Bellwether Farm

Just a Fluke?

2012-03-03T07:45:00.003-08:00

I've been debating about weighing in on this Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke thing, but now I just have to get my thoughts out there so I can stop fretting about them. This whole event is disturbing on so many levels. I have always been extremely sensitive to the fact that birth control pills are prescribed for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with birth control. When I was in college, I had many friends who were on them, not because they were having sex, but because they had uterine fibroids. Now that I have been diagnosed with endometriosis, I could take birth control pills to control the growth of the condition. But I've had a bad experience with them before, so I'm going to have a hysterectomy and ablation instead. But imagine if I was 20. Or wanted children. The calculus of these decisions is somewhat different then.

Which brings me to Sandra Fluke. She asked to testify to the GOP committee, and they would not allow it. So then she spoke to the Dem. committee. It took me one click on an Internet link to get to a transcript of her testimony. She spoke rationally and thoughtfully about her friend who was on the pill to control her uterine fibroids. When she could no longer afford it, she went off the pill, her fibroids have grown, and she is now a candidate for major surgery and is likely infertile.

So this is the person that Rush and any number of others have chosen to vilify. So fine, whatever, we all know he's a shock-jock who is just trying to get people riled up. It's his job. The thing that upsets me is that it's working. I have yet to find anyone in commentary who has bothered to click through and find out what she actually said. I suspect that if they did, they'd be on her side. Uterine fibroids and endometriosis are among the leading causes of infertility for women. So why would conservatives (who seem to feel a vested interest in the state of women's wombs), deny this medication to women with these conditions? It's illogical and inconsistent, and I don't understand it. (And of course, the reason a woman is on the pill should remain a confidential matter between her and her physician. Do they really want to open the Pandora's box of requiring that the owner of a company, or a pastor or a legislator needs to approve medical decisions? No, I thought not.)

The attitude of conservatives feels threatening and hostile to me. It informs my decision to have surgery rather than go on the pill for my own condition. If I can not be sure that that the drug option will be there for me tomorrow, I will not choose it. Many years ago, this fear also played into a decision to opt for a surgery that made me effectively infertile, because I was not certain that I would always have control over my own reproduction, especially here, in the most conservative state in the union. At the time, I thought I was probably being paranoid. As time goes by, and I watch what's happening on the right, which dominates what happens where I live, I become more and more certain that the only way that I can exercise my will and make my own decisions is to take drastic steps to be sure the decisions are irrevocable. I am not certain that I will be free tomorrow.

I am filled with fear for my sister, coming of age in this environment, when hatred and oppression of women is being so readily expressed and enacted into law in so many states across the country. I can not imagine how different her world is than mine was when I was her age. Many in the right make noise about Sharia law coming to the U.S. Take a look around at laws pertaining to women that are being passed in Georgia, Alabama, Utah, Arizona, and proposed in Federal Congress. Then take a deep think about the distance left to go before what we wear, read or do is as circumscribed as the medicines we are allowed to take.

Slow Cooker Porridge

2012-02-20T15:16:00.000-08:00

This is a new favorite breakfast recipe, and it makes an enormous amount that can just be heated up in the microwave during the week. I usually add a poached egg on top, especially now, when we are getting between 8 and 11 eggs every day! If you are not up on your fiber, ease into this---just a word to the wise... This probably has a full day's ration in one serving. Can be halved if your slow cooker is smaller than mine.

Slow Cooker Porridge:
1 1/2 cups mixed whole grains (I commonly use 1/2 cup hard white wheat, 1/2 cup brown rice, 1/2 cup barley, but I've also used rye, wild rice, hard red wheat, whatever is in the cupboard)
1/2 cup dried fruit
1 t vanilla extract
1 t lemon juice
8 cups water

Put it all in the slow cooker, cook on high until the water starts to steam, then on low for 12 hours.

That's it! I find it plenty sweet just like that, but you could add maple syrup when serving. It's dynamite with a couple of poached eggs on top, and there's something about a big bowl of grains that makes my belly happy all the way through to lunch time.

Danni update...

2012-02-02T19:07:00.000-08:00

It's been a while, so here's an update on the gorgeous girl!

She's running up to three years old now, and so her winter has been full of changes. She grew another inch (at least!), all in the legs, it looks like. She spent several weeks being higher behind than in front (oh no!) and then several weeks higher in front than behind (hooray!) and then too high in the back end again (oh no!)... But I'm quite certain that when she's doen growing, she'll be built uphill, like a proper dressage horse!

Along about the end of November, she started losing her baby teeth, and spent most of December and half of January on the near side of completely cranky, because the caps were tearing up her mouth a little as they worked loose. Yet another reason to give her most of the winter off!

About two weeks ago, she started sleeping through the night. Until then, she'd wake up at least once, maybe twice, and start banging at her stall: "I'm awake and I'm bored! Someone come entertain me!" only slightly maddening to the humans in the house, because horses are big and strong and stalls are big and echo-ey, and so it was all loud enough to hear in the house!

Of late, the weather has been quite bad---wet and rainy and muddy. For a bit, it was so muddy that we couldn't turn the horses out in their paddocks. So they had to go out in the arena (probably the best engineered piece of flattish ground on the planet!). Danni had all kinds of excuses to be bad, and she did not take them.

She's been much better about her feet in general, although she still prefers to have all four on the ground, rather than me holding one up... But she improves, and today, even though the grooming stall was muddy and slick with creeping damp, she eventually let me pick out her feet.

I've been doing a bit of ground work with her when I can, and she is gradually learning the three most fundamental lessons a horse can learn:

1) kicking and rearing are COMPLETELY unacceptable around people (young horses always think you are a horse, and that they can't really hurt you). Today, she actually kicked herself, by mistake, so I bet that has come to an end...

2) all those noises and gestures and nudges have information in them that leads to treats, pets, and praise, if she can figure out what they mean.

3) pressure means "move away", not toward. This is a surprisingly hard concept for them. If you rub on a horse, they will lean into you, because it feels good! But if you press on them, you mean for them to move away. It's counter-intuitive for them. But eventually, they figure out the difference between an "aid" and a rub.

Meanwhile, she grows more beautiful by the day, with her snip becoming more prominent, and her body and head becoming more like a grownup horse. In a couple more weeks, I'll put her back to work, and her grownup life will begin. By the end of March, I will have her in regular work under saddle, and we'll see if we can learn to dance together. Between the introduction to riding that she had in the fall, and the intermittent work we've been doing on the ground, the foundation is there, and I can't wait to see how she comes along in the spring!

The Smash and Grab Job

2012-01-31T19:10:00.000-08:00

So, not such a good day. Yesterday began the recurrence of my recurrent health problems, which brought me home from work for a day and a half, mostly to curl up in a tiny ball on the bed and just TRY to breathe slowly. I had charted this out, and it should have started tomorrow. Well, never mind. Next week I get to see an another specialist, who actually specializes in this kind of pain, and we'll see what she can do.

BUT. In the meantime, I have turned 40. Which means I had a mammogram scheduled for today. I got to crawl out of bed, put actual clothes on (ow, because my abdomen is so swollen that even my undewear hurts it) and go across town to the radiology clinic, where they have a cheery, welcoming sign that reads:

Some people are like slinkies.
They are essentially useless,
But they still make you laugh
When you push them down the stairs.

So I check in, and get my piece of paper to fill out, and they send me to the changing rooms. I sit down to start filling out the paperwork, and I'm not even 1/3 of the way down the page, when the radiologist comes to get me. So I say, "but I'm not even done with my paperwork yet!". And she says "just get changed. You can fill that out afterwards."

So I pull the curtain over, and it doesn't close all the way, but the person is waiting, so I just turn my back, and get into ye olde hospital gown (which for the first time in my life is supposed to go with the ties in front. This may seem obvious in retrospect, but I've been well trained that the ties go in the back, where you can't reach them!)

And I grab up all my stuff, because the last time I was here, I had to take all my stuff. And she says, "No. Leave it. Just bring your purse.". I'm juggling my purse and my clipboard and my pen, and trying to drop my clothes back onto the bench. Finally, I get that accomplished (was I only imagining the foot tapping and the heavy sighs?), and go across the hall.

The radiologist takes my clipboard, glances over it, draws a line through everything I haven't filled out yet, and says "you don't need to do that part anyway". Then she asks if I've had all my mammograms there. To which I reply "this is my first one", which was on the part of the paper I DID fill out, so she should have known that.

I get straightened out on my incorrect dressing, the fact that I should not have been wearing deodorant today, and away we go to the machine.

After lots of pushing and shoving and having to stand very awkwardly with my head tilted back to one side, one hip dropped down to the left, and my toes pointed to one side, the plastic plate drops, and is surprisingly painful, cold and uncomfortable. "Don't breathe." she says. There are some clicks and whines, and the plastic plate slides up. There is silence for a long moment, while I try to figure out if I'm allowed to breathe or move, and then she says "ok. We have a problem." which nearly causes me heart failure. But apparently I just have very...dense...breasts. Sigh. So there is extra smashing and grabbing. Just for me.

Finally, after several more episodes of holding my breath, flinching, and trying to figure out who engineered this particularly stupid invention, which does not allow for the fact that you will actually have a person, with a HEAD and FEET attached to the tissues in question, she leaves me standing there for a very long interval before she says, "good. Ok. You are done. You can go now."

So I pull my hospital gown back together, and ask, "so my doctor should have the results when?" and she tells me to call my doctor in a couple of days, but they'll send me a letter in the mail in a few weeks anyway. So off I go, back to collect my clothes, definitely feeling like the victim of a smash and grab job. And more than usually ticked off to be a woman in society today. Because for certain, if it was a testicu-ography, there would be no uncomfortable smashing. And someone would have taken into account that other parts of the body also stick off the front, and good engineering would make a place for those. Oh, and you betcha, the little plastic plates would be all toasty warm too.

Sunny Sunday

2012-01-22T15:24:00.000-08:00

It's been raining here, onto frozen ground, which means mud, mud, mud. Then last night, we got about 4 inches of snow on top of all that slick mud.

The paddocks are unusable, and yesterday, the horses each got only about half an hour of turnout in the arena. They are used to being out roughly sunrise to sunset. All are holding themselves in, but they struggle with the self-control required.

So I started turning horses out in the arena at a bit before nine this morning, while I cleaned their stalls. It occurred to me to absolutely as inefficient as possible, so they could each have more time. Trinket and Music Man went out together, and I managed to drag out cleaning their stalls, doing water buckets, etc. for forty minutes. Then Danni went out, and I did her stall, fed chickens, raked up the hay barn, did a few other little things. But that only took twenty minutes! So I went inside, and got Dressage Today and brought it out to sit in a chair in the sunshine in my Carrharts to read about Piaffe and getting the most out of a clinic. Time to change them around again---Danni in, Harley out. I mucked that last stall, and went back to my chair. John brought me a beer, and we sat watching the light on the snow on the mountains, watching Harley kick up his heels, listening to the others moving around in their stalls, laughing hysterically about how glad I was this morning to hear Russell crow. (Russell Crowe! Hahahahahha! I guess you had to be there...)

This afternoon, it thawed enough to use the new pump to get some of the water out of the paddocks---John is a hero, going to get that pump last week! So we all stood around leaning on the shovel, or with hands in pockets, to watch the minor miracle of modern technology. Danni was back out in the arena again, completely unfazed by gas-powered pumps and 150-foot hoses. And I felt so satisfied, to have thought so far ahead as to put in a GOOD arena, so that even when the weather is soup, ponies can get out. And SUCH wonderful ponies as we have here! And to be able to buy what's needful, when we need it (like dirty water pumps and hoses from the House of Hose). And to have bright sunshine and the luxury to take some time to be out in it with people I love. And to have warm clothes. And hot water for a shower at the end of the day.

Grading

2012-01-20T17:45:00.000-08:00

Today I gave AND graded two exams. All my University friends will be gaping in awe. But I found new motivators. As part of my Happiness Project, I'm trying to improve my work life. One part of that is "biscuits"---small rewards that help me keep moving on the things that are monotonous. It used to be that one big biscuit at the end of the day---like getting to leave early to go ride my horse---was good enough. But it's been years now since I have been able to work that out to coordinate with heavy monotony days, like exams and accounting.

So today, I decided to try a new strategy.

I allways grade exams by question. All of question one, then all of question two, and so on. There are lots of good efficiency and fairness reasons to do it this way, but it also breaks the grading into manageable chunks. So I put my headphones on, hit shuffle on my "favorites" playlist, and got started. I decided that when my very favorite song-of-the-moment ("Just Breathe" by Pearl Jam) came on, I would immediately stop, close the door and stare out the window for a few minutes until it was done. So that was a way to build in a break for stretching and breathing.

And then I decided that every time I finished grading a problem, I would take a few minutes to do something that someone ELSE would like. So after problem one, I wrote a note to a colleague who I recently found out has breast cancer, to tell her how much I have always admired her. After problem two, I sent a note to let a staff member know I was thinking of her, as she is bereaved as of yesterday. After the third problem, I really got going, and sent a nominal gift certificate with a funny note to someone who is struggling with her workload, just to let her know it won't always be this way---someday, the project will be done, and there will be time for reading and toys again. I, personally, sometimes struggle to find this person likeable, so i was so pleased to be able to think of something to do to acknowledge her burdens. After the fourth problem, I got to send some wonderful television (Lark Rise to Candleford) to someone who will love it. After the fifth problem, I wrote a card (I clearly had better buy more cards to keep around, if this is going to go on!) to hide for someone who will love discovering it. And when I was done, I went to lunch with a friend who really needed to unload about some of the stresses he's under. I wasn't looking forward to it, exactly, but knew he really needed to talk, and then we ran into some others, and just had a lot of fun instead. Which was even better.

So I finished grading the first exam, and felt just AWESOME! It was so fun to have little five minute breaks every 40 minutes or so, in which I completely changed where I was living in my head. And I felt I was doing something really important and valuable for my community---reaching out to the people I love, honor and value, and those who are struggling. For a moment, I felt guilty about that---isn't it just selfish to do things that you think will make other people happy, if it makes you happy too? And then I decided THAT was sick and wrong, and who put THAT idea in my head?! (Wow! Happiness is so...complicated!)

Which circles back around to Pearl Jam:

"I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands,
The ones I love.
Some folks, they've got none.
Others, they've got one."

There's something about telling other people how wonderful they are that reminds you how very lucky you are to have them in your life.

True Confessions...

2012-01-16T13:17:00.000-08:00

While on book tour to Austin, TX to the AAS meeting (completely fun, and a huge boost to my morale!), I picked up a book in the airport called 'The Happiness Project'. It was on the NYT bestseller list for 44 weeks, and I can see why. It's not preachy. It's not annoying. It's not about finding your spiritual blah-de-blah-blah. It's chock-full of interesting observations about what makes people happy, what makes people unhappy, and what it's like to spend a year dedicated to trying to do more of the former and less of the latter. (And also why it's completely NOT selfish to do that! Hooray!)

This comes at a particularly good moment for me, because as you know, I am trying to figure out how to whittle down my work responsibilities. It's helpful to have some signposts to direct me about which things are urgent, which are important, which make me happier and which detract from my happiness.

At any rate. One of the resolutions the author makes is to 'Tackle a Nagging Task'. This afternoon, it occurred to me that I have a nagging task that has been hanging around for THIRTEEN, yes THIRTEEN, years. It took me half an hour to do. And now it's done!

I confronted this task at least three times each day, and sometimes four or five. Every day when I woke up. Every day when I went to sleep. Every day when I made the bed or every time I took the sheets off to wash them, or put them on again. Every time I pulled the covers tight, or smoothed them down.

In order to understand this, you must understand that I have a weird relationship to money. Really, really weird---a little bit crazy, actually. And I often behave completely irrationally about it (this, by the way, is the source of much of my difficulties with accounting---if money is involved, it's super-easy to make me cry. And our accounting staff make even non-crazy people cry...imagine what they can do to me!) Purchasing even small things is a huge deal for me. Shopping for...anything...for myself is accompanied by lengthy internal monologues from "The Troll" in my head about what I "deserve", have "earned", can be trusted to "take proper care of", what I am "worthy of", whether or not I really "need it". It will sometimes take me multiple trips to the Department store to finally buy a six-pack of socks for $6.99. Sigh.

Thirteen years ago, for Christmas, we got a gift certificate to Eddie Bauer that enabled us to purchase a down comforter (not the nicest, fluffiest one, because of The Troll), and a duvet cover. They didn't have the cover in the size that fit the comforter, but only in the next larger size. I bought the duvet cover anyway, because I knew that if I didn't buy it right then, when my courage was up, I would never, ever get it, and then I would be stuck with this raw, white down comforter, which is even more impractical than a duvet cover that doesn't really fit. Besides, I rationalized, I can always just sew a seam down the long side, and then it will fit. Right? Right. And also, a duvet cover in the wrong size kind of fit in with what The Troll was telling me about luxurious down comforters. Serves me right.

There I was. Year after year, waking up every morning, fidgeting with the down comforter so that it lay in the middle of the duvet cover. Going to bed each night, tugging on the duvet cover so that it was centered over the comforter. Making the bed, washing the sheets, taking the cover off and putting it on, and each and every time thinking, "I need to fix this." That's approximately 13*365*3=14,000 times I had that thought. 14,000 times I felt a little bad that I hadn't gotten to it yet. 14,000 times I mentally shied away from thinking about it, and moved on to something else. It's ridiculous.

I was thinking today about the Happiness Project, and I suddenly wondered why I had never fixed that stupid thing. And I realized (hold on, because this is really disturbing) that I had never fixed it because I was afraid that if I tried to fix it, I would mess it up worse than it was. And that was REALLY bad, because a) I didn't really deserve it in the first place and b) clearly I couldn't be trusted to take good care of my things. Double-sigh. So then I thought f*!@K that. I'm going to try to fix it. And if I mess it up, I hereby give myself permission to buy a new one. So there. And I put all my courage together, and I annoyed John by starting a project when he just wanted to relax on the sofa, and I annoyed the dogs by putting this lovely comforter on the floor and not letting them lay on it. But I got started. And then I kept going.

Half an hour later, a nagging task that had been bothering me for more than 1/4 of my life was completed. And it's marvelous. It fits perfectly. It looks great. It's fixed. A big sticking out of my tongue to The Troll, and a new mental image I'm working on about defeating The Troll.

This feels great! What else can I do? I'm sure I have more nagging tasks around here somewhere!

(P.S. This gives me a good direction for my own Happiness Project. Clearly I need to do something about The Troll and that creepy, disturbing money relationship. "Money---it's a good servant, but a bad master." More about that in a future post, but not so far in the future that it becomes a nagging task!)

Solace

2011-11-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

John let me sleep in this morning, getting up at 5:30 to feed the horses (usually my chore), and leaving me in bed under a pile of blankets and dogs cuddled close to me. It was nearly 8 by the time I rousted myself out, and wandered into the kitchen.

After breakfast (baked bacon with eggs from our hens and home made wheat toast; homemade ketchup and jam; black tea), I wandered out to the barn, and took my time cleaning stalls, prepping pony dinners, adding new bedding, as the drizzle came down, and the gusty wind brought willow leaves sleeting to the ground in bunches. Leaning on my pitchfork in the doorway, I watched the clouds slide around the mountain tops and away to the East through the canyon. The horses moved quietly about, picking through the fallen leaves for a tasty snack. Russell the rooster expressed his opinion of the cold and the wet. A red-tailed hawk perched in the Lombardy poplar at the far end of the property, shoulders hunched and head pulled down between them---like a city dweller in a trenchcoat, hat pulled down, hands in pockets, hurrying along the sidewalk, hunched against the wind, trying to keep his ears warm.

Back in the house, I wiped down the wet dogs, laughing at their laughing faces, and wriggling bodies, wrapped in towels. John had started a project, breaking into the pumpkins, to make them into purée for the freezer, and spicy pumpkin seeds for snacks. (T-day is coming!) I decided to make a pumpkin-corn chowder for lunch, and we spent a quiet couple of hours dancing in the kitchen---moving this way and that, circling the center island, sliding each other out of the way to get into a drawer, offering and receiving a taste on a spoon, passing in and out of the pantry, query and response about where to find the cumin seed or the dried peppers. The simple pleasure of a well-stocked home, filled with whatever you need, to make whatever you want, if you can find it. And someone to share it with.

Before the soup was done, the rain had turned to snow, and John decided to make cornbread to go with the chowder. As he stood in the door of the pantry, a number 10 can of cornmeal in his hands, I smiled, thinking 'three years ago, we would have had to go to the store before we could have made cornbread on a snowy Saturday. We're kind of nutty.'

This afternoon is for reading books and knitting and drinking chamomile tea by the quart as the snow comes down, and the wind blows. After chores, Saturday is candle-light game and pizza night, (the dough is rising, and I'm thinking about toppings for my side of the pizza...).

Our growing competence at all the things that are truly essential to living, our supply of food that means we will not starve, no matter what the weather does, our responsibilities to the crowd of beings that rely on us, our amusements and entertainments, and the quiet partnership of moving in the same space to separate ends; all these things act in my mind and my body so that I find myself comforted, so full of peace and security that sadness becomes a kind of sweetness. And the outrageous joys, that in their own way are so draining and fraught with the fear of a fall, become mellowed, warmer, not so glittery-hard. It's a hard year, this year, with highs that are so high and lows that are so low. Days like this one remind me that the buffeting waves are only temporary and there's ground down there somewhere just waiting for me to plant my feet on it.

Practical Things

2011-11-08T18:02:00.000-08:00

We went to see Temple Grandin last week.

Now, that might sound like we've gone off the rez---we drove an hour, each way, to see a woman speak about how she designs slaughterhouses. But I'll point out that two friends went with us, AND the auditorium was packed with hundreds and hundreds of people, AND several other friends made time to catch her earlier talk. So if it is off the rez, there're a lot of others out there with us!

Temple gave a great talk, mostly about animal handling, and how the goal should always be to keep them calm, not to find ways to calm them down again after they've been upset. It was a great talk all together, and left me with several ideas that I don't want to forget. So you get to read them here...

The first was about how McDonalds (since Fast Food Nation, Omnivore's Dilemma and a host of other scathing books reminiscent of Sinclair's The Jungle came out...can it be ten years ago already?!) has stepped in to demand improvements in the handling of animals at the slaughterhouses it buys from. That alone is staggering. McDonalds is important in the food industry in the same way the Mormon Church is important in Utah. If they throw their weight around, everyone else gets sucked along in the draft, whether they wanted to go that way or not.

Temple helped McDonalds design their criteria. And in her autistic way, she focused in on the real, actual problem. Rather than specify what slaughterhouses should DO (put in x number of lights, lay y type of non-skid flooring, install z type of cattle chute), she specified very specific, easily measured, animal by animal checklists that indicate wellbeing. Did the cow moo? Did the cow fall? Did the cow run at any time?

And these criteria have dramatically improved the handling of these animals. By focusing on outcomes, and making them very, very specific, Temple allowed the people 'on the ground' to solve problems, innovate, find a system that worked for them. Of course, this was frustratingly abused at times. And of course, once they installed remote monitoring via videocamera, they found that many people only met the standard while they were being watched. Still, things have been improving by measurable leaps and bounds.

Which leads me to the next nifty thing. Someone asked how she gets management on board, because management has to buy in to the program, otherwise it will never be followed. And she said, "We fire them." If management can't produce the measurable outcomes, and won't buy in, McDonalds swoops in and insists that someone else be put in charge. Who knew? Management can be fired!

Another kid stood up and asked about the moral dilemma of using animals for our own purposes, blah-blah-blah. You've heard it before. And Temple had such a good answer. It came in several parts, but two things particularly caught my attention. The first was that she explained that she's about practical solutions to actual problems (not, as Taylor Mali says "what I would wish for in an ideal world") She asked the kid if he'd ever done anything practical. And he must have blinked at her, because she followed up immediately with "what's your major?" Religious studies. So then she really scolded him for not ever having done anything practical. And I think her point was that when you build a fence, fix a car, cook a meal, put up food for winter, plant a tree, hang a gate, build a shed...move in the world, you begin to realize that it's not made up in your head. That there are real things outside of you that have real limitations, and you can't just make things up and then nail them together and expect them to last the winter, unless you take the actual real world into account. And that resonated for me. Because these days, I'm all about practical. Which is funny. For an astrophysicist.

The second thing was about the horses. We used to slaughter horses in the U.S.---for dog food, among other things. And then a law was enacted that made it so we don't do that anymore. Victory, right? All the pretty horses, not getting killed anymore, right? Sadly, no. Now they just get shipped to Mexico to be slaughtered. And as you can imagine, Mexican slaughterhouses are nothing like ours. It's a tragedy and a MESS. And the horses suffer so much more now. It's an unintended consequence of saying, "I won't be a part of it." But the activists never wondered what would happen to the surplus animals. It's a literal fact of nature that there will always be surplus animals. If you aren't willing to adopt a PMU mare and put her on your front lawn, what do you propose to do with her she comes off the line? You have to look at the WHOLE problem. Not just the piece that makes you upset.

And so Temple's point was this---people eat meat. We are not likely to become a nation of vegetarians anytime soon (there was a funny aside here about how scallops would be a much better thing to grow in a vat than beef) And meat has some advantages. If you eat meat, you can grow food in places that won't sustain grain. Rangeland can not be farmed, in the traditional crop-farming sense. It's just too poor, too dry, too hot. But you can still grow ruminants on it---cows, goats, sheep. And when it's done right, these herds actually improve the rangeland. So she looks at the system, and asks, "how can I make this the best system for the animals that it can possibly be?" And then she works on that. She's practical. And keeps her eyes wide open to see the whole problem.

So. Why am I thinking about all this and not wanting to forget?

On Saturday, I was at an outreach event for high schoolers. More than one of them could not subtract 9 from 17. More than one of them asked for a calculator to divide by ten. On Monday, in class, I discovered that at least one of my physics students is a "magical thinker", and believes there is no objective reality. I kicked my butt last year to run programs that drew 45,000 people, but when I wandered around some of these programs, watching the kids, I realized that the vast majority weren't getting ANYTHING out of it. They wandered into a Science Olympiad event with a pouty face and a sour attitude, and wandered out again, even more sour, because they didn't know anything about the event, and did poorly, despite having almost a whole year to prepare. The winners went off to Nationals, and came in dead last...again. Science Fair posters are perennially terrible, with the omnipresent volcano, and the teeth soaked in soda. For twenty years, I've been doing outreach of various kinds, and suddenly find myself wondering why. So, in MY autistic way, I went looking for data. Actual cold hard data on the effect of these outreach programs on kids. As far as I could determine, the last study on Science Fair was in the 50's. And it found that it worked kind of well for the kids who WERE INTO SCIENCE ANYWAY. I could find no assessment data about Science Olympiad. And drop-in programs and field trips and so on have only the crudest possible data about efficacy.

But that totally makes sense. Because even I, who could be considered an expert in actually doing this stuff, have not sat down and made a list of desired measurable outcomes. "A positive experience" with science is not a measurable outcome. "Did the child have a smile on his/her face" IS a measurable outcome. But even better are outcomes that emphasize what we want students to do. "Did the 11th grader successfully subtract 9 from 17" may seem like a low bar. But it appears to be where we are.

Frighteningly, I begin to worry that I'm actually part of the problem---that all these programs are actually sending the kids to Mexican slaughterhouses. By emphasizing positive experiences that might be fun, but are shallow, unfulfilling, impractical, and above all, FAKE, I'm helping these kids to grow up believing that science might be fun, but is shallow, unfulfilling, impractical, and above all, FAKE. That it has no place in the actual world. That it's fluff. That they can't use it, like a screwdriver or a hammer, to solve actual real-world problems around them every day. I had already made this jump in my classes, with courses like Physics@Home, Environmental Physics, and even my introductory survey course being chock-full of everyday examples about water levels, microwaves, cell phones, etc. But now it's beginning to be apparent to me that I also need to re-think the whole outreach thing. It's a practical problem. With a practical solution. Maybe. But I won't know if I don't get out from under all these things that I suspect aren't doing any good, so I can step back and actually see what the point is.

So that's a thing I'm working on. And I have to keep it in the front of my mind, because it would be so easy to just keep doing what I already do, and eventually start defending it as sacred, because I have a queasy feeling it's not all it's cracked up to be, but I can't actually admit that, because I've been doing it so long. It would be so much easier to just go along with the things that are already being done. And it's only now that I begin to understand that this is what "No" is all about for me---building some space around myself so I have room to figure out what we should be trying to accomplish, and then figure out how to measure it, and then figure out how to get it done. I can't do that if I'm constantly distracted by chasing after event coordinators, fixing student time sheets and being yelled at by accounting. Just, you know, as examples...

Oof.

2011-11-07T18:40:00.000-08:00

My dear, sweet grandfather went into hospice care on Sunday. He can't swallow, and he can't talk, and all anyone can say is that hopefully, it won't be long. My grandfather fought in the war. No, the big war. He was part of that whole 'defeating Hitler thing' that has meant so much to the world ever since. And his son fought in Vietnam. And died, possibly because of it.

Everyone says Everett is one of the nicest people they know. What I know is that he nursed my grandmother, who had a stroke when I could not have been more than nine, until she died, when I was in college. In all that time, I never heard her speak more than a phrase or two---all the words she had left. He nursed her until the day she died. And, to my knowledge, never complained, not once.

I once watched him play a game of pool with a young man. He worked at teaching the young man how to play, patiently watching as he made mediocre shots. Then the young man lied about a shot. And Grandpa gave hima a chance to come clean. But he didn't. And in two more shots, Grandpa cleaned the table. A lesson there. As long as you are honestly trying, I'll teach you. But as soon as you give less than your best, I will slap you down.

Then set up the triangle to try again.

In his kitchen, Grandpa had a plaque, that said something in fake Latin---I remember one phrase: 'Nobili, demis trux. Si what's inem? Cowsen dux.'. And when I was taking Latin in high school, I liked to study it, and try to figure out how it was like Latin, and how it wasn't. There was also a picture of Pope John Paul on the refrigerator, which was a novelty, and I never asked what it meant to him.

He made the best spaghetti.

He always had bowls of Hershey kisses all over the house for us grandkids.

Auntie Anne lived with them in the spare room on the first floor. She smoked. A LOT. I was a little afraid of her. And then she died.

The upstairs of his house had two rooms, separated by a landing. On the left was the girls' room---my mom and my aunt grew up in that room. On the right was my uncle Jimmy's room. The girls' room had a number of dolls that had lost their hair. My uncle Jimmy's room had a lot of guns. And him. He worked the night shift...er...or something. But he was always sleeping during the day, and when I was sent to bed before everyone else (because I was just a kid), I would listen to him getting up and moving around. And I would be frightened, because I rarely ever saw him. And he always looked a little wild. Like Mr. Edwards, from Little House, but with more guns.

Grandpa would take us kids to the store on the corner, and we would get baseball cards (that was my brother) and bubble gum (me) and then we'd head back, and I'd hang over his shoulder and 'help' him do the crossword puzzle. It must have annoyed him no end that I was chewing my gum in his ear, but he never said a word. He was like that.

At the end of the street was a nasty old pond, that used to be nice, apparently, because everyone had stories about ice skating on it in a long ago Bobbsey-twins time.

Everyone on the street looked after Grandpa, and vice-versa, especially Smitty, next door, who just thought Grandpa was the cat's meow.

He had the best attic over his garage. It seemed like he had saved just everything from when his children were kids. And there were so many toys, and books, and more books and some Breyer horses that I took home with me. They helped pay for my senior year in college. I still had some of the books. I could pull them off the shelf and show you where my mom wrote her name, and under it, I wrote mine.

I never saw him be mean to anyone. I never saw him lose patience with my grandmother. I never saw him lose his temper. He must have had one. And sometimes he must have raged, like when he finally retired from years and years at Monsanto (there was a gold clock!), but his wife was to sick to go anywhere. And that went on for years. There must have been frustrated dreams. And there must have been existential angst about how there was always someone else to care for---sister, wife, son. Still, he got up in the morning, and did his pushups and his situs and rode his exercise bike. And then he did his crossword puzzle. And sometimes, I'd see him put his hand on my grandmother's head, and tell her to "shush. It's all right. Take your time."

When my grandmother died, there was such a wake. So many fantastic stories, and I remember sitting with the great-aunts in a kitchen somewhere, thinking "someone needs to get a tape recorder in here! These stories are amazing!" but no one ever did, and those stories are lost now. Like so many others. And my Grandpa, in his grief, had his favorite picture of her made into a life size oil painting. I was so honored to be the one who got to go with him to the artist. Grandpa was easy-going, in general, but he had his heart set on this, and until he moved in with my aunt, it hung in his living room where he could see it all the time in his waking hours. Bravo, Grandpa, bravo.

He was one of the bravest people I've ever met. From where I sit, he lived his whole life in the service of others. And he didn't whine about it. He just said, "someone needs to take care of this." And then he did it. Soon, he will be gone. And I'm sorry for myself.

No.

2011-10-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

Science Olympiad came back and tried to roost above my door, like a raven.

And I realized the problem with a 'Just say "no"' campaign. Nobody wants to take "No" for an answer. And so they keep coming back with 'But what about...' and 'What if we...' and 'Why can't you...'

D. C. School District might run it. If I can give them all my contacts, and all our homemade software to make it easier, and all our checklists, so they know how to do it...

And Mr. X from Math wants to do it, if I can supply him with funding, oh, and staff support...

And then I put Mr. X and D. C. S.D. together. And they will do it, if I can pay for them to rent the University facilities. Oh, and provide help with staff. And all my contacts. And all my homegrown software, and all our checklists. And organize the people.

So...

That would be a big fat 'What part of 'No' don't you understand?'

No.

If any of you people want to just take it on and run with it, I will give you every piece of paper I have. But I have no funding. And I have no staff. And I am not available to help with this.

No.

Yes.

2011-10-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

Now, available on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Our-Universe-Stacy-Palen/dp/0393912108/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320019549&sr=8-1

I will hold copies in my hand tomorrow (depending, of course, on the vagaries of our budget-challenged University mail, in which "FedEx" means "some time, when we get around to it...").

Still, yes, yes, yes. I am so proud of what we've made in this book. It's completely different from anything else out there, and I had so much fun thinking of new ways to engage students in the subject.

So yes.

And "yes", too to the fourth edition of 21st Century Astronomy. Because I have so much to learn about working with this group of people on this massive project. And I kind of did it backwards, by being a first author first. So now I am learning to follow, and let someone else lead. It feels like when we took salsa lessons, and I had...to...let...John...lead...arg. It's so hard for me. And such an important lesson!

Yes, to writing books. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

No.

2011-10-26T17:26:00.000-07:00

We have a golden eagle. A dead one. (It's stuffed, and in our Museum, just so you know...)

In this country, in order to have an eagle, even a dead one, or a part of one (what?!), you need to file paperwork every year that tells where you got it, and how you used it, and how many people saw it or otherwise benefited from your possession of a National Treasure. It's not a huge deal. It takes maybe a couple of hours a year. But you have to remember to do it. And then you have to actually...well...do it.

Unless you are me. And then you think, 'This sounds like a job for... The Zoology Department!' who are already dealing with the Department of Fish and Wildlife anyway. And they love dead, stuffed things. And you call them up, and say, 'Hey, do yous guys want to be responsible for this big, dead eagle?'. And they say, 'Heck yes we do!'

And then you have an empty space in your head, where keeping track of the eagle used to be.

No.

No.

2011-10-25T16:38:00.000-07:00

An outreach person from Hill Air Force Base called me today. She wants to work with me as the go-between on some things related to Science Fair, instead of working with the person actually in charge. HAFB has scholarships for kids. They want to set up a recruitment table. Fran wants me to work with them to make opportunities for young people who are interested in science. She insists that i'm so easy to work with. I gave her the phone number of the person in charge, and said "No.". A complete sentence.

I'm sure the kiddies will get their scholarships without my direct input.

So that's Science Fair: off my list.

No.

Yes.

2011-10-24T18:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, if you are lucky, someone is watching you carefully. They see what you need before you do, and deliver a dream you didn't even know you had.

John has been after me for months to keep my birthday weekend free. Our University has "Fall Break"---a random Friday that almost always falls in the week of my birthday. Purely selfishly, I cancelled my Thursday class, and took off when classes were over on Wednesday. That afternoon, we went to Golden Spike for a ride in the sunshine, we had a lovely dinner, and I received fun and thoughtful presents from John and Jo, including games to play the rest of the weekend.

So Thursday was a quiet day. We did lots of little projects (I finally finished the solar hot water heater for the wash stall, for example...), played games, and generally puttered around.

Friday morning at 11:30, Jo had a lesson. John was all fired up about cleaning out the garage, and left to take the recycling to the transfer station around 10:00 or so. At eleven-ish, he sent me a text to let me know he was stopping at Home Depot. At that point, I was pondering doing some work on my closet shelves over the weekend, so I asked him to get me some paint. I wandered out to the barn for Jo's lesson, and we got started in the arena.

About halfway through, I saw John come through the barn with a dark-haired woman. I thought, 'That looks like Colleen. Sigh. I miss Colleen.' but mostly, I was still working on explaining something to Jo. But then John and the dark-haired woman were at the gate at the end of the arena. I shaded my eyes and stared. "who is that?" I asked. "I've come for my lesson." she said, and it was Colleen!

I took off running for the gate, tears already in my eyes, covering 30 yards in a single breath, and threw my arms around her over the gate! Then I hugged John, and then Colleen again. Then I looked back at Jo, who waved me out the gate, and I was just beside myself. I couldn't really process the fact that Colleen was here! On my farm! And I had so much to show her and so much to talk about, and she was actually here! I couldn't stop staring at this fantastic person who means so much to me that I can't even really articulate it. I grabbed her hand and dragged her all around the farm, like I was a little kid---showing her everything as fast as I could, and just giving her spontaneous hugs, because I was just so happy to see her.

She stayed for 48 hours, and we got to ride together again, which we haven't done in years, and that meant I got to give her a little gift back. My lovely, beautiful, safe mare, in our flawless arena, with that spectacular view... Giving her back a little of what she's had to set aside in recent times. David (her three year old son) came with her, and we played with him, and talked and talked and talked. About our jobs, and friends and futures and David and Danni and John and Toby and dogs and goats and just everything under the sun. A little about old times in Seattle, when we went eventing together every summer, sharing a tent, getting up at dawn to walk the cross-country course together in the knee-high grass, drinking beers with th guys after cross country, when the adrenaline high had wound down to reasonable levels, sharing barn chores and dissecting our runs in the truck on the way home. Best times...

I feel like I've been wrapped in swaddling clothes. Like I'm tucked in under the covers with a fire going and a storm outside. Like hot chocolate and warm mittens and a blanket around my shoulders at the Christmas parade. Cherished and comforted and wrapped in love and warmth and the glow of candles and being read my favorite story. And so grateful to John and Colleen, for the best birthday present ever.

Wednesdays are hard...

2011-10-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

Today was another ordinary day at work.

I got in just after 7:30. Which meant that I left the house a bit past seven. Which meant that I woke at 6, fed the horses and the dogs, opened the coop for the day. Then I made oatmeal, fed the dogs, ate my oatmeal, and realized I was running late. A quick brush of teeth and hair and I was our the door.

Leaving so much behind. Undone.

On the way to work, I found myself crying to these lyrics from Train:

'did you sail across the Sun?
Did you make it to the Milky Way
To find the lights all faded
And that Heaven is over-rated?'

And so I had to pull over for a minute until I could take a deep breath.

And then I went on.

I got to work, and got ready for class, planning out which problems I would do, that fit the humorous 'super-hero' theme I'm working on. In the past couple of days, we've been Superman, Spiderman, Bruce Willis in Armageddon, and the X-men. Also search-and-rescue. I checked email, and started to answer one.

Off to class, and for 50 minutes, answered, hinted and directed, with all the intensity that only I am capable of. They laughed, they cried, they made jokes and solved problems.

After class, I was swamped with students, one after the other asking the same three questions, demonstrating that they didn't pay ANY attention to last week's problems worked in class. For an hour and ten minutes, I asked the same questions over and over: 'have written down your variables? Where is your free-body-diagram? What is this letter on your paper? Where is the rest of your work?' and it's hard to remember that they were only 5 out of 86.

Then finding that I had no time to go over my notes, I headed off to class with the speaker for the afternoon seminar. I've known him since I was a post-doc, and he's new faculty at another University. He's come to see me teach, and get some pointers. So I start my lecture, and get to the second page. Where I realize pages are missing. Because I used them in another course last year, and never put them back. And didn't have time to check before class. So now I have to 'wing it', on the explanation of core-collapse supernovae, with photo disintegration, charge destruction and neutron degenerate matter. I'm thrilled when the class side-tracks me on magnetic fields of neutron stars, and this disguises the fact that I was completely unprepared.

Back to my office after class, a line of students waiting to hear me ask them 'Where's your free-body-diagram?'... But it's not office hours, so they just have to wait for me to be done with the visitor. He asks me about teaching for an hour or so, and I give him all my astro 101 materials, so he'll have some kind of help in his new job, and agree to mentor him when he needs it. Then it's time to take the guest to lunch. A student stops me in the hall, just to ask me a 'quick question', that turns into three. Which are all basically about the definition of the words in the problems.

So off we go to the Union Building, where the food ranges in quality from bleh to inedible. But it's what we've got.

Back again after an awkward hour of conversation between this newly minted faculty member and one of our professors (who should be emeritus by now) about the 'lost generation' of scientists, who obediently filled the pipeline, only to find that no one is retiring, and there are no jobs. Some things are bad, and others are worse. The average time a PhD astrophysicist spends in post-docs is now 8 years. EIGHT. On average. So some spend much, much longer than that.

Back to the building, explaining again that LAST year was the last ditch year for Science Olympiad. That it didn't matter anymore if it was good or if we wanted it, but that it couldn't be done. And yes, it was me that made that decision (and, goddamnit, if everyone cared that much about it, where in the hell were all of you when I was lying on the bathroom floor because I couldn't stand up because the stress had shut down my entire digestive system?!). Or maybe i've just been having this discussion so many times that every conversation about Science Olympiad feels like it goes like that...

Off to a poorly attended seminar. An embarrassment, when bringing people in from other places. Especially friends.

And the person who is supposed to shepherd the speaker for the rest of the afternoon is off to lab. So I take him up to show him the planetarium, completely forgetting my regularly scheduled meeting with my staff. And he's duly impressed that our 'little' planetarium has sold shows in 26 states, 17 countries, and they've been translated into 8 languages...

So away he goes, and I check in with my staff, and keep them going on their projects. The Physics Open House is Friday, and there are lots of preparations in train for that. Back to my office to send electronic copies of physics at home experiments, that need to go to the copy center, hopefully to come back before the Open House. It should have happened first thing this morning. And maybe they won't get done in time. But there was nothing I could do about it.

I check the rest of my emails, and my phone messages, which include a long list of people getting in touch with me about the parts of my job that I'm terrible at---accounting, paperwork, interim reports. And co-authors demanding instant responses. And who even knows why OSP left me two messages on my phone and an email asking for a meeting ASAP. I don't know what they want, but it probably means I'm in trouble. Again.

And I look at the clock and it's after 4:30. I've been here for nine solid hours, and the To-Do list just got longer and longer. That just seemed counter-productive. So I left.

And on the way home, I thought about what our visitor had to say about all the things I'm doing (teaching multiple classes, writing books, running an internationally recognized planetarium, running a Museum and multiple outreach programs reaching tens of thousands of people a year, and so on and so on...) and I thought about winding up in the emergency room last year. And i thought about having to pull off to the side of the road this morning. And I thought 'Ok. So it's a problem. Every problem has a solution somewhere.' And I made a plan. I'll make a list of what I do, over the next two weeks. And then I'll study it. And then I'll figure out how to cut it in half.

Because it turns out that I'm really good at saying 'No' to me, and to John, and to my family and friends, and the people and creatures who matter to me. But I'm terrible at saying it to people who have nothing to offer me but money. So that has to change. And it has to start with me.

Modern medicine 2, or I'm just angry in all directions...

2011-09-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

So here's a case where I think modern medicine could do better:

I've spent much of the last 18 months learning, in a sense, what death is about. From number 16 to our chickens to the 'perfect' hog, I've been figuring out, in my methodical and metaphorical way, what I think about death, what I believe about it, and what it's like to feel life literally slip through your hands.

And I'm with Temple Grandin: "Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be!" In the HBO movie, she (well, Claire Daines as Temple) repeatedly asks "where did they go?". A question with no answer, that gets to the point that first the animals are alive, and then they are not, and the difference is obvious and vivid. You can not mistake it when it happens. And it comes to all of us, whether we want to believe it or not.

So, I have now participated directly in the deaths of more than a dozen animals, from dogs to horses to cows and chickens. I once tried to kill an injured mouse by drowning it. That felt like it took forever, and I vowed I'd never do it again. A few weeks ago, my dogs had caught one, but didn't know how to do more than hurt it. So I took it's head off with a shovel. It suffered for maybe 15 minutes. Because I cared. And I didn't want it to suffer. But the decision had already been made that today was the day it would die.

So. What is this all about, and how does it relate to modern medicine, and what, exactly, am I angry about? Last week, my dad died. On Thursday, he was taken off of lie support. He had extensive brain damage, had been sick a really long time, and had so many things wrong with him that he was never going to be well again. Life support stopped on Thursday. Not until Friday did they start the morphine. Not until Friday night did his suffering finally end. The people who were there say his suffering was terrible. For more than 24 hours, he suffered. Even though the decision was made. Even though this was his day to die. Even though we would all rather go quickly, with dignity. I have treated my dogs better than this. I have treated mice better than this. This would have been allowed to go on for days, or even weeks, or even years.

How is this merciful? How is this compassionate? How is this right?

Suppose this had been a cow. Any number of animal welfare agencies (not to mention the sheriff and the H.P. up the street) would have been pounding at the door. A man was just cited in my town because he shot and dressed a cow in his driveway. (I'm not saying that's appropriate, exactly, I'm just making the point that at least that was quick, and humane!)

Suppose my dad had been a criminal on death row. He would have been put to death in a process that might be excruciatingly painful (as far as I know, no one knows for certain), but would last no more than a few minutes.

Can someone please explain to me why ordinary people are left to suffer agonizing pain for hours, days or weeks, but the worst of the worst are treated with dignity? Can someone explain why, once the decision is made, we can't help people out the door with the same compassion we show our dogs? Are we really that filled with hatred for ourselves that we would rather let billions suffer than be grownups and make the hard choices for those who can't help themselves? Do we really believe there would be a rash of people killing their friends and relations and next-of-kin, just because we can? Really? I mean, really, really? Wow. That's disgusting. I don't even know what to think.

Sooner or later, we all go through the door. Really. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true. And all I can say is that when it comes my time, and someone else has to choose for me (are you listening, J?), I want to be treated like my dog. Not like my dad.

Modern medicine

2011-09-20T18:39:00.000-07:00

So, this is exciting. Lance Armstrong is coming to town for the XTerra bike race. And that dove-tailed so neatly with an article I was reading recently at the CDC website that I have to tell you about it. (I have that plague 'thing', so I stop by there regularly to check up on the latest about y. Pestis---weird, I know, but that's just me!) As you probably know, Lance is hero to many people, because he fought testicular cancer and won. The particular type of cancer he had was caused by a virus that's transmitted sexually. And now there's been a medical breakthrough---a vaccine is available, that will keep young men from getting the virus, and no young men will ever have to suffer this particular cancer again, or lose their chance to have children! The CDC is recommending that they get it young, long before there's any chance of them being sexually active, since it's useless after they contract the virus.

Ah, see? It's a different story, isn't it? People would flock to get this vaccine for their sons.

I just made it up, by the way, as an exercise. I always do this when I hear about something happening to girls. I imagine it was a boy. Then how would it go? You'd be shocked at how often just changing the gender changes the whole scenario!

Because people would flock for a testicular cancer vaccine for their sons, but their daughters can just... Well... Suffer.

Thanks for that, Michelle Bachman. Not only are you ignorant, and sexist, but you have just done harm to an entire generation of girls. I lay every case of cervical cancer to occur over the next generation directly and squarely at your feet. nice work. I hope you are proud of it. There's you, and there are the religious zealots in Pakistan, who prevented us from eradicating polio from the entire planet, as we did for smallpox. As polio moves back into China, and India, and eventually back across the globe, I hope you think a little harder about the ground on which you've chosen to set your feet. Vaccines are one of the great achievements of human-kind. And anyone who doesn't think so needs to go back to school and read the accounts of pandemics, epidemics, and even just simple, ordinary instances of people being crippled for life by disease. If not for vaccines, you could never be so complacent as to think they weren't necessary.

County Fair, 4-H, and the hog of a lifetime

2011-09-05T07:35:00.000-07:00

Each year, we are more enraptured by the County Fair. It's not the rides and the entertainment, although we take note of that as we walk by. And it's certainly not the Demolition Derby! No, we make straight for the livestock barns, where all the 4-H kids can be found brushing, feeding, watering and cleaning their animals. Tiny 8-year-olds leading thousand pound steers into the wash rack, corralling 300-pound hogs, and scolding stubborn goats. Sometimes the child leans her whole weight on the lead line, and the goat just digs her feet in and pulls back. A lesson learned there---sometimes the most obvious thing is not the easiest. A goat will go anywhere (away from you), if you even threaten to grab her tail!

This year, we were determined to help out some of these kids, who are learning to farm, one animal at a time. So we signed up for the Junior livestock auction. Here, all the 4-H animals are sold at premium prices, giving a helping hand to these kids. We had our eye on a couple of hogs that we thought were pretty nice, but thought we'd wait and see what happened.

The first animal on the block was the championship lamb. The bidding started at $3 a pound, and rapidly rose to $19 a pound. Uh-oh. Maybe we wouldn't be getting ourselves a hog after all!

After that, it quickly became clear that businesses were buying the champions, because it's relatively inexpensive advertising for them, at more or less every County Fair from now until the end of time.

Then the 'normal' animals started coming to the block. Prices were all over the map, and it took us a while to figure out what was going on. These were all blue-ribbon animals, so people weren't deciding what to bid based on the quality of the animal... Then a woman down the row from us bought a lamb. And her last name was the same as the last name of the child with the lamb, and we thought 'Oh. Of course. It's not about the food. It's about the child'.

After that, we had a blast watching bachelor uncles (who'd been having a few too many on a hot August afternoon!) get into bidding wars over lambs, hogs and steers. Grandparents would have their heads together, calculating how high they could go on Jimmy's lamb, and still have enough to bid up the price on Rachel's hog.

We watched as friends of ours---Famer Phil, Thayne the butcher, Curt the rancher---bid on animals that were going for too little. So we followed their lead. After a couple of hours of just watching, a hog came up with a nervous little boy, who was obviously doing this for the first time. Crickets were chirping as the auctioneer called numbers. The opening bid fell to $2.50. And we bid on it. That got things started, and the price quickly went out of our league. So we did that a few more times, until we reconsidered the maximum we were willing to pay.

Then came another little boy, no more than eight years old, clearly adopted from overseas. We bid on his hog, the price went up a few times, and then we won the bid! So I took the bidding card away from John, because you can never tell with him at an auction...

After a few more minutes, we made our way to the cashier. As we were waiting to pay, the boy's dad walked up to John. 'Son,' he said, 'this here's the gentleman from Bellwether Farm'. The boy was so nervous, but he presented us with a little gift bag of pancake fixin's. We made small talk for a few minutes, talking to the boy about his hog, and if he had fun raising it and would do it again next year. (Yes and yes.) As they turned to go, his father made eye contact and thanked us most profoundly for helping his boy. So that was worth $4 a pound right there.

We paid for the hog, filled out the form that said we wanted Thayne to butcher it, and went on our way, feeling like we'd made an investment in something really important.

That evening, Dale went over to help Thayne load the animals in the trailer. They went off to a slaughterhouse in Brigham City (about half an hour from here). Two days later, they were back down the road, and Rusty, Farmer Phil's son who is apprenticed to Thayne, cut up our hog. About ten days after that, Thayne called us, and I went to pick up ham, bacon, chops, roasts, hocks, and half a freezer-full of the best pork we've had since we left Iowa.

So yeah. We'll do that again. Everyone wins, and we get bacon too... Now, the only problem is to figure out how to fit the cow in the freezer later this month. Guess I'd better get those chickens out of there, made into broth and canned...

Ride number two. And three.

2011-09-03T16:53:00.000-07:00

I know! You thought i was done talking about Danni... But wait until you hear how amazing she is!

My fantastic trainer Trisha was here on Wednesday, and that lined up with Danni's every third day work schedule. Since I'm still learning about long lines, I got a lesson from Trish on long-lining. This was lots of little corrections to my technique, which just make that work better. Trish hooked the lunge line to the bridle, then had me belly up, slipping back to the ground after walking around until all the blood rushed to my head. Then she had me slide my leg over and get on. Danni was unfazed, as usual. We spent a very long time (well, maybe 20 minutes---it felt long!) walking around, with Trish gradually moving out on the lunge line away from Danni. What we are teaching her is that she's not supposed to listen to the person with the 'string'. She's supposed to listen to the person on her back.

It's surprising to me, the things Danni doesn't know. Having never started a horse this young before, it didn't occur to me that they have to learn what 'pulling' on the left rein means. I would pull gently on the rein, and she seemed to have no idea that it COULD mean something! And I would put my leg on, and she would just keep doing what she was doing. No language here!

Danni several times was frustrated. She would stiffen, and fling her head up. She knew we wanted something. But she just couldn't figure out what it was. Then she hit that point. You know the point. She started offering things. Is this what you want? What about this? How about this? And that's the point you are looking for. That's the point you want to encourage. So we praised every offering, but the RIGHT offering got so much more praise that it was unmistakably the right answer. And by the end of the lesson, she knew that 'pulling on the rein' means 'go that way'.

Danni had several moments when she could have taken advantage of an excuse to be naughty. But she just took a deep breath, and walked on. Trish got out to about 5 feet away on the lunge line, and Danni started to realize that instructions were coming from somewhere else.

So today (Saturday) was the next work day for Danni. We worked on the long lines, then John and Jo helped while Danni had her third ride under saddle. Huge improvements today in her ability to recognize that I was 'talking' to her. She made as if to move off my leg several times. She recognized the outside rein. She went the way I wanted her to, even though it meant John was about 30 feet away. At one point, she took a trot step. I said 'no', and she went back to the walk. Later, she caught sight of some kids on bicycles in the street. Her head went up like a giraffe's! But I sat quiet, and asked John to come in toward her, and pat her and reassure her, so she just stared. Then we walked on. After about twenty minutes, I slid off, and we praised the heck out of her, and gave her a bath!

So at this point, the plan is to ride her every third day from now until the snow flies. Then she gets the winter off. Next spring, she will begin to work in earnest. If we get all three gaits this fall, so much the better. But there's no hurry, really. I need to just listen hard, to hear what she's ready for, and then do that. This is what teaching and learning is really all about. Feeling your way, every time, as though it's the first time. Which it always is, for one, the other, or both.

So much...

2011-09-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

Whenever I disappear for a while, you know it's because simply too much is happening! I'll try to spend some time this weekend getting caught up on the news...

First, Danni. Whose registered name (with the Dutch Warmblood Association of North America, thank you very much) is Eridani. Eridanus is a constellation, representing a river in the sky. Beautiful.

I've been working on her ground manners, and she's improving. She will now not only pick up her feet, but also let me hold them for a few moments before I put them down. This is a huge step for a prey animal. I'm asking her to give up her only means of escape. It takes a lot of trust. So that's going well. She's gradually learning not to flip her head all over the place when I put fly masks on or take them off. She accepts the bit and bridle, as well as the saddle. This naturally leads to... Riding.

Last Sunday, I rode Danni for the first time. This was the first time she ever had a rider on her back, and it went EXACTLY the way it should. I waited to tell everyone we were going to try it until I went to get Danni ready. This was a calculation on my part about how worked up they would get, and also how many questions I wanted to answer before it actually happened. I honestly didn't know for sure what was going to happen, so I didn't want to spend a lot of time talking about it. I just wanted to try it with an open mind, and all my attention on Danni.

So I put her in long lines (this is two lunge lines, so one goes to the outside 'rein', and the person stands in the center of the circle---it more closely approximates what happens to the bridle when you are riding) for a little bit, to make sure she was listening, and let her burn some energy.

Then it was time to 'belly-up'. I led Danni to the mounting block, took off the long lines, and put her halter on over the bridle. I already had a grab strap attached to the saddle. John held the lead line, and Jo stood on the off side, reassuring her with petting and scratches. I climbed up on the mounting block and leaned against her, leaning over her back, and patting her side. She was bored. so I leaned all my weight onto the saddle. This is danger point one. If the horse doesn't trust you, they will panic when 10% of their weight shows up on their back. Danni just flicked her ear back, and tightened her core to carry the weight. I stepped off onto the mounting block. Then I put my foot in the stirrup, and draped myself entirely across her back, with my head hanging down over the other side. Danni flicked her ear back, but that was all. So I told John to ask her to walk forward ONE step. This is danger point two, because now she has to figure out how to move when her balance is different. It's like the first step you take with a loaded backpack. You will either figure out how to engage your core, or you will fall. Danni flicked an ear, and took an unsteady step. So I asked John to take two steps, and she took took two much steadier steps, and didn't even flick an ear. So three steps. And then several.

Then I said to John and Jo, I'm going to move around up here a little bit. And I pushed up from the saddle. And I patted her haunches. And I rolled a little this way and that. And I turned to my left, and swung my leg very softly over. And then I sat up.

And this is the really, real danger point. Because now what the horse sees is a lion, coming at them from above, ready to wrap their arms around their neck and dig their claws in. Danni barely noticed. She was so busy being petted and fussed over that she had no time to think about lions! So then we walked on. She takes up my whole leg, already, and she's only two. She looked around. She took some unsteady steps, especially in turns. We walked to the end of the arena. Then we came back. John and Jo kept telling her how amazing she is. I kept patting her all over her body, and getting her used to the idea that she could carry a person, who would do weird person things. We walked back to the top of the arena, and I slowly leaned forward, and then to my right, and then slipped my leg over her back, and then dropped to the ground. And then we gave her approximately a billion peppermints.

My horse is now officially 'broke'. She has made the step in her head that means she's learned to trust that it's ok if a 'lion' sits on her back. It was nothing like the movies, and everything like what it's supposed to be. Just another step in the long line of things for Danni to learn.

The next day, she went ballistic in her paddock when I got on Trinket. It's difficult not to interpret that as jealousy. ;) Especially because she actually WATCHES the riding. And sometimes imagine that she's making the figures herself, in the paddock. Haunches in. Shoulder in. It seems she watches, and tries it herself. Or maybe I just hope she does...

My little pony...

2011-08-17T19:57:00.000-07:00

Danni passed vet today, with flying colors! I wrote the check, and now she's mine! She's a Dutch warmblood 2-year-old, daughter to Idocus, granddaughter to Titan. She's downright magnificent in motion. Sweet, smart, and BIG. She'll mature to probably 16.3 or 17 hands. I've had her here long enough to teach her several things---loading and unloading, standing still for grooming, how to pick up her feet (but not how to hold them up!). She learns quickly and wants to please---a great combination! Everyone who has seen her falls in love. Because she's a beauty. And now she's mine.

The Start of the Harvest

2011-08-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

Up the fruit highway this morning, we found apricots, twenty dollars a bushel---that works out to about 30 cents a pound. But what do you do with a half bushel (30 pounds) of apricots?! Dry them of course! A new use for the greenhouse, and we get to put the food dryer that I made several years ago back to work.

What will we do with all those dried apricots? Chop them up and use them in homemade granola, snack mix, breakfast yogurt made from milk from our goats. Mix them into ice cream, smoothies, scones and biscuits. Eat them out of hand to kill a craving for sweets. Dip them in chocolate and give them to people at Christmas time.

Maybe we'd better go back and get some more...

The Garden in August

2011-08-06T13:22:00.000-07:00

A view from the back of the house. The vegetables are finally taking off, and we're only a little afraid of the pumpkin vines that are taking over the world!

W

2011-07-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

What is that feeling?
When the summer storm comes
With thunder and lightning and drenching rain,
And you take hay to the animals,
One by one
To show them the way
Out of the rain.
And you are soaked to the skin,
Underwear slipping down,
But you take the time to teach the young one.
And shake your head at the old one.
Back to the house, shivering with cold, wet to the skin.
Dropping wet clothes on the laundry room floor,
Grateful for hot water and dry socks.
And then this feeling comes.
Like the world spins a little more upright on it's axis,
Like all the flatware is in the right place in the drawer,
Like the copyedits are done, and all the i's are dotted and all the t's are crossed.
Like this is what you were made for:
Taking care, teaching, looking after, setting right.
And now your spine can relax, and lengthen,
And you can sit and listen to the rain.

Day 3

2011-07-31T16:39:00.000-07:00

I had planned to lunge Danni again today, but when I got her out, J was messing with the sprinklers, so I had an opportunity.

I walked her around in the front, with the sprinklers going, cars driving past, dogs barking, all kinds of excuses to be bad. She lOOked, for all she was worth, and only jumped once, when the sprinkler spray hit her hind legs. Cutie. That's probably pretty scary, if you are a two-year-old prey animal!

Then I worked with her in the barn for a while, introducing her to truly scary things like fly spray, getting her legs brushed, and standing quietly in the cross-ties in the barn aisle. At one point, she got her foot caught on the stall mats, then whipped herself turned around in the cross-ties, and I was never so glad that we've made those break-away! So she broke them, and then was immediately quiet, and allowed me to move her back where she belonged and go on with her brushing. She forgot about her panic moment, and moved on. A good sign about how she thinks.

Tomorrow, I have a long 'ordinary day' at work, filled with the types of things that I am actively working to minimize or eliminate completely. But I should be home by 6pm, to spend a little time with this precious girl, and see what else I can find out about her. We've been joking that she is my 'midlife crisis'. I'll be 40 this year, and by the time Danni is really hitting her potential, I'll be in my early 50s. Which is maybe just a rationalization for doing what I want to do anyway... ;). She's spendy, but not THAT spendy. Just a little stretch, that shows what she might mean to me, as a present to myself. So I'll wait for Wednesday, and Trisha's input to make my final decision, but I've been working my whole life to be worthy of a horse like this one---one with the brain and the talent to go all the way to the top. I've been learning all those lessons: control over my emotions, control over my body, how to think of six legs, two backs, two necks as though they were one. And now I have more to learn, just to keep up. Isn't it great?!

Dear God

2011-07-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

An exact quote, startled out of me by Danni's extended trot. I put her on the lunge line today, and she appears to just float above the ground. When I asked for a canter, she stretched her whole body out, with hind feet overstepping her front hoof prints. She looked like her famous father, and she's only two.

By the way, she hasn't been lunged in months, because she's been turned out with a crowd of other horses. She mostly remembered exactly what to do!

Tomorrow, we will try lunging 'in gear'---I.e. With proper tack on. Almost the hardest thing is refraining from trying everything at once!

But she's only two...baby steps, grasshopper...

And one more

2011-07-29T13:57:00.000-07:00

A little closer. She's actually hard to get pictures of, because she wants to be right next to me in the paddock, which makes for a nice picture of a nostril or a shoulder! Not that I'm complaining. She's sweet.

Maybe baby...

2011-07-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

This is Danni. She's 2, and we have her here for a week to see if we are a match! So far, she has totally charmed us all... babies do that!

She's an Idocus daughter, and a Titan granddaughter, and if she tops out at less than 16.3 hands, I'll be surprised. Not only does she look nice standing there, but she floats across the ground, like a li'l butterfly. With her breeding, she should be more than capable of the upper levels. And so far, I'm finding her mind as impressive as her body. She's completely unfazed by a two-hour trailer ride and all new environment!

Tastes like chicken

2011-07-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

Ever since we got our first three chickens, oh, maybe six years ago, we've been talking about what has to come at the end. One of the big ideas we used to rationalize our chicken acquisition was the idea that "if we don't like having chickens, we'll just eat them.". Easier said than done, of course, for a couple of gen-Xers who had once made a mess of killing a sick, half-dead mouse.
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And for the last few months, we watched the twelve new chicks get bigger, taking more and more room. The ten old ones slowly decreased production, with fading feathers. We knew the clock was ticking.

Because here's the thing. These animals are the backbone of our civilization and our entire food supply. It's obvious that eating meat requires the death of an animal. Other things, not so much. Maybe you think that eating eggs doesn't kill a chicken? Then you've never wondered what happened to the male chicks that hatch. And you've never wondered what happened to 'spent' hens. And you've never seen hens in battery cages, absolutely, positively stark raving mad; like Rochester's wife in Jane Eyre, they'd set fire to the place if they could.

And maybe you think that drinking milk is ok, or eating cheese, or yogurt. No cows get killed to bring you dairy products, you think. But then you've never connected the dots between pregnancy and milk production. And you've never wondered what happened to the calf that is born each and every year to each and every dairy cow. Hint: think milk-fed veal. A surprising number of really smart people that I personally know, have never made the connection between milk and babies.

Or maybe you think veganism is IT. You'll just eat plant products. But you never wondered where fertilizer comes from. And you never asked about the danage to the soil from heavy crop rotations. And you've never wondered about the best way to help a field recover from years of heavy crop rotations. And it never occurred to you these systems evolved, (and were bred, in some cases,) to support each other. The animals and the plants all form part of an inter-connected set of loops. If you pull out one piece, the whole thing becomes a rat's nest of tangles, like when you accidentally start the yarn skein by pulling the wrong turn. This is what the dust bowl taught us---that animals and plants go together. Modern, out-of-the-box thinkers like Joel Salatin are proving that imitating the intensive grazing of bison or antelope results in dramatic increases in soil fertility, crop production and animal health. That putting animals on the land is the BEST way to rejuvenate it. And then what?

All of which may be seen as a rationalization for what we did today, or as a genuine conversion, over several years, to a different way of thinking. To a vision of the connectedness of the world, in which I play a significant part in the life and death of its creatures. I could hide my head, and pretend I have no responsibility and no part to play. I could let all of my sustenance be gathered by underpaid, overworked people in horrible working conditions from animals living in conditions that I would not allow to exist inside my toilet. Or I can be vegan, and eat adulterated soy products, full of salt, and unpronouncable chemicals, made from soy obtained from farmers at prices that don't produce a living wage. Or maybe i could be vegan and eat only beans and rice, grown with petroleum-based fertilizers and huge carbon inputs in the form of tractor fuel, pesticides and herbicides. Or maybe I can be vegan, and eat only beans and rice produced on organic, sustainable farms. In which case they'd better have some animals around for fertilizer, and I'm back where I started... Or I can open my eyes, walk in the world, and be as humane as possible, as grateful as possible, while still realizing that infinity chickens is bad for everyone. We can't keep them all when they are done laying. Death comes to everyone, and it's not clear to me that it's more humane to let them get sick and suffer and THEN die.

So we killed a chicken today that we knew well. We knew her waking and sleeping habits. We knew what she was like when she was brooch, and when she wasn't. We knew that she would invariably peck the younger chicks fiercely on the top of the head when they tried to get to the water. We killed her. Then we ate her. She was a tough old bird, so we made broth and chicken salad out of her, and it will take us at least a week to finish every (truly flavorful) morsel. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't pleasant, and I would not say I enjoyed it. But it was the responsible, grown up thing to do. And there is satisfacton in knowing that she did not suffer. She had a really good life, and about 3 really bad seconds. I should be so lucky.

'NATURE is cruel. But we don't have to be.'---Temple Grandin

Limits

2011-07-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

July has started. In Utah, that means not only Independence Day, but also Pioneer Day, which is actually more celebrated here in Utah. The state legislature this year has seen fit to lift some of the restrictions on fireworks, allowing regular ordinary people to purchse and use fireworks that rise 100 feet into the air, and then explode. These fireworks are allowed for a week leading up to each of the state holidays in July. So for half of the month, we have been, and will be, having fireworks every night. The argument has been made that regulating fireworks is an infringement on individual freedom.

The first night of July, the fireworks began. Captain and Smokey went ballistic, barking every time one exploded in our neighborhood, and sometimes at explosions we couldn't hear. I went out to see how the animals were doing. Maisy and Harley were unfazed. Trinket and Music Man were alert, looking at each one when it happened, but not running. I stood in the pasture for a while with Kitty and Cleo crowded close to me. Cleo pawed (hoofed?) at my leg, and then reared up to put her front feet on my hips. I sat down with her, and she crawled into my lap and curled up in a tight little ball. I thought, 'guess I'm spending the night out here now...'. But the fireworks faded away before midnight. Cleo got out of my lap and shook herself off, and I limped back to the house with both my feet gone to sleep.

By the time the ACTUAL fourth rolled around, the horses, dogs and goats had gotten used to the noises and the flashing lights. From where we sit, we can see the benches all around the valley. After the town shows were done, the benches were still lit up with dozens of individual, at home fireworks. We got tired around 11:30 and went to bed, while the show was still going on.

We are lucky here this year, and have had a lot of rain. There were only three wildfires (that I know of) started by fireworks in the area. One burned just a couple of acres immediately southeast of our old house. The other two were both in the foothills in Salt Lake, and threatened the not-yet-finished museum of natural history, and several other University buildings.

All of which got me started thinking about the meaning of individual freedom in a society. (not that i expect to have anything really NEW to say on this perennial topic of college essays!) Clearly, this particular freedom for some impinges on the freedom of others. The actions of my neighbors impinges on my ability to run a business, feed myself, sleep, and protect myself and those in my care. These actions also impinge on the efforts of firefighters to keep us all safe. Looking just to the south, in Arizona and New Mexico, we see horrific examples of the effect of fire in the desert. These actions cost money. Every time the fire department has to ask the firefighters to work overtime, to be on call for the month of July, that costs money. Every time the fire department has to get called out to put out fires, that costs money. This year, not one but two Universities in the state had buildings that were threatened by fire. If those buildings burn, it will cost tens of millions of dollars to rebuild them! A wildfire on the scale of those further south has incalculable costs, by any metric you choose to measure. So I can't agree that 'freedom' means being able to do whatever you want whenever you want. That's not freedom. That's anarchy.

So then I was thinking about my own life. Several people have commented about how constrained we are now. We absolutely have to be here twice a day, at feeding and milking time. The further we go down this path we are following, the more we find other limits as well. There are entire swaths of the grocery store that we never visit. If we are out of jam, we are out, until we can make it again (and then we'll make more this time, so we don't run out!) This ground can support only four horses, in the oh-so-luxurious way we mean to keep them. I can't have more. Choosing to care about peak oil and climate change means that I can't buy just anyold car,but have to wait for the Leaf or the Volt. Our new refrigerator is neither hip nor trendy, and doesn't have an ice maker, but it uses only as much electricity as a light bulb. Most of these are self-imposed limits, but I find they give shape to my life. Identifying the boundaries that I'm willing to live within identifies what's important to me. Drawing a line around the outside defines the center and gives me a place to be and to rest. Within those boundaries, I am absolutely free to do what I think is best. But only by acknowledging those boundaries do I know what 'best' means.

And this is where it gets tricky and complicated. Because the boundaries mean that i have to make hard choices. I don't get to just have whatever I want whenever I want it. And my boundaries bump into other people's boundaries all over the place! We have (jokingly) been accused of single-handedly ruining the Ogden economy, with our thrifty mentality that makes use of everything we can get our opposable digits on. My choices for my animals impact other people in ways great and small, positive and negative. I'm sure my neighbors appreciate our efforts at fly control, but get annoyed at the dust that comes off of our sacrificial paddocks. Putting in a full size dressage arena makes my life awesome, but also means we have people trailering in for lessons and we have changed the drainage along the south property line. We do the best we can to be aware of how we impact other people's freedoms, and willingly take on the responsibility of trying to limit the negative impact as much as possible. With great freedom comes great responsibility. And maybe that's where the answer sits. Because as a culture, we seem at the moment to be obsessed with freedom, but neglecting responsibility. Being free, to me, means that I get to choose some of my boundaries. It also means i get to choose how I fill the space inside all the boundaries that are either chosen by all of us together (i.e. By the government), or the non-negotiable ones set by nature herself. It doesn't mean that I don't have boundaries. A person without limits isn't free. They are lost.

Flies

2011-07-06T06:41:00.000-07:00

Once, when i was a graduate student, John and I lived in an old observatory that was infested with flies. (terrrible living conditions, but free!) There were so many flies that you could smell them (a kind of sickly sweet, rotten meat kind of smell). We would vacuum the windowsills, and fill the vacuum bag. EVERY DAY. We had an exterminator come out, and he said they were in the cement block, in the mortar, under the tile floors, infesting the entire structure, and nothing he could do would get rid of them, the only thing to do was to tear the building down, scrape away the ground, and start over. There were so many flies that they formed a kind of self-sustaining, Soylent-Green ecosystem. Other people went out of their way to mention the swarms of flies in Amityville Horror to us, which was funny for them, i'm sure. So that was a miserable experience, which has left me with a lasting impression that flies are an indicator that something is wrong somewhere.

This year, we have virtually no flies on our farm. That's unusual, and clearly something unusual is going on. It's by design, and I'm so excited that it's working, I am going to tell you all about it!

1) Cleanliness: we are devoted to keeping the entire property absolutely immaculate. We have only 2.2 acres here, so it's not that hard to do. At least twice, and sometimes three times a day, we run poop patrol in the paddocks, picking up manure. When the horses are in at night (just now, they are turned out all the time), one of these pickups is mucking stalls. Jo does a run (or two, or three...) in the afternoon. Most of these runs take just a few minutes, And it's important to keep ahead of the poop, and it never sits on the ground around here for more than half a day.

2) Composting: we have one central location for the compost bins where all that manure goes. As it begins to compost, it heats up, killing weed seeds, bug eggs, and fly larvae. The resulting compost is beautiful and rich, giving us the best garden we've ever had, despite the late spring.

3) Fly Predators: one central location means that we are perfectly set up for a relatively new biological control known as Fly Predators. These are teeny-tiny wasps that eat immature flies. The company that sells them delivers a box of bugs via UPS periodically throughout the summer, and all I have to do is open them up and sprinkle them on top of the compost heap. They are sterile, which is good for the company, and relieves any worries about the law of unintended consequences. It means an ongoing expense of about $40/year, but that seems worth it to me!

4) Other Predators: our ecosystem is healing, since the abrupt ceasing of petrochemicals last spring. This happened at our old house too---we stopped the pesticides and herbicides, and for about a year, the weed and insect populations roared back, one intense wave after another. I should have another post about that... But here, now, we are seeing the birds come back, as food and habitat comes back. And birds eat flies. So we couldn't be happier.

5) Other Animals: our other domestic species on the property at the moment are dogs, chickens and goats. We don't yet know what's going to happen with the goats---their poos look like a little handful of raisinets, and are un-pitchfork-able. Interestingly, when I peer at them with my little eye, I don't see flies hovering around, like they do around the horse manure. Perhaps because goats are ruminants, so their poop is sort of pre-composted by the time it leaves their body? I don't know, and the Internet seems unconcerned about the critically important issue of flies and goat poop! The dogs must be making piles, but most of the time we can't find them. Sometimes we will find a bunch of piles in one spot, and we pick them up with the horse poop. The chickens are deep-bedded---we start with straw and/or old hay and/or shredded paper and/or old weeds and/or fallen leaves more or less six inches deep. They poop in that, and stir it around, and add more manure, and stir it around, and so far, it hasn't smelled at all, and the chickens dig out all the flies and fly larvae, and turn them into tasty, unbelievably yellow eggs. We are about at the point where we need to scrape out all that newly formed chicken compost, and begin again. But first, I want to finish their new portable coop, so we can just put them in there while we clean out the old bedding. That will make it so much easier that it's worth waiting for.

So that's why we don't have any flies. Because we are looking at this little farm as a whole system. We are making biology work for us whenever we can. We are always on the lookout for some way to rebalance the system. You don't get swarmed with flies in the woods, (in general). You don't get swarmed with flies when walking across the prairie (in general). You don't get swarmed with flies when walking on the beach (in general). To me, that means that swarms of flies are a symptom of an ecosystem that's broken, and needs to be fixed. All of those "in generals" above refer to the fact that sometimes you DO come across swarms of flies in the woods. Usually swarming around a dead deer. If there are swarms of flies, something is dead and decaying. NOT composting, but rotting. While that's a really good way to take care of dead deer in the woods, I don't want it here on the farm!

Canning season begins...

2011-06-27T18:11:00.000-07:00

With 15 half-pints of strawberry jam, thanks to Jo, who brought us the berries from her yard. This is almost like filling the hay barn. If there was a jam barn, it would now be more than half full, including enough to give away! I don't even have to think about strawberry jam again until this time next year. I just open the cupboard, and oh, there it is!

It's nice to be sending the jars back to the pantry from the garage, when all winter, we've been sending them the other way, from pantry to garage.

Stocking Up

2011-06-27T18:07:00.000-07:00

After considerable nervous watching of the weather, multiple phone calls to Jeremy about how the hay is coming, much nail-biting when it was clear weather for three, but not four days, Jeremy called on Saturday. He wanted to bring a couple of loads of hay.

Jeremy, his brother or cousin (I can't remember!) Casey, Jeremy's father, and four children ranging in age from 5 to 13, showed up with the hay wagon. One of my favorite things about Jeremy is that he lives about 2 miles from here, so he and all the kids were riding on top of the hay---grandpa and Casey were using all the room in the truck. Oh, my really favorite thing about Jeremy is that he delivers and stacks. Because he does it all summer, it's much easier for him than if I did it---just once a year!

The kids were troopers, pushing bales off the trailer, and shoving them along to grandpa, who slapped them on the elevator. This stretched horizontally into the hay barn, where Jeremy and Casey waited for each bale, picking it up and swinging it onto the stack, four bales high. All told, they delivered 3 loads of 133 bales each. That, along with the 127 they brought a week or so ago, is all the hay we need for the year. So it's nice to have the barn full, with a bit more than 500 bales.

The price of hay is up, by roughly $1.25 per bale. I suspect everything will be more costly this year. We have flooding and record rain, cool temperatures and snow here, cutting into the farm economy. But it costs what it costs, and it's up to me to figure that out at my end. Jeremy needs to beagle to make enough to stay in business, make great hay for me, and buy pink cowboy boots for his little girl.

I sent him away with my thanks, and $40 extra to get the kiddies some ice cream. He said, 'No, I'm going to pay them.' a little offended, and I said 'I know you are, and I'm going to buy them some ice cream!' offended right back at him. So he laughed, and took the kids for ice cream. They earned it!

New additions...

2011-06-27T12:41:00.000-07:00

Kitty and Cleo! Who knew goats were so cute, cuddly and personable? Kitty is milking, and John has already made a batch of chevre that was wonderful! Cleo is a little love, and keeps curling up on my feet whenever I'm standing still. What an adventure we're having!

These are Nubian/Oberhasli crosses, bred by our vet, who lives down the street. Cleo is Kitty's daughter, 10 weeks old. Both will get bred this fall, and by the time we are milking both of them, we'll actually know what to do with all that milk!

In the meantime, we are just having fun, learning how to handle goats.

Tree trimming

2011-06-11T17:22:00.000-07:00

And just one more today, lest you think i'm a total slacker. I trimmed a few branches from our trees that hadn't been pruned in forever. Just, you know, one or two little twigs... ;)

Also, in pony land, Trisha has started teaching us passade turns, which are used to teach collected canter, which is the prelude to flying changes and canter pirouettes. Trinket has decided she loves it so much she doesn't want to do anything else. I think she's just so delighted that I'm asking her to do something she's good at (as opposed to stretching, say, which she detests) that she just can't get enough of it!

And Chapter Five page proofs are done, and I've seen the cover of the book. That made the finish line seem right around the corner!

We had people come and put new gutters on (squirrelly had drilled holes in the old ones---Squirrelly!!) aside from putting the gutters on the garage backward (so they drained into the barn, rather than the driveway---I caught it early, so they fixed it), they did a terrific job. But then they left a gap in the fence. So multiple times today, I found my dogs outside the gate, with no idea how they got there! Silly gutter guys. Always close up a fence if you have to open it! That's the first rule of fences!

Tonight I get to watch some ridiculous sic-fi film about Venus, so I can be the expert commentary when they play it on tv---FUN!! The things I get to do... Who'd a thunk it?

Fortress update 2

2011-06-11T17:21:00.001-07:00

Baby chicks, happy and healthy (this is actually the following morning, when the were awake...)

That's 1 for Mr. Weasel, 1 for Dr. Primate. Hooray for opposable thumbs! The fortress stands strong!

Fortress update 1

2011-06-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

Friday morning, at 12:15 am, I started awake, with a picture of a hole under the coop in my head. I rolled out of bed, shoved my muck boots on, grabbed a flashlight, and headed out to the coop. This is what I found. (don't worry---I don't think I'm psychic. I think I heard the rocks hitting the metal barn wall in my sleep, and my clever back brain interpreted it correctly!)

I looked inside the coop and found...

Surprise After, Take Two

2011-06-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

Here it is from the outside. I think it's just beautiful. And we finished it just in time, because Jeremy came today with about 1/4 of our year's hay---127 bales. And that was the whole reason we need the feed room. To clear more room in the hay barn so we can buy all our hay at once, because I'm guessing it's going to be in short apply later in the summer.

Surprise After!

2011-06-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

So my team of crack construction women helped me put this door in. It took only one trip to Home Depot. And one argument with the pontificating fat old man there who thought he knew I couldn't possibly be actually cutting a hole in the side of a garage myself. Idiot.

Several jigsaw blades later, (1/30 the price of a Sawsall) we had cut a hole in the metal siding and the wooden crossbeams. About five minutes of fitting the door, hammering down bits of metal, shaving a little wood here and there, and the new door was in. It was also level, plumb, and true!

Surprise Before!

2011-06-11T16:41:00.000-07:00

I have been so busy that I was starting to think I wouldn't get a surprise done before John came home. But I did, in fact, get to John's surprise, although I then proceeded to tell him about it, so it's no longer a surprise...

Here's a corner of our back garage/workshed that backs up to the passage between the barn and the garage. It's also immediately adjacent to the hay barn. So it's a perfect corner for a feed room! If only it had a door... (prior to this picture, there was electrical wiring running through this corner. So the first thing we did was move the wires. You can see the new junction box high on the wall on the right, where we spliced the wires in. Jo is now a master electrician! Call her up anytime you need to make a wire longer!

Laundry

2011-06-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

After a year without it, I finally got my laundry line back! A house just isn't a home without a clothes line. It took me a long time to figure out where to put it, but in this spot, I can see it from the kitchen, so I can't forget I've got laundry on the line! Well, I probably still will once in a while, but not as often as if it were somewhere else!

Yes, I have plans for the stacks of bricks and cinderblocks we inherited with the property---over the weekend I was at the Mother Earth News fair, and learned to make an earthen oven!

The south pasture

2011-06-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

Makes me worried that the trees will actually drown! Still, we are extremely lucky compared to many!

Driveway flooding

2011-06-08T17:56:00.000-07:00

The same rainstorm made a nice pond for dogs to play in!

The grooming stall

2011-06-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

Had more than four inches of water in it after a night of heavy rain. Here, I've started spreading shavings to soak it up.

Late spring...

2011-06-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken about two weeks ago, and shows a little of what this year has been like. Record rain and snow here---and not just a little more than ever before. We've had more than a foot of rain since March, down here in the valley. But my favorite thing I've heard? The one that really sticks in my mind? Snowbird's previous snow record was hit in 1984. This year, they beat that record by 72 inches! No. I did not leave out the decimal point. Six entire feet more than ever before recorded. Looks like we're in for some flooding. Which reminds me to post a couple more pictures...

The Fortress

2011-06-08T17:47:00.000-07:00

So, Mr. Fox or Mr. Weasel, or whoever you are. You think you can just waltz right in and steal my chicks? Think again. This is the new, improved, chicken fortress. With 100% more repurposed concrete block, 100% fewer access points, and infinitely more peace of mind!

The To-Did list.

2011-05-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I hit the end of the day, and I think I didn't get anything done. So I make a "To-Did" list, as the closest approximation of the past tense of "To Do".

This is one of those days... so here's my To-Did:

1) 6:00 am: Got up. That's an achievement all on its own, because it was very windy here last night, and I have a hard time sleeping when it's windy.
2) Fed ponies and dogs.
3) Made breakfast (homegrown poached eggs, homemade biscuit with homemade strawberry-raspberry jam, fresh steamed asparagus). Ate delicious breakfast.
4) Mucked stalls, turned out ponies, fed chickens and baby chicks.
5) Put away all the tools we are done with for the run-in sheds, cleaned up painting stuff, washed dishes, general straightening.
6) 9:00 am: Made second cup of tea, started laundering the winter Carhartts, got to work on page proofs for Chapter 2.
7) 11:00 am: Finished laundry, went to FedEx to ship Chapter 1 and 2 page proofs.
8) Stopped at Utah Tea Room to discuss erroneous charge on University charge card. Back to accounting I go on Tuesday.
9) Stopped at C.A.L. Ranch to pick up: squeaky toy for Captain, new muck rake, new drill bit, rope clamps.
10) 12:00 pm: returned home, had lunch
11) Groomed and rode Trinket and Music Man, chatted with a visiting vet and Jo
12) 3:15 pm: Supervised Braxton (aka Bracken and Stockton) as they drilled, hammered, and bolted field shelter walls. My wrist is not exactly up to holding the cordless drill yet after yesterday.
13) 4:30 pm: got to work on Chapter 13 copyedits.
14) 6:30 pm: fed ponies and dogs, returned to Chapter 13.
15) 7:25 pm: finished Chapter 13 copyedits, except for writing more thought-provoking multiple choice questions, if I can think of any before I have to ship it tomorrow...
16) 7:30 pm: wrote To-Did list.
17) 7:40 pm: John called!
18) 8:30 pm: finishing To-Did list.

Do I know why I sometimes feel like I didn't get anything done? Because I'm insane, that's why. ; )

That's a typical day, more or less... I'll bring ponies in and shut up chickens at 9:30. Between now and then: shower time!

Maisy's Shelter

2011-05-25T12:03:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering what these things look like! They are 12x12, with a 2-foot overhang off the front. So, when you come to think of it, we've more or leas rebuilt the barn, in four separate pieces!

Surprises...

2011-05-25T06:03:00.000-07:00

John left for Seattle on Sunday, and won't be back until June 22-ish. This means extra chores for me, but it also means I get to plan a surprise! We have an accidental tradition that every time he goes away for an extended period, I do some mammoth project, like replacing the floors in the kitchen (recall the $140 plywood floor that I drew on with a Sharpie to make it look like old barn floor) or build a tack room or repaint the bedroom renovate the cottage or... Well, the list goes on. What will it be this time? I'm not tellin'!

I have finally received page proofs for my book---this is where I get to see it all laid out, with pictures and everything, for the first time! It is so exhilarating to see itmlooking like an actual book! I finished corrections on chapter one yesterday, and will do chapter two today, and send them back together. Simultaneously, I'm finishing copyedits from the end of the book (in chapter 13 now), which is a little confusing.

On Satuday, before John left, we got the roofs and most of the walls on the field shelters. I spent the day up on the roofs with the drill, attaching aluminum roofing to steel beams with self-tapping screws that occasionally didn't 'tap'. Just today, I woke up without sore arms, which is good, because Jo is coming to help finish the up on this rare sunny day between rain storms!

I watched the most amazing movie yesterday, although i can't say quite why it was so great. It's called 'Grey Gardens', and builds on a documentary of the same name that came out in the 60s or 70s. It's about an aunt and cousin of Jackie Kennedy, who become completely non-functional, and live in a ramshackle mansion together. Just a riveting story, kind of about what happens to people when they spend too much time alone! Fortunately, I don't have to worry about that, even with J out of town! Between friends and neighbors and Smokey putting his nose in my face at 6 am, there's very little opportunity for me to go off the rails! Note to self: apparently cats actually encourage that kind of disengaged behavior---there always seem to be dozens of them in these kinds of stories.

Off to finish chores, and then chapter two before Jo gets here. Sunshine today-hooray!

And After

2011-05-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

When it's raining, clean the garage! Especially of you've got two little boys hanging around wanting to help with any jobs you have to do! Welcome Stockton and Bracken, to the Bellwether Farm never-ending to-do list! Good thing you are a couple of horse-crazy little boys...

Oh, and by the way, we are ready, in case the rapture happens tomorrow, apparently at 6pm. Much room for loot in this newly-cleaned garage!

And we've finally got the garden in (everything but corn, pretty much), and went to a U-Pick place to get 18 pounds of asparagus for $1.50 a pound. All spring, I've been saying that I wonder what it would be like to get to have so much asparagus that you'd be sick of it, and WANT it to end until next spring. Maybe I'm about to find out...

Before

2011-05-19T17:35:00.001-07:00

Unexpected Gratitude

2011-05-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, something happens that makes you realize that there was a fork in the road a while back. You took one road, but you might not have. And then you'd be over there, on that other road. And that would totally suck. I was standing in the shower after cleaning the garage today, when I realized all of the following:

1) it's been raining since February, with snow in the mountains reaching levels 400% above normal.
2) we are relatively dry here.
3) every boarding stable in Northen Utah is completely unprepared for rain---you're lucky if they will do turn out in the rain.
3) some people are worrying about moving their horses because of the flooding.
4) there is a serious outbreak of EHV-1 that started about a mile from here. This is the disease that nearly killed Trinket 6 years ago.
5) our last boarding barn is under quarantine, with no horses allowed in or OUT. This means that at least one of those horses was exposed.
6) Utah horse council is recommending all horses stay home. Shows and clinics are being cancelled all over the place.
7) There is nowhere for the people in 3 to take their horses.
8) I am so grateful. If we had not, more or less spontaneously, decided to buy a horse farm last year, I would be in a total panic, as I waited to see if any of our four-legged friends caught this deadly disease. As it is, I have complete control over whether or not my horses are exposed. So they won't be. We are above water and (mostly) dry. And I have dozens of people to thank for helping make this possible.

Thanks to Deonne, who helped us find this place. Mickey who helped us put the financing together. Adam and Colin and Dan and Deb and John and Sheri who helped us move in. Dale and Genie who repeatedly helped us in so many ways. Bill and Nancy who taught us how to run the ditch. Shawna, who helped with lots of things, from the tack room to the field shelters. But most especially, Jo-Ann, who has been here every day, rain or shine, always ready to help out, cheer up, listen, advise, and try something she's never done before, just because she loves it here. Thank you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It could be otherwise. But it's not. And I am endlessly grateful for that.

Run-in sheds 3

2011-05-14T06:20:00.001-07:00

And here's one with the plywood sides installed. Roof material doesn't come until next week, but it should go quickly, since it's relatively light and doesn't take much but screwing it onto the cross-bars.

In other news, we are so happy to see the sun! We might get some actual planting done today!

Run-in Sheds 2

2011-05-14T06:16:00.001-07:00

Dale brought the tractor and helped us move the frames back to the paddock. Then Jo and Shawna kicked butt and helped us put them up. You can see one on the right in this picture, and the rest down the fenceline. We assembled all four structures by 3:30, and then I went to Logan to give a talk to an amateur astronomer society. Fortunately, my host fed me, or I might have bitten some poor astronomer!

Run-in sheds 1

2011-05-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

When we came back from vacation, we got word that the steel frames for our run-in sheds had arrived. A little help from our friends, and we had ~2400 pounds of tube steel in the yard!

Home again...

2011-05-08T14:19:00.001-07:00

And this one looks East, the other way, towards the mountains. Our ridiculously beautiful and beautifully engineered arena, Trinket in the back field, Music Man in his paddock, a giant pile of wood chip mulch left over from last year's trees that came down... Home.

Home again...

2011-05-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

While the tree guy was here, he ran his bucket all the way up as high as it would go, and used his phone to snap a couple of 'aerial' photos of the ol' homestead. Here you can see the garden beds going in, along with a tree that had to come down (at the center of the semi-circle, John working on his arbor, our neighbor Dale's house, and the last of the pile of bricks, etc. that Squirrely left us and we still haven't decided how to use. At the moment, they are stacked against the back of the house.

Valley of the Gods

2011-05-08T14:05:00.000-07:00

After our big hike, we sat on the porch at Valley of the Gods for two days. I absolutely think everyone should go and stay there at least once while Gary and Claire are still willing to take visitors. Not only is it a gorgeously restored homestead in heartbreakingly beautiful country, but it's off the grid, and a wonderful demonstration of the power of renewables. We came home with a hundred ideas for how to push the envelope a little harder.

I was so lazy there that I didn't take a single picture! (What was I thinking?!) But the internet comes to the rescue, with photos, description and contact information:

http://www.zippitydodah.com/vog/

In one of those bizarre coincidences that always seem to be happening to us, our refrigerator is failing (bear with me...), and I've been shopping around for the most energy-efficient refrigerator that we can buy. Turns out SunFrost is the thing to get, but the capital cost is a little high, so I've been hemming and hawing. But Gary is a SunFrost distributor! So we bought one. It'll be shipped to us in a couple of weeks, hopefully before the compressor in our current fridge fails completely. (But WE are backpackers, and know how to live without a fridge for a while, if necessary!) How do these things happen to us? We don't know, but we like it!

I can also recommend a Navajo Taco for your first meal out after backpacking. I mean really, fried bread covered with meat and more fried bread? It's perfect for the stomach wearied by too much freeze-dried veg and minute rice...

The vehicle

2011-05-08T13:43:00.000-07:00

We very cleverly rented this jeep for our tour. This saved our 10-year-old car from the trauma, even if it did use a lot more gas...

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

Climbing out on the last day, we ran into this crazy thing. Someday, this will be an exam question in statics for my physics kids. Because it really doesn't look like it should just sit there.

Natural Arch

2011-05-08T13:39:00.000-07:00

There are more ruins off to the right of this arch in the Wingate. We think... But not being willing to climb up there, we aren't entirely sure!

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:36:00.000-07:00

Mouse footprints. So adorable. And we're so glad they are there to clean up our crumbs!

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:35:00.000-07:00

Near the intersection of Grand Gulch and Bullet Canyon, there are genuine trees, and path-finding requires actual bush-whacking. Who knew?

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

I couldn't decide: a hand? or Wilson from Castaway?

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

Another ruin, this one at gulch level, instead of up in the cliffs. There were several more ruins up above, but this one was in a huge natural amphitheater, and was accompanied by rock paintings of... llamas?

John thinks this was a retirement home, for the elders who couldn't make it up the ladders anymore. I think they probably also all got together here a couple of times a year to figure out who was going to take out the garbage.

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:31:00.000-07:00

Deep in the gulch, at this time of year, grass grows thigh-high. Springs are still running, so water is readily available, but the main wash is empty, so the walking is relatively easy. Sort of. Because it's sand. And we all know what four hours of walking in the sand feels like!

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:30:00.001-07:00

A broken piece of pottery. My thought? Clay was pressed into a basket, then the basket was burned away, both firing the clay and leaving this nifty pattern.

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:29:00.001-07:00

Can you spot the ruins?

Ha!

We were able to walk right up to this set of ruins, called 'Split-Level House Ruin', because it's sort of like a split-level house. These ruins are all over the place, and you really begin to understand that many hundreds of people lived in this canyon over a period of more than 500 years. I couldn't get good pictures of some of the higher ruins, on the tops of the cliffs, but one in particular was interesting, because it was built at the junction of Grand Gulch and Bullet Canyon. It faced down canyon, and opposite, much higher on the cliff was a second ruin. Our working theory is that the first ruin was the lookout---on the watch for invaders. On the top of the cliff was a fire tower, to alert all the folks upstream if they needed to retreat to the cliffs. Such a tower could also alert people if there was rain on the plateau (which would mean flashfloods down the canyon, again requiring a retreat to the cliffs). The marvelous thing about Grand Gulch is that you really begin to see how the civilization worked, and how all the ruins tie together to form a community. This is very different than anywhere else we've ever been.

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

A classic midden heap, with a 1,000 year old corn cob. Much smaller than modern corn, but you can imagine how proud they must have been as they figured out how to breed this up from ancient maize!

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:26:00.000-07:00

Where are the ruins? Can you find them? (This is kind of unfair, because my phone takes just... phone pictures...) But there are some there, I promise! After a while, you get really good at spotting the straight lines that mean 'a person did that'. This canyon was inhabited between 750 and 1250 AD, so the ruins are more or less 1,000 years old.

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness we don't have to climb out that way!

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

Night one campsite. You can see several meanders of the canyon in this picture. We are traveling down-canyon, to the left, then we will make a turn to the right, to cross behind the closest cliffs, then back to the left again in front of the rearmost cliffs in this picture. The whole canyon meanders like this. And on nearly every south-facing cliff full of Wingate sandstone, you find ruins.

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

Wingate sandstone shears off in slabs, leaving nearly vertical cliffs. Fortunately, we were not required to climb them, either up or down. The vertical drop from top to bottom of the canyon was 1,000 feet. If you've never done this, you'll be surprised to hear that going down is much harder than going up. It's so much harder to keep your weight over your feet on the way down...

Grand Gulch

2011-05-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

John is ready for some serious backpacking! We never weighed his pack, but it sure seemed heavier than a feed sack (50 pounds). Either it would have been much less heavy than that (depressing in one way) or much more (depressing in another). I was clever, and opted to carry the food. By day four, my pack weighed less than half what it did on day one.

Fruita

2011-05-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

When the Mormon pioneers arrived in Capitol Reef, they found irrigation ditches dug by the natives along this creek. So they made good use of them, establishing a homestead in this mostly ridiculously forbidding region.

Capitol Reef

2011-05-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

If we just walk over this way, I'm sure we'll get to those distant, snow-capped peaks sooner or later!

Capitol Reef

2011-05-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

John takes a look at the Chinle formation from the Reef...

More progress, troubles, and the next week

2011-04-26T16:10:00.000-07:00

We are working on the connection between the house and the barn. We moved some solar powered lights from the front, where they don't do much good, to the back. In midwinter, I won't kill myself heading out to the ponies in the dark. J is building an arch out of the cuttings from our trees. It has taken a little playing around, some false starts, and pounding a form into the ground, but it's looking really nice, i think!

And in other news, a rat-bastard, s.o.b., evil, weaselly, hunchbacked, even-i-don't-have-enough-swear-words piece of crap god-damned skunk or fox or raccoon dug under the chicken coop and slaughtered our baby chicks. It was a creepy, 'unnatural' act. Eight had their hearts eaten, and were sucked dry of blood. One was a bag of skin and bones, and one was missing. All the little corpses were 'buried' in a hole, with one of the nest boxes dragged over them. The wanton destruction and waste is specifically enraging, in a way that I barely have words for. We buried their little bodies, and stood over them a while, feeling sorry for not doing a better job; for not taking better care; for not seeing it coming. And I feel, somehow, like I really, truly recognize evil for the first time. If the creature showed up in front of me this minute, I would wring it's neck with glee. And then bury it next to my wasted chicks. And then I would probably feel awful. Because I wasted it. And it wouldn't help. And it wouldn't change anything. All the little live things, with their hearts eaten out, and their blood drained, and all their little peeps silenced forever, just when they were learning what the Sun was about. I am just sick and heartbroken and keep feeling their weight in my hands, as I moved them out of one hole and into another.

And we thought hard about our vacation, which begins tomorrow. But we couldn't stop the carnage, even when we were here. so we will go, and maybe heal up a little before we come home. We are off to go hiking in Goblin Valley, Capitol Reef, Grand Gulch and Valley of the Gods. Red rock loosens the muscles at the back of my eyes, and the person I am in the desert is a different person, with access to a part of me that's usually asleep. Sometimes a change is as good as a rest. I hope it's true this time.

Location:BWF

Opening up...

2011-04-25T20:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, even though you really love trees, you have just too, too many trees. Squirrely planted far too many willows, far too close together. Today, our famous tree man came to take half of them out.

There was a moment, as he was taking them down, when I thought, 'oh no, what have we done?' But now that I've gotten a little used to it, I thin it's good. The remaining trees will fill in, and we have an opportunity to underplant with fruit trees, berry bushes, and a perrenial border, which would have been impossible in the deep shade the willows cast.

And, in the house, it's no longer so dark, even though it was cloudy much of the day today (will it EVER stop raining?!).

Check another item off the list. The trees have been thinned. Off to vacation, then on to the next item on the list!

Ditch Meeting

2011-04-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today was the annual ditch meeting, in which any troubles with the irrigation ditch are brought up, discussed, and hopefully, decisions are made. This marks our first full year as part of this community, in a pretty profound way. We seem to be two of only eight people who care about what happens to the irrigation ditch that serves something like 100 families. But last year, there were only seven, so things are looking up!

Actually, that's not completely true. I'm sure there are lots of other people who care about the ditch, who use the ditch, who want the water to come to their fields, pastures and lawns, but just don't want to be involved with actually doing the work that makes that happen. Not even the work of coming out one Thursday per year for less than an hour.

I think that's interesting. What do you think would happen if the ditch suddenly disappeared? Yeah, me too.

It's so easy to take for granted that "someone else will do it" and "it's someone else's job" and "i'm busier than other people", and a thousand other excuses that all really mean "nobody else is as important as me", and somehow simultaneously "nothing I do really matters". I've been guilty of this myself, that's how I know! But the older I get, the more I realize that every little piece, every tiny little thing, matters enormously, if only because it's a little push in the right direction. As it says on a despair poster, "it only takes one harmless flake to unleash an avalanche of destruction".

But enough philosophy. The ditches are in good shape this year, and there will be plenty of water, which isn't always true. I think I finally understand what an inverted siphon is---at least I have a picture in my head, although I have yet to work out the physics to my satisfaction. And I know that the ones that Squirrelly put in on this property were never going to work in a million years. But at least I know what he was TRYing to do, and that's a comfort. I'm also developing a richer understanding of the whole system of head gates, flapper valves, boxes and culverts that makes the whole thing possible. It's a little shocking that the whole system was dug by hand more than a hundred years ago, and we're still using it today, albeit with tractors to help dig out the cattails... Last year, we remarked that we couldn't believe that it's still all done by hand---that we have to walk a mile up the road to drop a head gate and a bunch of 2x4's, and then trudge through a neighbor's yard, 4 houses down to drop another gate, and then drop our own once we've taken our share so Bill and Nancy can get theirs. This year, I don't know. I'm looking forward to it---to late nights under the stars, watching the water come down the ditch, and hoping the skunks have moved out of the culvert. It takes as long as it takes, and it can't be rushed. It's a meditation of gravity and water and time. Of nature doing her own thing, shaped and steered by man, but running under rules that have been in place since... Well... Very nearly (but not exactly), the beginning of time.

Of course, by August, I'll be complaining about it! But that's human nature, and by September or October, it will come to an end, and I'll be glad. Until spring...

I'm sure spring is coming...

2011-04-17T14:15:00.001-07:00

I'm so sure of it, in fact, that I started spring 'starts' today. Roughly 400 plants---peppers, tomatoes, onions, eggplant, all kinds of goodness!

It's the first chance to really use the 'greenhouse', which is more sort of an over-windowed potting shed, really. We didn't use it last year because we were just entirely too busy to have a garden of any size. It makes a lovely place to work in the rain, and call people on the phone, while spooning starting medium into large numbers of small pots.

Friday, we had the tenure party for John, and managed to completely surprise him---so much so that he is still sort of trying to figure out what happened! The look on his face, when Brad's talk turned from pictures of birds into a slide of John, with the title 'Tenure!' was priceless, and now he won't trust any of us ever again! ;)

Yesterday, it was actually sunny and warm, for what felt like the first time in months. We made our semi-annual trip to Honeyville in the morning, loading up on all the staples, and today J is making bagels---hooray!

I caught a better picture of the willow fence around the raised beds:

And one of the path from the barn to the back porch:

Still a fair amount of work to do to get the porch set up for summertime. Sure would be nice if the sun would come out and stay for a few days! The sump pump has been running for almost a week, and the south lawn is completely underwater!

The little chicks have moved outside, to the west half of the 'chicken taj mahal', and all 20 birds are starting to get used to each other. As a special surprise for us, three of the new chicks have feathered feet, which looks particularly hilarious when they are small!

This week is finals week, and we have dean candidates coming as well, but that means the big wind-down is coming. Thank goodness!

Oh! I see sun! I'm going to go weed the asparagus bed right quick...

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Location:BWF

Ris-oat-to

2011-04-14T18:39:00.000-07:00

It worked!

So earlier, I posted about falling behind on the oats, so that we now have 25 pounds of rolled oats from Honeyville, and a decided lack of recipes to cook them in.

So then I was thinking of things to do with rolled oats. Probably J's favorite thing that I make is risotto. I make that for him when he's tired, or discouraged, or when he's done something amazing. So it's a little bit nerve-wracking to mess with a good thing.

But he's nearly speechless. He keeps saying, 'you know, it's like, rargh!' so here's what I did...

The basic risotto recipe is to soften the aromatics, add the rice and toast it, add acid to break the outer covering on the grain, and then add small amounts of fluid, one cup at a time, until the rice can't absorb any more. Because you don't know how much broth this is, you adjust the fats and seasonings at the end, to give you the mouth feel and flavor you are after.

I started with that concept, but adjusted it to suit the different grain. Because rolled oats are already 'broken', I added acid (homemade white wine and canned tomatoes) in two steps, with the oats in between, instead of adding oats at the beginning. I wasn't sure how to know when they were toasted enough, so I guessed, when they started to smell good! Then at the end of the long process of adding broth (which took less broth than normal), I added some diced sausage, to pump up the salty flavor, and adjust the salt and 'toothiness'. I added a little butter to enhance the creaminess. I could have done both of these at once by adding Parmesan cheese, but I didn't have any.

So that gives me a recipe:

Risoatto
1 onion
4 celery stalks
3 carrots
3 smallish bay leaves
6 dried sage leaves
1 t dried rosemary
1 glass dry white wine
1 pint canned tomatoes
1 pint stock, mixed with about 6 cups of water and juice from the tomatoes

Sauté the vegetables and herbs in butter over medium heat until a fond forms on the bottom of the pan. Deglaze with wine. Cook until dry. Add oats, and pan-toast until fragrant. Add tomatoes. Cook until dry.

Begin stirring constantly and adding broth mixture one ladle at a time, then cooking until, when you drag a wooden spoon along the bottom, you see the bottom for a moment before the risoatto falls in. Continue until the oats are saturated, or, when tasted, they have the consistency you would like.

Adjust fats and seasonings (add butter, cheese, sausage and/or salt and pepper to taste).

I am not aware of anyone else who has ever made this exact thing. Fun! And delicious!

Testing...

2011-04-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

Just found out the emailer wasn't working on the ol' blog. Please shoot me an email if you get this, and want to be on the mailing list!

Bus to Work Challenge!

2011-04-11T16:08:00.000-07:00

Ok. The worst of an appallingly busy year is over. Time to start re-instating the things we really believe in. (Not to mention getting the most out of our compensation from the University!). We are fortunate to have bus passes as part of our paychecks. This serves the University well, when we actually decide to use them to get to work---fewer parking spaces means less ongoing expense.

In general, J and I do pretty well. Even in this year of excess meetings, late nights, unpredictable schedules, and learning our new environment, we only drove the horse truck to work once. Other times, we worked it out so we went in together, and one of us took the bus home.

But starting next week, J is on sabbatical for 15 months. Which gives us a lot of freedom for testing things out. So the plan is to take the bus to work from here on out. We had already cut our driving from ~100 miles per week to ~75 miles, by moving out here (while we go to work more days the ponies used to be farther. This is probably an underestimate of our prior driving...). So now, we'll cut down even further, perhaps even to 15 miles per week!

The bus stop is about a mile from our house, and we have a transfer downtown. Depending on whether we make the really tight connection, or leave a little earlier, the trip takes 40-50 minutes. Just the perfect amount of time to read the paper, catch up on blogs, or relax with an audiobook!

Since January, I've been keeping track of 'one-star' and 'two-star' days. These are days when either I or both of us don't get in the car at all! I'm looking forward to seeing those numbers really climb!

Lazy Sunday...

2011-04-10T16:38:00.001-07:00

Our projects for the day...

1) make beef jerky for our backpacking trip. This turned out to make a discouragingly small amount of jerky. Or maybe it's just really, really dense!

2) J dragged the arena, twice. We've had so much rain that we haven't been able to drag for a while. But the miracle is that it's wonderful to ride in, even in early spring, even after unprecedented rainfall!

3) J finished the willow branch fence around the raised beds, and I finally moved all the flagstone from the rock pile, and made a path out of them, where the grass gets entirely too much traffic:

4) I moved the rest of the rock pile, and put them around the greenhouse, so they will be handy the next time I'm filling containers, and I. The meantime, they'll look nice.

5) I taught a lesson, and J and I both rode our horses.

6) I took down the old hose rack (which didn't work), and made room for the new hose holder, and organized the trash area in the barn, so we will take it out more often.

7) along the way, the broken water trough got emptied out, and I was able to test the fit of the new design of the solar heated water trough holder---it fits perfectly! And now we can use that broken trough elsewhere.

7) Wash the dogs.

8) we are now relaxing with Radiolab on KUER, getting our dopamine fix!

Just a typical day here on the ol' homestead!

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Location:Home

And down comes the cowboy!

2011-04-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

Today, we took down the cowboy. See, we had a big, brick cowboy over the mantle, with unfortunate Dorf-like proportions. Since it's been raining since... Forever... It seemed like a good project. It took much less time than expected---only an hour---because, as it turns out, the 400 pound brick cowboy was just glued to the drywall! Squirrelly!!!!!

Also today, two new discoveries. Why, oh why, have I never sprinkled Garam masala on popcorn before?!

And, British flapjacks. Fundamentally rice krispie treats, made with oats:

1 stick butter
1/2 cup brown sugar. (or 1/2 cup white+1 T molasses, if you happen to have used up all your brown sugar!)
1/4 cup honey
2.5 cups oats

Mix the first three in a saucepan on medium-low heat until a smooth sauce.
Take off heat, stir in oats.
Pour into a greased 9-inch metal cake pan.
Bake at 350 for 25 min or til browned.

Wowza! That's a good oats recipe!

Oats, etc.

2011-04-08T16:18:00.000-07:00

About twice a year, we make the trek to Honeyville grain's retail store in Brigham City. It's a tiny little store in the front part of a warehouse-style strip mall. And it's a little...unusual. Although it seems nearly normal to us now.

When you walk into the store, the first thing you notice is that the carts are not normal shopping carts. They are more like something you would find at your local home improvement warehouse. The second thing you notice is that everything comes in big---really big--- packages! 50 pounds is the standard bag size for most things. Some things, like pasta, can be bought 15 or 25 pounds at a time, but all the grains and flours come in somewhat overwhelming quantities. They also have freeze-dried foodstuffs, like asparagus (wonderful!) or mushrooms (eh.) or berries (how did I ever get along without these!). And all in vast quantities designed for... You guessed it... Mormon food storage.

So this is interesting to me, because there are two ways of thinking about food storage. One is to think that you are going to buy a year's worth of food, packaged to remain shelf stable for 25 years, and then go ahead and buy food like the rest of the population. The second way of thinking about it is that you have a year's worth of inventory, and you are going to store the things you use all the time, and then use them until they are gone. All the time, you are rotating stock, keeping the shelves full. While we are neither Mormon, nor in possession of a year's supply of food, what we have figured out is that we can take advantage of the whole infrastructure, to lower our food costs, improve our diets, and help support the local economy.

So typical purchases at Honeyville include:

50 pounds of all purpose white flour.
50 pounds of hard red wheat
50 pounds of soft white wheat
25 pounds of sugar
10-15 pounds of dried pasta
2-3 very large cans of dried berries
2-3 very large cans of dried vegetables
10 pounds of popping corn
5-10 pounds of dried beans
5 pounds of sea salt

And 50 pound of oats...

Which brings me to oats. I keep John in granola, at a fraction of the cost of box cereal, keep myself in baked or boiled oatmeal, keep us both in oatmeal cookies, and generally work my way through 50 pounds of oats, 6 cups at a time. This year, because I was so busy, I didn't keep up, and find myself with about half a bag left, and it's just about time for our periodic visit. So of course, I started looking around for things to do with oats. And as I was thinking about it, I realized there's an added bonus to thinking about this. Not only are oats a whole grain, and not only are they packed with vitamins like niacin, which we should probably all eat more of, but they also have several other wonderful advantages, if you are pondering resilience.

First, they grow practically anywhere, dry, wet, hot, cold, whatever. They are the most indestructible of common grains. Second, they contain a natural preservative, so they can just be rolled and stored, unlike wheat, which goes rancid if you try that. THAT means they are the easiest grain to harvest and store in small quantities. Third, they have collateral benefits (unlike corn), in that oat straw makes great bedding for animals, such as...let me think...chickens and horses! Fourth, people, horses, chickens, and dogs can all eat oats straight off the stalk, making them good for all the creatures on a small farm.

Taking the obvious next step, I went looking for other things to make from oats (because if there was any grain that we had any hope of figuring out how to grow, it would be oats!). And I find very little. Which is interesting. Because oats might not have much gluten, (so won't make good bread), but neither does rice! And it's easy to find great rice recipes. I did find a recipe for an oat pilaf, that turned out to be delicious. So now I am both on the hunt for oat recipes, and also shifting into major experimentation mode. It's time to start treating cooking like it's research. What to do with a low-gluten starchy whole grains? well, we'll find out! But I've got some ideas I'm working on... If it makes pilaf, it will make ris-oat-o. Get it? Risotto, ris-oat-o? Ha! I should do stand-up!

You know you're done when...

2011-04-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

Lunch talk for the Kiwanis Club today. Because the computer hookup wasn't working, and it was a small group, I just sat down to talk with them instead. They had asked me to come and update them on what we've been doing in the planetarium, and we had a wide-ranging conversation about dark matter, black holes, making color photos from a series of grayscale ones, Technicolor film, and so on. I generally think that my job, at these events, is to be sparkly---unicorns and double rainbows, all the way. So I sparkled about HST, and I told jokes about dark matter, and I was witty about black holes.

But then they asked me about climate change.

They should not have done that.

Because they are wrong.

Their whole belief system is founded around an incorrect understanding of basic physics, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of time.

And for the first time ever, I didn't hedge. And I wasn't polite. And I didn't pull my punches. And of course, no one was convinced. Because data doesn't matter. And 28,000 separate lines of investigation that agree don't matter. Shifting coffee plantations, migration patterns, ice cover, times of bloom, mass extinctions, wildfires, glacial retreats, just don't matter. What matters is that they don't WANT it to be true. Too bad. Nature doesn't care what you want. I failed to sparkle. And there were no unicorns, and definitely not any rainbows.

So I know I'm burnt out. Because I couldn't even let the Kiwanis Club wrap themselves in soothing lies that make them feel better. And for the last two weeks, we've been doing climate change in my environmental physics class, and even I can't find any rainbows.

But I'm sure if I take a vacation, I'll find a unicorn around here somewhere.

On the way back...

2011-04-05T16:45:00.000-07:00

So much to tell you! So many pictures to post! But I'm still so tired!

To use a complicated physics analogy about electrons in an atom, I usually wander around in my 3rd or 4th excited state, with plenty of energy for everyone. For several days after Science Olympiad, I was wandering around in my ground state, barely able to keep myself together. This week, I'm bouncing between ground and first excited states---I can see how someday I might actually WANT to do something at work, but it's not happening yet! Unfortunately, these are the couple of weeks focusing in on the physics of climate change in my Environmental Physics class. This means I'm spending all my time reading about mass extinctions and melting glaciers and wondering what I'm doing that's of any value at all.

But! We have ten new chicks on the farm, and are averaging 6 eggs a day from the old flock. We are hatching (hah!) a new plan for 'chicken boarding'. Since we can't sell our eggs, we are thinking that we should board chickens for people at a flat monthly fee, and then they can have the eggs from one chicken (about 15 per month), since they are boarding one chicken with us! Is that not awesome? Don't you want to do it too? How much would you pay for us to keep your chicken for you?

In other random news, J has been crafting the most marvelous willow stick fence around the raised beds---pictures coming soon...

We have finished the tack room, to our neighbor's specifications---there's a little fridge in there! I've beaten the sewing machine into submission, and crafted a holder for my knitting needles. I've also knitted 2 hats, 1 pair of mittens, and a pair of slippers. I hope to impose on my friend K soon, and go to her house to do some felting.

The old house is sold! Our old mortgage is paid off, and we even had a little extra to roll over into the new mortgage. A friend advised us to incorporate the farm, and that helped us out a LOT with our taxes, so that got rolled over too. We are now working on a plan to pay off the current mortgage in five years. It will be a push, but imagine having it paid off completely, by the time we are 45! We are excited to make as many early payments as possible, and fold all our extra money in as soon as we can----git 'er done is our new motto! We are anxious and uneasy, and this is our last remaining debt. It would be nice to see a '1' turn into a '0'.

This past year, we did so well on feeding ourselves, from our own efforts, that it's not even funny. We are coming to the end of some things in the cupboard, but the higher food prices have just... Passed us by. We haven't really noticed, and are getting ready to start planting seed starts. Soon, spring will actually be here, and we can get things in the ground. Meanwhile, we are looking for new oat recipes, and eating a lot of pickles... ;)

Much else has happened, and I'll gradually get caught up here. So much is going on that my boss at work was speechless in my annual review---and that's just work! For now, I'll just make a quick list of goals for the year:

1) pay 1/5 of the mortgage as extra payments on the house this year.
2) source all of our own food locally, except oils and spices.
3) start chicken boarding.
4) teach T her flying changes.
5) drive our household energy usage down by 50%, so we can plan for solar panels.

Out with the old...

2011-01-03T18:41:00.000-08:00

The turning of the year is usually used for looking forward to whatever we'll all get up to fixing about ourselves, our environment, our society, or whatever. But I find myself this year with a half-stunned feeling. Like when all the smoke alarms go off first thing in the morning and you spend the rest of the day wandering around saying, 'WHAT? NO. I'M NOT YELLING. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I'M YELLING? COULD YOU SPEAK UP PLEASE?'. And then I started thinking back to this time last year, and I realized that is a perfectly sensible reaction.

Roughly 365 short days ago, we were living in the old house, at the top of the hill, next to the University, with 2 dogs, 6 chickens, and 2 horses that lived elsewhere and were someone else's responsibility for 22 hours of the day, 4 days per week, and 24 hours on the other three days.

My job consisted of 'physics professor' and 'planetarium director'. It filled all available work time, and then some.

I had just lost a book contract, because the other authors couldn't come to an agreement with each other about royalties. I breathed a sigh of relief to not be working with them. I was contemplating finishing the second draft of my novel.

We had just started thinking of a five-year plan, to find a place where we could move the horses home. This was inspired by a number of separate lines coming together, of which the most important was probably the owner of our boarding stable telling us he had five years left in him.

It was starting to seem likely that there would be layoffs in the college, and my work responsibilities would change. But the legislature had not met yet, so it was all still uncertain.

Today, we sit on our own little mini-farm, a boarding stable in our own right, with responsibility for not only our own two horses, but two boarders, and all the facilities. When the gate falls off the hinges, that's us. We renovated a barn, installed more than 1200 feet of fence, had an arena built, and learned to care for it. And we are learning how to deal with the eccentricities of a new house, built by someone our fantastic neighbor refers to as 'Squirrely'. I've also started giving lessons again, and find that I dearly love it. It's so much fun to have students who genuinely care AND do their homework!

We killed a cow.

We have two dogs and ten chickens, with more birds on the way in the spring.

I have written a first draft, and more than half of a second, on an Introductory Astronomy text. What was originally to be a straight-forward update developed into a project so different that the name has changed. 'Understanding Our Universe' is now more than halfway through second draft, dealing with reviewer comments, which are nearly as unforgiving and autistic as referee remarks. I'm simultaneously dealing with copy-edits on earlier chapters (third drafts, in a sense), as well as a few new items which are more or less in first draft. It's very confusing, and somehow, I still have to figure out how to explain to the art studio why the woman pushing the refrigerator should NOT be wearing high heels and a skirt.

My work responsibilities have changed. I am now all of the following people, some only interim, (which is almost harder, because I feel constrained in the changes I can enact)

Physics professor
Director, Ott Planetarium
Director, museum of Natural Science
Director, Center for Science and Mathematics Education
Director, Science Olympiad of Utah
Assistant Director, Ritchey Science and Engineering Fair of Utah

I am in charge of a staff of two full-time employees, hordes of hourly students and volunteers, and a constantly changing rota of smaller projects.

So many things have changed that I think my resolution for the new year should be to be a little more forgiving of myself, if the trough boxes aren't built yet, and I keep getting in trouble with accounting for various heinous offenses like putting the wrong six-digit code (which was told to me by the scholarship office...TWICE!) on my PARs. Maybe I have a lot going on right now, and it will all seem easier once I've actually successfully hosted 1400 sixth through twelfth graders all on the same day, without having them set fire to campus.

My mom always says it takes a year to get used to a new home. That's also true for jobs, I think. And vocations. And farms. Especially when a perfect storm of opportunities and challenges show up all at once---every one of them worthy of your best efforts.

The flock, part ii

2010-12-09T19:12:00.000-08:00

Yes, you guessed it---none of 'the ladies' went to the killing cone last weekend! That's because we haven't got all the parts to make one yet. I did find some ductwork pieces that get us more an halfway there. We just need a funnel that we can cut the end off of, or else a smaller piece of flashing or ductwork that we can mold into the piece we need. Hopefully, we'll get that done this weekend.

In other animal news, we found out that 'our' butchers set aside time at the time of the County Fair, so if we buy at the fair, they will be able to do their high quality job on a hog for us! Who wants bacon?!?! Mmmmmm, bacon!! The more I think about this, the more I like the idea. I do not actually have time to raise my own pig at this time. But I do have time, and money, to support a young farmer, who's learning this venerable profession. Just by asking them how they raised the hog, I'll let them know people care about how their food is treated. It seems like a valuable, community-oriented thing to do. Especially since we've figured out that sausage is soooooooo easy to make!

And our Christmas present to ourselves this year is that we hooked up speakers to the wires that were already run through our house. So now we have music everywhere! Sweet! It's like a grownup house! I know. It's not Christmas yet. But this way we can listen to Christmas songs all the way to Christmas!

The flock...

2010-12-02T17:46:00.000-08:00

This morning, J and I were talking about 'the ladies'. We have ten laying hens, acquired at different times. They went off the lay about two weeks before Thanksgiving. (We have no reason to think this is because we were going to be having turkey!) so we were discussing what might be happening with them. It's been cold, but not all that time. It's been snowy, but they've never minded that in the past.

And then it struck us, and we started trying to figure out how old they are. Hens can be expected to live about ten years, if they are coddled a little bit, and a maximum of 30, if they more or less live in the house with you (!). But the typical lifespan is closer to seven years for pet chickens, which is a heck of an improvement over the handful of months for factory broilers, and the 18 months for battery hens. Egg production falls off after 18 months, so typically, they are turned into dog food, or whatever, at that age. Most hens stop laying all together after about five years, although this number is 'fuzzy'.

Our six oldest hens will be 5 in the spring, we think (I lost the record when I had to take down the old blog). This is roughly the age at which they stop laying. The other four are younger. We got them from friends, so are uncertain as to age. Probably, they are going to be three in the spring.

So now we have to decide. Are we running a retirement home for aged hens? Or are we running a productive homestead? If the former, we should just keep going to the IFA, and buying them food. If the latter, we should go ahead and slaughter them, and get new chicks in the spring.

We need more information. So this weekend, we're going to slaughter two of the ladies, to find out what that's about. We have illustrated instructions. We have a basic knowledge of anatomy. We have dogs to clean up after our mistakes. But actually, we have no idea what we are doing. This should be interesting.

Blizzard!

2010-11-23T09:55:00.000-08:00

We are expecting a blizzard to roll in this afternoon, and all is excitement here at Bellwether Farm! Fortunately, I had no scheduled meetings or classes at work today, so I was able to stay home, batten down the hatches, and work on my book. But I'm finding it hard to settle down to the book...

This morning, I went to put the horses out at the usual time (7:00 am), and they all turned their tails to me, buried their heads in the back corner, and pinned their ears when I tried to get closer to put halters on. 'Ok,' I thought, 'They don't want to go out! Got it.' I left them in until almost nine, at which time they were more willing, although still not eager. I turned T out in the south paddock, so she couldn't get running in the big back paddock.

I pulled several extra bags of shavings into the barn, in case we can't get into the garage right away, emptied and filled water buckets, swept stall fronts, brought all the muck tubs and wheelbarrows into the hay barn, in case we can't get to the compost heap, moved everything else that might, possibly, blow in the wind, into the hay barn, and then tried to think of anything I might be forgetting. Around 11:30, the neighbor horses started running, on both sides. I went out and watched ours for a few minutes, then decided to bring them in. They'll get extra lunch and night hay tonight, since the temperature is supposed to drop to... oh... 3. With wind.

Chickens have feed and water. I'm worried the water will freeze, but don't have a good solution for that at the moment. Captain is in. Smokey is running around like an idiot.

It occurs to me the power might go out. Maybe I'd better make some stew, that we can heat up in the fender of the gas fireplace, if we need to...

Number 16

2010-10-06T18:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I ate a heart that was ticking less than 12 hours ago, cooked in a stew with broth made from a tail that was twitching less than 12 hours ago. Number 16 became food today, and it was not nearly as upsetting as you'd think.

Last night it poured rain, and we woke up wondering if we'd be standing in the rain all day. But the sun was shining on the clean, wet grass, making little sparkly rainbows all over the pastures. We went next door at about 8:15, to study the chart of a black angus steer, and all its parts. And also because we were nervous. I wore my baseball cap, old clothes, and muck boots. So did J. Dale pointed out all his pictures of grandkids on the wall, and we killed a little time until the other buyers came.

About 8:30, the butchers showed up. Three steers would be slaughtered today. Two of them were Dale's, and one of them from another farmer down the road who trailered him in this morning. Dale let the butchers through the gate, and they drove through the pasture to the trailered steer. The butcher rig is a large diesel truck (350-class), towing a tall (about 10'), narrow (about 4') trailer with solid sides and back. It's refrigerated inside. On the outside, there are rows of garbage cans, stainless steel sinks, a water spigot and hose, and assorted cabinets to hold knives and other gear. From the top of the back of the trailer, a steel rod sticks out about 5'. It has a pulley arrangement attached about 3' from the doors to the trailer, and a steel cable hangs from it that is run all the way up while the rig travels.

Once in the back pasture, they pulled the rig around by the trailered-in steer first. Dale, Mike, John and I were all looking at Dale's steers, since one of them was exploring whether he could climb the manure pile and jump over the fence. I watched as Shayne stepped out from behind the trailer carrying a gun. I was the only one turned that way, and so was the only one who didn't jump when the shot rang out, and there was a loud thump as the steer hit the floor of the trailer. J turned a little white, but held his own. Within about 5 minutes, they had a line tied around the leg of the steer, and had hauled it out of the trailer and hung it from the back of the butchering rig. Shayne slit its throat, and it bled out on the grass.

We went into the barn to do some paperwork (We had to sign some papers that said we knew the killing site had not been inspected by the USDA. Well, duh. We inspected it ourselves!) We also had to choose how to have the steer cut up. Many parts were mentioned. I said 'yes' or 'no', primarily depending on whether I recognized the part so named. It was interesting that this was clearly my job. Thayne (the father of the butchering company) looked only at me, and not at J for this information. It felt like respect.

By the time we came back, the steer had been moved over onto clean grass, and laid down on its back so that the apprentice, Rusty, could begin taking off the legs and the hide.

We watched as Shayne went into the corral where the other two steers (No. 13 and No. 16) were penned. They were mildly disturbed by all the strangers, but not panicked. Just moving around a bit. Shayne waited patiently, sighting down the barrel, and then, when No. 13 turned toward him, and was still for a moment, he pulled the trigger. It felt like we heard the shot and saw No. 13 hit the ground at the same time. He just... went down. Thunk. He was there. And then he wasn't. There was just a big pile of food where the steer used to be. Some more waiting, as No. 16 tried to figure out what just happened, and then it was his turn. Bang! Thump! It takes longer to say it than it does for it to happen. There was some residual struggling, but if you've ever put a dog down, you know what this looks like. There's nobody in there, willing the legs to move. They just do, all on their own.

I don't know where they go. But clearly, they are in there and then they aren't.

Shayne backed the trailer up to the steers, and one at a time, he hung them, slit their throats, removed their heads, took the tongues out, and drove the carcass over to lay them in the clean grass. A Thai man, Jom, was there, and he took the heads and the tongues, along with several other choice portions that I would have no idea what to do with. Apparently, a man needs a girlfriend after eating gall bladder...

After that, it was an awful lot like re-upholstering a sofa. The hides were carefully removed, the ribs were split with a special reciprocating saw, the stomach, intestines and lungs were removed and the apprentice carried them over to one of the trash cans. The heart and liver were separately saved---good for eating. (We now have about... oh... maybe 12 POUNDS of liver in the freezer. Oh dear.) During this process, the steers were gradually lifted off the ground, so the meat never touched the ground, only the hides. In the end, a steer would be hanging by its hocks from the butchering rig. Labels were attached through the front and back leg tendons, so they'd know which steer belonged to which person. The steers were sliced down the back, their spinal cords removed, and they were suddenly clean, recognizable sides of beef, like you've seen in the movies a thousand times, hanging by the hocks from hooks on pulleys. The apprentice opened the doors to the trailer, and I could see that the pulley rail ran all the way inside. Rusty pushed each side of beef in to the front of the trailer, one at a time. No. 16 went in first, probably because he was heaviest (his hanging weight turned out to be 896 pounds! Can I pick a good-lookin' steer, or what?!).

It was a pleasure to watch people who were so competent at their job; focused; careful; working so well together that they barely needed to speak. And they did the job with such respect. They were done by about 10:00. In the time it took them to take apart three steers, most slaughterhouses would disassemble 300.

Afterwards, Dale spread shavings over the bloody spots, and the magpies carried away the stomach contents and other bits and pieces. By early afternoon, you couldn't tell that just that morning, 3 steers had been slaughtered just over the fence there. Our dogs each got a shin bone and hoof. Happy, happy dogs. The four remaining steers wandered about, in grass up to their chests, soaking up the sunshine.

No. 16 will hang for about 10 days. Then approximately 630 pounds of him will come back to us in shrink-wrapped, labeled pieces; 2 steaks to a pack, 2-3 pound roasts, 1 pound hamburger packs, stew meat, soup bones, bbq ribs, all other assorted pieces.

And tonight, we started to eat him. I made stock from the tail (oxtail soup!), and we cut up the heart into stew chunks and browned it and stewed it with onions in the stock. I served it over mashed potatoes, made with raw milk and homemade butter from Ropaleto's dairy, down the street. J made a cucumber and tomato salad to go on the side, which came from our CSA, along with the onions and potatoes. We looked at our plates, and every single thing on them came from someone we know. For the first time in my life, I felt like praying over my food. I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of gratitude that I get to live here, in this time, with these people, and this steer. It didn't matter if anyone heard me say grace. It mattered that I said it.

Thank you, Number 16. You were a good-looking steer. And now you are a tasty one.