So you want to be a farmer? The Reality of Being Organic and Sustainable

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work."
-Thomas Edison

If you thought that recycling made you sustainable and organic meant that you didn't use deodorant, then we're a shocker for you.  We take that to a whole new level!!!(Yes, we do use odor protection.)
Sustainable means we put up enough hay in the summer to feed the herd in the winter, and we're planning on growing the grass again next year. So we mow it when it goes to seed-head.  It's not a nice lawn look all year.  Sometimes during the summer it may look quite shaggy-depending on rainfall.
It means when there's an apple tree in the field, we pick it and sauce it so we have food in the winter. We don't complain the apples are the size of your thumb. Sometimes sustainability can take on the same look as common-sense...a chicken gets used four different ways. First as a vet for the cows as it cleans the pasture, next as an egg layer, third as a stew bird for dinner, and lastly as chicken broth preserved for later. We use the sun and air we breathe to dry our clothes, for light during the day and that "fresh air" smell on our sheets.
Everything that's sustainable is hard work, there's no skating by.  Burning wood for heat means cutting the wood, splitting the wood, and stacking the wood-sometimes in the coldest day of the winter.
But it's so worth it!
Organic means we don't use anything God didn't create for fertilizer, animals, and food.  We use our own animals to fertilize the pastures, then give them a dose of watered down compost for good measure.  We don't breed animals to have the biggest body-parts for show or production, we take them as God made them and use them right. That's why our goats have horns, cats have claws, and chickens have bone and skin!  We let the animals eat the grass, the apples, the leaves, the herbs-and we don't peel back an ear of corn for them.  This is the way God meant it to be.
Before you think this is all daisies and roses, can I be quite frank?  Because of this life we live...there are things you may want to consider...wear mud boots(real ones, not fashionable ones) to get to the door. There's chicken poop everywhere.  Why? They have wings, they fly any where they want to.  That means to the house, not just in the barnyard.
There's a goat who will greet you at the car door, and will gladly display for you how she can urinate on your foot and poop all the way to the front door of the house.
The cats like to leave "gifts" everywhere.  Dead mice, voles, ground squirrels, chipmunks...
Be prepared for dirt.  The windows are open in the house and it coats the furniture...really, I dusted it off six times today from the dark wood piano!  The dirt covers feet, shoes, clothes, and gets under nails.  It sticks to the cobwebs created overnight, and onto the faucets where children were washing it off.  It doesn't matter how we attempt to get rid of it, it comes back. A magazine cover will never show the reality of farm life dirt.
The mess. There's a plethora of misc. tools, equipment, toys, and vehicles that don't run. The reality is, we're busy staying alive, there'll be a time to make it all clean(when the dumpster is here), but right now isn't that time.  So, if you're OCD(which I find I am) take a deep breathe and close your eyes as you walk past it. The mess won't change the taste of dinner, and it also won't make the photo shoot for the magazine cover(thankfully).  So just move on. Lastly, prepare yourself for a new brand of sweat.  I promise, we do use odor protection, but it doesn't help the amount of sweat we produce.  It doesn't matter what time of year it is, there's hard physical work we're doing.  Whether it's under the hot sun or bundled in the dead of winter-people around here are sweating!  No need for aerobics class, we pitchfork hay around for hours. Snow-shoeing and cross country skiing are means for checking the fence lines.  Walking miles is a form of transportation, not relaxation. And when you see people standing around this kitchen with dripping hair or frozen hair and wet shirts and socks, covered head to toe in dirt and poop-laughing about the day they just had...know that they've accomplished the "Organic" label that went on that product in the store. AND LIFE IS GOOD!

I'm gonna DANCE!

We have one favorite activity that encompasses all age groups...DANCING!
Truly, we aren't good.  You won't see any of us on TV anytime soon, but we DANCE like we mean it! We have heart, if not rhythm.

We could trace the origins of this activity in our family back to the Wife's Great-Grandparents. As country-folk it was a community activity in the winter to gather at one appointed house for an evening of dancing. The Wife's Grandma(the Amazing Farm-Wife) remembers the drive and anticipation of the evenings.  They would walk into the house and the floors would have been cornstarched for a little slip.  The adults would enjoy the evening dancing away and children would eventually pass out on couches then be loaded into cars for a late-night drive home. Grandma continued her love of dancing during WWII and all the dances afterward.  The Wife's Mother learned and loved square dancing and polka. When the Wife and Dear Farmer married, it became almost a requirement that Dear Farmer dance.  He even square danced with the Wife's Grandma and the two won family awards.
It seemed only natural that when the children were old enough we taught them the barn dance "Virginia Reel".  The children also learned ballroom dancing...the old-school-Fred-and-Ginger ballroom dancing, not this new dancing that looks like an aerobic-workout.  This is our dancing.  We are hard-core, old-school, break-out-the-fiddle dancing.
If we get really crazy, Honorable Son #2 begins his Irish High-Step Dancing, the rest of us attempt to follow him, but it's so not pretty.  That's about as crazy as we get.

O the fun we have!!!  Many family nights we have spent moving the dining room tables out and spending the night twirling and laughing. The fiddles sing from our MP3 music and bluetooth speakers, the dog and cats, goats and chickens all peer in our dining room window to see the family warmed by love and woodstove having a evening laughing and talking, spinning and skipping, eventually the adults are the ones sitting and fanning themselves while the youngest pester "spin again, spin again!"

This is a reason to love the long winters, I'm gonna DANCE!

How about a cat?

There is a road that divides the farm, it makes life...interesting....
The Farmer's Daughter initially started breeding the "elusive" blonde tabby for farms, it was a struggling business.  The hardest part was keeping the cats alive.  She was caring for them well, but barn cats live outside...in barns...which means they walk outside wherever they feel like.  Apparently they really like to sunbath on warm concrete...like the road.
Unfortunately, like cats usually do, they seemed to feel that the cars were in their way-not that they were in the cars way. And so, they did not move when cars came...smoosh.
We're not trying to be hard-hearted, but that is life, the survival of the smartest. We stopped counting how many died...the death toll was astronomical. At the same time, the cats were reproducing at an almost ridiculous rate. At one point in time she had eighteen kittens, and no one was buying them!
She began giving them away...buy one, get one free...and "ding-dong ditching" them on doorsteps(people we knew wanted them).  Cats were urged to follow neighbors home, and tossed in departing cars. Desperation had set in.
Thankfully the herd is now under control-somewhat-but we still have the kittens available at any time, if you want one!  They are excellent "mousers" and do a great job begging to get in the house(which is NOT happening!). Hey, you! You want a cat?!

The Wife vs. the Goat

Usually the children rotate through milking the goat.  There have been two times that the Wife has had to stand in for a child...in two years.  That mean that the Wife and the Goat are on wonderful terms, however the relationship only extends so far...milking isn't included.
This morning the Wife had to send the Farmer's Daughter off to the Stable at six o'clock in the morning and then transfer her to next job at eight o'clock.  At seven o'clock Dear Farmer asked the Wife "Who's milking?"  The answer should have been "The Farmer's Daughter."  But she was gone.  The answer was, instead, "I am."  With a frazzled thought and morning sneezing the Wife bundled up the Itty-Farmer's Daughter, plopped her in the backpack, and away we went to milk the Goat.
First thing, find the Goat.  The Wife and the Goat have a good relationship, one that centers around the Wife bringing the Goat food.  All the Wife needed to do was call the Goat's name.  The Goat, happily, came.
Second thing, get Goat onto milking stand.  A little more difficult.  The Goat, never having the Wife(really) milk her, was confused as to why she should stand on the milking stand for this woman???  A little coaxing, a lot of nudging, and some tomatoes from the garden...the Goat decided to stand on the milking stand.
Third thing, milk the Goat.  Surprisingly easy, except if ...you have a baby in the backpack on your back(well behaved, but becoming heavy),while you are leaning over to milk the Goat, and have cats that keep wanting to go swimming in the milk bucket...THAT'S where this got difficult.  One cat actually jumped on the rim of the bucket startling the Goat and the Wife, which made the Wife jump back, the Goat jump up, and the bucket tipped over.  One quart of milk and one cat gone.  Back to milking....
The Wife brought in one quart of milk to the house.  The Whiz Bang!  Farmer's Daughter said, "Is that it?"
The Wife mumbled something about having one less cat and departed back outside.  The Goat was standing at the barnyard gate(asking to be let out)...the Wife looked at the Goat.  The Goat looked at the Wife.  The Goat stayed in the barnyard and the Wife gave her water.  The Score is Wife:1 Goat:1, but the Wife maintains control of the game.

The Farmer's Daughter Raises Kittens

Sometimes we like to think that we raise beef cattle, chickens, or hay. However, the Farmer's Daughter raises... kittens.  Ahh, the joy of childhood entrepreneurship.  While Dear Farmer was preparing to sell chicken feed, Honorable Son No.1 was preparing to sell beef, chicken and eggs, and Honorable Son No.2 was preparing to peddle pumpkins...the Farmer's Daughter wanted to make a buck.  Can't blame her, money does come in handy.  The Wife told her to look at everything she had and see if there was anything she wanted to sell.  The answer came back with "I have an abundance of kittens."  In went the add in the local advertiser...she had eight kittens, the add cost three dollars, there was a five dollar profit to be made!
The Farmer's Daughter, was able sell off litter number one with a tidy sum in her pocket, but the profits didn't quite come in for litter number two.  So we had a couple of kittens that hung around and grew to be cats. Now we had three cats having kittens.  Three cats, two litters a year of an average of five kittens!  Kittens were coming out of our ears.  (The Wife didn't have to worry about mice, thankfully.) A feral cat, seeing the lovely home for adoption we were running, decided this was the perfect farm to bring her kittens to.  We see her every six months, she deposits her kittens and leaves again. The Farmer's Daughter isn't quite turning a great profit these days.  She gives away more kittens than she sells.  If people ask what she does on the farm, she'll sweetly reply, "I raise kittens.  Would you like one?"