News and blog

What an eventful past week; more for our country, than for us personally.  After some morning errands I was able to return home in time to watch the inauguration of President Obama.  Perhaps it is the dormant history teacher in me, but I found the events very moving.  I am still kicking myself for not planning ahead and making arrangements to actually be there in person.  It surely would have been more memorable for our daughters than their parent’s (okay, mostly mom’s) euphoric outbursts and the fake-looking grocery-store flowers and box of ice cream we shared in celebration.  One reporter’s story of parents frantically searching for their lost child in that crowd however made me think twice about my wish to have taken the girls. 

Here on our frozen farm life is pretty good.  New lambs began to arrive on January 6.  The first little ewe lamb was deemed “epiphany” and yesterday’s hulking, energetic ram lamb was named “Obama”, of course.   So far we have eight live lambs and two that were born dead or very weak.   This is just the beginning of lambing so every time we go to the barn we are expectant.  It is like an extended Advent season for us.

 

My husband, Roy Dale as childhood friends and immediate family know him, unlike his father, farmer Roy of Village Acres, is not friendly with machinery.   I too am not mechanically minded.  I am more apt to kick and curse a machine than to ponder its inner workings and try to figure it out. I wish I were more curious about them.  I just want them to work for me.  Roy D. would prefer to work with animals than machines and he is good with them.  This is in part why Mac is such a valuable member of the family farm.  Already his skill at keeping animals in their place or moving them where we need them to go has been invaluable.  All this love of animals however doesn’t change our reliance on some machines.  While Mac is great at moving cows and sheep, he really struggles getting those half-ton round bails to move into the feeder.  For that we have a Bobcat skid steer and an old David Martin tractor pulls the feeder wagons around the farm.  Because we need them and they do good work for us, we do care for our machines too.  Like anyone suffering from over-exposure in cold weather, this weekend they needed a little TLC.  Their fuel lines froze in sub-zero temps so we took our electric bathroom heater and some old blankets out to barn to warm them up.  They responded beautifully and in no time sputtered to life. 

 

There are many signs of life and hope around us, even during these frigid days of winter. 

On Tuesday Roy came in from the barn after feeding the cows and sheep to report the arrival of our first set of twin lambs.  We were expecting them in about two or three weeks but here they are braving the howling wind and icy barnyard. 

Every year we attempt to keep better lambing records.  About two years ago we succeeded at getting ear tags in every ewe so that we can keep record of her lambing success from year to year.  Getting ear tags in however is only helpful if you can actually read the numbers!  The first couple tags went in pretty easily until we looked at their new accessories and realized we had the tags in upside down so that the number was hidden inside the ear.  A simple change corrected that problem however even with the tags facing out they are not easy to read.  During lambing season we check on the sheep three or four times a day. We rarely have to intervene and only if it appears necessary do we separate the ewe and lambs from the other sheep.  So in order to keep accurate records we have to watch closely to see which lambs belong to which ewe.  Frequently we can be found in the barn with binoculars trying to get an accurate read on the ear tag without going into the pen and causing added stress.  About once a week over the next several weeks we will go in and catch the newborns, record their gender, and dock their tails.  The reason we dock tails is to keep them clean over summer when flies will lay eggs in long, dirty tails, and, in the case of ewe lambs, so that when they start birthing lambs, it is easier for their lambs to find the udder and get an early drink. 

There is no doubt that docking tails is stressful for the lambs, mostly because they are taken from their moms and handled by us.  We use a hot docker that cuts the tail just below the bone and cauterizes the end to stop the bleeding.  Frances and Riley return the docked lambs to their moms.  They love to nuzzle and comfort the little lambs and often get the lambs to suck on their noses in the process.  Of course sometimes a lamb is just too lively, or so we claim, and Roy and I get cuddle that little guy back to its mom. 

I heard from Patrick this morning that CSA distribution combined with Election Day made for quite an energetic combination in State College!  I understand the line for the polls extended around the block at Friends Meeting House.   Kudos to any of you who braved the long wait; I hope you were able to enjoy free pizza or snack on your Village Acres veggies while you waited.

Voting here in Shade Valley is a much quieter affair.   About a mile from our house, in the village of Cross Keys an old, one-room school house is our township / precinct headquarters. The poll workers, three older women, have worked elections for as long as I’ve been voting here.  I arrived at around 9 am and was voter number twenty-one. Dorothy said turnout was up considerably this year.  Jim B., his wife Susan, and her elderly mother were chatting with the poll workers, who are neighbors they have known for years.  They know who I am too so there was no need to call out my party affiliation, for which I was rather relieved.  After voting I stood and talked for several minutes with them too.  I learned from Jimmy that when he began working for PennDot back in the sixties, Election Day was a state holiday and as a state worker he was expected to be available to drive people to the polls.  Sounds like a pretty good idea to me.  Apparently when they unionized and were given more personal days the state took away Election Day as a holiday. 

I took Mac out at 6:00 this morning and the stars were so prominent and air so crisp it was a surprisingly refreshing way to wake up..  I hate the thought of a long, dark winter approaching, but mornings like this leading up to it make it a little more tolerable. Every morning this week when the girls and I go out to wait for their school bus, the grass has that icy autumn glitter but by 10:00 the sun is warm enough to dry the laundry and lawn is just dewy and wet.

The landscape around our farm went through another annual change last week.  All the corn that Charlie had planted in the fields around our pastures has been cut.  Now when I wake up in the morning and stumble into the bathroom I can see the lights on in their stall barn and I am reminded that Charlie and Tammy have already been up for over an hour doing the daily milking.  And to the west in the open fields we frequently see deer making a mad dash across the valley from ridge to mountain or vice versa, as though they can sense that archery season is open and rifle season only a month away.  The crows too are more raucous as they glean corn left scattered on the ground where the combines and wagons have spilled some of their load.  There are days I wish I was working in some office or classroom, with adult colleagues to converse or gossip with, but those days are rare in the fall and I feel a little guilty at times that at this stage of our lives Roy is the one who has to drive away from our farm to earn an income and provide health insurance we need, knowing that this is where he’d prefer to be too, especially in high autumn. 

Last Saturday a farm that adjoins ours along the southern ridge sold on auction.  The farmer that sold it has had knee trouble the last several years and he and his wife decided it was time they slowed down and moved south to be with their grown children. 

It was a cool, rainy day but Ralph and Maria’s farm lane and fields were packed with pickup trucks and SUV’s.  If it had been in the spring, this would have definitely qualified as a “mud sale”, sales that take place just after the spring thaw.   The girls and I were only there long enough to get them each a bowl of chicken noodle soup for lunch, but Roy had his eye on a cattle-handling chute that might sell at a reasonable price and since he’d only have to haul it two miles around the ridge it seemed worth waiting for.   Farm auctions can be an affordable way to buy equipment and they certainly are a great way to catch up on valley news, they can also be a colossal waste of time, especially if you are only interested in one or two items, like we were.  Knowing there was more pressing work he should be doing, Roy impatiently waited for the auctioneer to turn his attention to the chute.  He got to it soon after lunch while the girls and I were there to witness the bidding.  We had already discussed our high bid when the auctioneer started his sales pitch about how “you don’t see them built this well very often.  I can’t read the name but I think this is a __________ chute, and boys, you just aren’t going to find a better made chute than this.”  With that the bidding began and in no time it was at our high bid and only two bidders, our neighbor three miles down the road and us, were left.  Bidding between neighbors in a small community is closely watched so I was a little surprised when Roy kept bidding well beyond our agreed price.  No doubt several onlookers saw the “what are you thinking?” look I flashed at Roy.  I was still unaware of who the other bidder was, but Roy had caught his nod and wanted to push just a little higher.  Soon the bids slowed and our hesitant bids gave in to our neighbor’s deeper pockets and greater desire. Oh well.  At least now Roy was free to return home and attend to more important matters. 

I’ve written several times about our neighbors here in Shade Valley.   So many of them have family connections that extend back several generations.  Even though we’ve lived here for ten years, we still feel like the new folks in valley.  Last summer, (2007) I became a little alarmed when I noticed a green mini van driving slowly past our farm several times in one week.  Since our girls were often outside playing when the van went by I allowed my mind to assume the worst.  I mentioned it to Roy and he too had noticed it, so I decided the next time I saw it trundling slowly by the farm, I would very obviously stare at the driver and license plate.   I was quite surprised to find a little silver-haired lady smiling and waving back at me.   She certainly did not look like the predatory pedophile I was trying to intimidate.  Her pattern of driving slowly up and down the road continued and soon other neighbors were filling in the details.  “Oh, there goes Evelyn again! If they don’t take her license away soon, she is bound to cause and accident,” another mother fretted when she picked up her daughters, whom I had been watching that afternoon.   Charlie, the dairy farmer down the road informed us that her husband had died recently and she “live alone on that farm before the S-curve.  She is a sister-in-law to….”   By mid-summer we routinely stopped what we were doing in the yard or garden to smile and wave at Evelyn when her little mini-van drove by going about 30 m/h.  A couple times I walked towards her hoping she’d stop and we could talk but she seemed more comfortable just smiling and waving as she passed.  I imagine it was a reassuring break in perhaps a lonely day to drive up and down the valley she had lived in most of her life and catch glimpses of her neighbors, relive memories, or just wonder at the small changes taking place as new people moved in.   I hardly noticed this summer that her van was no longer making it’s daily pass until the other evening when Charlie called to let us know that she’d died over the weekend.  I didn’t really know Evelyn, but briefly sharing this narrow, beautiful valley, vibrant with its seasonal routines and predicable yet quirky characters, connected us in some small way and I suspect when our family reminisces about life in Shade Valley, the summer we had a daily “visit” from Evelyn in her green minivan will be a memory that will make us smile.  

Last week we went to the farm in Blacklog Valley where we graze some of our cattle.   We discovered our best and oldest bull had a very bad limp.   We had him in the barn for several months this spring to keep him from breeding the cows too early.  His lazy days in the barn allowed his hoof to grow too long; it is the walking on ground and stones that keeps hooves ground down to healthy length.  In years past we always put him in a separate paddock away from our cows but he is a very formidable bull and he would stand alone at the corner of the pasture bellowing to the neighbor’s cows and intimidating their bull.   We thought is was amusing and liked to imagine just what sort of trash talking was passing between our hulking Angus bull and the short, shaggy Scottish Highland bull next door.  The neighbors didn’t find it very amusing however, so Reto was on barn arrest for a couple months and we forgot to schedule a pedicure for the old guy.  Thankfully the vet was already scheduled to come out to pinch our young bulls (to make them steers) and pregnancy-check our cows.  He took care of poor Reto and we brought him home to a valley with more courageous neighbors and no other bulls for miles.

The first weekend in May we filled the girls' wagon with yogurt containers, bread bags, a soil corer, and scissors and began making rounds through the pastures below the road.  In each paddock we pulled twelve soil cores and cut as many forage samples.  The samples from each paddock were mixed together, dried, and shipped off to a lab in Tennessee.  The girls were so excited to be little scientists and scrambled to claim a job in each paddock.  Like typical six-year-olds, their enthusiasm lasted for about an hour.  Soon  they were hungry and tired and Roy was just as happy to have them retreat to the house so he could finish the job.  While their enthuiasm lasted however, it was fun to have them looking for specific kinds of weeds and grass or pull earthworms from the soil samples. 

The results of the samples will tell us which minerals we need to add to our soil to make it more productive.  In some of our paddocks we've noticed the tips of the grass yellows as it matures and in others the grass seems thin and sparse.  Ideally we should sample the soil every five years or so,  but it is a time-consuming process and this is the first time we sampled all the paddocks below the road and later this month we hope to do it for the four paddocks above the road as well.

Many customers ask about our farm name.  "Why BlueRooster? You don't even sell poultry!"   We pondered many different names and really wanted a name that better described what we were about on our farm, but everything was too long, already used, or  just didn't stick.   BlueRooster kept coming back to us.  We thought perhaps we should sell the farm and open a pub with the name instead, but we really wanted to farm and knew nothing at all about brewing or pub-tending, having both grown up in fairly devout Mennonite families.   We were finally forced to choose a name when we began marketing our lamb and beef and about that time I came across an article describing Medieval agricultural symbols.  The rooster, I learned, is a symbol of fecundity and rejuvenation.  Not only that,  what other animal heralds the dawning of a new day long before the rest of us can see it coming, (or even care for that matter.)   We do believe that agriculture is seeing a new day and we hope our farm will be a part of it, so the ole' Rooster stuck.   And no, we do not have any blue roosters on our farm, if fact, I've never seen a blue rooster.   (We do have colorful roosters and chickens that lay blue eggs though.)  But WhiteRooster or RedRooster just didn't have the whimsy or rhyme that kept us coming back to BlueRooster, so BlueRooster it is.