May Mother
May 9, 2012
Each October we turn the buck in with the does, which then gives us kids in March. But, every once in a while, a doe doesn’t take the first time around, or the second. Yesterday, two full months after all the other does kidded, the last one had her baby. After two months of watching all the others with kids and being treated as something a little other, it is evident that she thinks different about herself now, as do the other does.
© David B. Bell 2012
Chirping Toward Voice
April 3, 2012
JustLiving Farm
Morning feeding sometimes lends itself to a moment of consideration. A few days ago we picked up a few chicks whose lot in life is to become this year’s egg-laying hens. These chicks may not be the image that comes to mind when hearing the word chick. This time of year, in our area, the image that does come to mind is all around us. It is nearly impossible to walk into a feed store, a lumberyard, or even a clothing store and not see chicks about the size of tennis balls chirping next to a feeder under a heat lamp. Something about Easter brings out the sellers and buyers of chicks. However, our chicks are not the size of tennis balls.
Our chicks are two months old and at two months, they have lost their fluff and gained their feathers. They are beginning to look like chickens, but have yet to acquire a chicken voice. At two months, chicks continue to chirp as they did when they were tennis ball size, but there is something more to it. The chirp has something of a hoarseness to it, kind of like the in between, breaking, voice I remember all too well from my teenage days. Soon, though, their true chicken voices will kick in and the days of chick will be long-gone.
Finding voice is different for chicks and chickens than it is for teenagers and adults. Speaking—having the ability to speak or chirp, is natural in most of our lives. But finding voice, finding those thoughts which are uniquely your own, is something different, something that takes a bit of time and a lot of reflection. Such voice might be verbal, but it might also be that which is written or formed by clay or painted on canvas or pencil on paper, or by way of camera. Such voice is not chirping nor childish, but mature with a dash of thoughtfulness—however; such voice may rise up out of a child and be lost to an adult.
Voice does not silence the voice of another, but gives another something to ponder and consider. Voice encourages voice.
I’m not sure why the chirping of two-month-old chicks has me thinking of voice today. I imagine it has something to do with the darkness of Holy Week. A time that calls for attention, consideration, and awareness of the deep and abiding hurt that has far too much presence in our communities. Perhaps it is the riding of a colt and Travon Martin and Mathew Shepard; perhaps it is the selling of doves and John T. Williams; perhaps it is a few days before Passover, some nard and Rosa Parks, Dorothy Day, and Fannie Lou Hamer; perhaps it is Judas and I; perhaps it is a meal in a guest room and Oakland and Oikos University; perhaps it is the casting of lots, sour wine, a torn curtain and us.
Voice does not just happen. Like so much of life, chirping comes first, then listening, then consideration, and then with the help of friends, neighbors, and elders…voice becomes. Perhaps, today, I just begin chirping and live with the hope of voice and resurrection.
© David B. Bell 2012
Farm Kid Day!
March 12, 2012
JustLiving Farm
She moved around slowly. Very slowly. Every doe in the herd except her had kidded. I had thought she would kid two days earlier and I think she thought the same, but so far, nothing. When I arrived at the barn she moved up to the gate. The gate led to the area where we bring mothers for a few hours after birthing. While there, kids get a shot of selenium, iodine on their umbilical cord, and an ear tag. I think she came to the gate because she thought if she could get in, that would induce her babies. I opened the gate, and she slowly walked in.
It took a full day, but by the next morning the slow moving doe finally had twins, one doeling and one buckling. Life seemed better! After a week of birthing, every doe had a kid on the ground, and no deaths! Which means…
FARM KID DAY! Yep, the time has arrived for our annual workday with kids and their mothers. This is the day when we trim mother’s hooves, give them a good brush down, and cleaned them up. At the same time kids get tetanus shots, dehorned, and banded. A very busy two to four hours. Normally, we have this day on Saturday, but this year we have a Saturday workshop presentation. So, instead, we are going with a Sunday afternoon. If you would like to come and help (your kids and grandkids are welcome!), you are welcomed!
COME join us and other folk who support small farms! Come and help work with the mothers and kids, walk around and learn about the farm, and sit down with us, new friends, and have homemade chili and sourdough bread! Please call or email and let us know your coming!
FARM KID DAY
March 18, 2012: 1:00pm
Join JustLiving Farm for a day of…
Care for Does and newborn Kids.
and
Supper of Chili & Sourdough Bread.
RSVP (509) 969-2093 or
dave@justlivingfarm.org
© David B. Bell 2012
Just Kidding
March 4, 2012
JustLiving Farm
The birth of this season’s first two kids reminds me, creation keeps on keeping on and the slower living winter gifts us with is on its last legs. As each kid emerges into an existence we all too often take for granted, we are called to gear up another notch. Though there is plenty of winter to come, this is an exciting time after months of gray frozen fields, snow, and frost ringing window edges.
© David B. Bell 2012
Expecting
February 23, 2012
JustLiving Farm
Yesterday, with the help of a few friends, we reshaped, remodeled, and temporarily organized the barn into a kidding area. This came the same day I received notice a friend of mine is pregnant. As a guy I really don’t have a clue what it means to be an expectant mother, but as a parent I do know what it means to be expectant.
I know it drives folks—it did me at one time, a little nuts when folks compare the human condition of pregnancy or raising children to that of animals, but I know few folk who are parents and work with animals that don’t make the comparison on a regular basis. For instance, today, four out of twelve does have bagged up—that telltale sign of goat utters filling and teats enlarging. This stage of pregnancy says soon: soon birth, soon mamas making the sound only mamas make with newly birthed babies, soon baby kids finding they have legs, soon the first taste of milk, soon babies learning the mystery of life with sky and wind and straw. This sooness has the demeanor of the four does quite different from that of the other eight and not all that different from other mothers, four legged or two legged, living this stage of life.
When the demeanor, the expectation, of these mamas become what it is, then we are compelled toward the barn to ready stalls and a loafing area in anticipation of birth. In only a few hours the barn was readied for the first birth of the year. Now we wait.
It is nice to be ready, to have shelter and warmth in the time of expectation. And I reckon that is my hope for all expectant parents, to have a warm place for new life to enter which allows their youngsters to live and learn and love the mystery of life with sky and wind.
© David B. Bell 2012
Life and Supper: Paying Attention Tastes Better
December 28, 2011
JustLiving Farm
Dawn of the fourth day of Christmas brought cloud cover and warm weather to the valley. The warmth got me thinking about the second day of Christmas.
I had been putting off a job I find somewhat unpleasant for the last two months. By 9am Monday the temperature outside was 38 degrees and very warm compared to any day for the last two weeks, which made it seem now was as good as any time for the job.
Having laying hens wandering freely about the barn and pasture and providing us (and others) with fresh eggs is wonderful. What isn’t so wonderful is when they move beyond their productive egg laying years. Many people sell their hens off at this time for they do not want to engage in what naturally comes next—chicken dinner. We do not sell our hens for a couple of reasons. First, it seems unfair to raise a hen, have her provide years of eggs for my wellbeing, and then when it comes time to die, be carted off to a place that has never been home. Now folks can say what they want concerning chicken brains and their not having a clue to what is going on, but that has never seemed the case around the farm. Hens have outsmarted more than one person on the farm over the years! It is only right, therefore, if we are to benefit from a chickens life and its death, if we are going to have a feed and water in return for eggs relationship, we all should be present at death. Second, butchering chickens means we get to have chicken dinner with the ease of mind that comes from knowing where the chicken lived, how it was treated, what it ate, and maybe most importantly, how it died. I imagine I don’t have to say more than this, all anyone needs to do is go online (or watch Food Inc.) to learn about the life and death of most every bird one might buy in their local grocery store.
However, there is a problem. I really, really don’t like killing. I know the importance of it, in fact more than once I have said all folk who eat meat should go through the killing process at least once. Maybe not literally kill an animal himself or herself, but be in the same place at the same time when the animal they are going to eat dies. It is important to know life as sacrament. It is important to know that no one—vegetarians and vegans included—on this earth is going to eat without causing death. This is why I, who would do most anything to get out of killing an animal, have come to value one who butchers well. And we have been lucky when it comes to our large animals. The Dutch gentleman who arrives at the farm and butchers our large animals has a way about him that the animals act as if they know him and are comfortable in his presence. One can’t ask for more than that. However, when it comes to chickens we are on our own and that is why I put the job off for two months.
So, on the second day of Christmas, with warm weather and blue sky, friends and family came together and spent the better part of the day with chickens. The day is never as bad as I imagine it. However, it always leaves me with an ache. An ache for life that is no more, an ache arising from the reverence that comes from sacramental knowledge of one giving its life for another, and an ache that wishes all life given for supper tables might be so revered. I think it is an ache to embrace, for at the end of the day, with friends and family sitting around the supper table, we say grace and know more fully the sacrament before us, and that, yes that, makes for a supper that tastes wonderful.
© David B. Bell 2011
Stop It All
November 15, 2011
Native American Heritage Month
We all do it. We eat our animals without knowing. Knowing them or ourselves. It makes it easier, doesn’t it? Easier to let others raise our food in confined feedlots where manure piles up so high the last days of our food lives are lived out on what we flush down the toilet. Would it be different, would our and our food’s lives be richer, if each of us, at least once, looked our food in the eye and shot it? Then, perhaps, we would no longer eat and live lives of sewage, but honor our food, again?
First Deer
I trailed
your guts
a mile through snow
before my second bullet
stopped it all.
Believe me now,
there was a boy
who fed butterflies sugar water
and kept hurt birds
in boxes in his room.
Joseph Bruchac
Lenten Kid’s
March 9, 2011
The last kids were born yesterday afternoon. After three days and a good deal of our time with does and babies, there are now twenty-one kids on the ground.
Today is also Ash Wednesday. Christian folk enter this first day of Lent in many ways. Some take the time to have ashes placed on their foreheads on this day, the forty-sixth day before Easter. The ashes are representative of living into a time of humility and sacrifice. In the spirit of sacrifice, some folk make a promise to themselves to give up something they enjoy during the time of Lent as a way to express the hardship of living life that matters.
Three days of birthing has given doe mother’s twenty-one babies. Twenty-five were born, four never made it to their second day of life. Whether we are a Lenten people or not, it seems fair to remember life in the landscape of this world is a gift, and living into that realization with humility, matters.
Kidding in Thirty Days more Pasture Today
February 01, 2011
The Does should be kidding in about thirty days. In anticipation of these last thirty days prior to kidding, we stockpiled pasture last fall—basically, twice, we did not turn the animals onto one of the pasture paddocks when it came up in rotation—so the Does would have more roughage and maybe a little more protein during the final days of pregnancy. Therefore, today is the day. We put up a temporary fence on the south end of the pasture, made sure the fence is hot, and turned the goats out. The pasture may not be pretty, but the goats are happy.
Dogs under the Fence
December 15, 2010
Dogs got through the fence yesterday and to the goats. When we arrived, we found we had arrived in time, the goats were crowded into a corner but the dogs hadn’t maimed or killed any.
Dogs are one of our greatest fears. Coyotes come and go around the farm and we don’t give them much worry. It isn’t that they haven’t taken a lamb or two over the years, rather, that what they do kill, they eat. Dogs, though, are much more a menace. When two, three, four, or more domestic dogs get together, they kill with little thought. For they have a food source every day and when they show up their not hungry. Therefore, when they run in a pack they are not killing for food, but for pleasure. Over the years we’ve been lucky and have had only one ewe torn up, but not killed. Our neighbors though haven’t had such luck and have come home to find multiple animals killed, and, it is this sight in our mind that has us worry more about dogs than coyotes.
Once the dogs were ran off, we walked the fence line to where they came and went. We run a high-tension electric fence. Belinda came across this type of fence about twenty years ago when she and her father visited sheep ranches in Australia. When it came time to build the perimeter fences on the farm, we chose high-tension and electric. Walking the fence line we found nothing out of the ordinary. However, the ordinary is not electrifying the bottom wire of the fence during the summer. This way, as vegetation is growing, the goats will nose under the fence and keep the fence line free of plants that might otherwise short out the fence. This works great during the summer, but not so well during the winter when vegetation is not growing. An unelectrified bottom wire in the winter is like opening a hole in the fence for the dogs. So, the fix was simple enough. Make the bottom wire hot.
© David B. Bell 2010
Snow Enhances Creations Wonder
November 24, 2010
First snow is on the ground here in the Yakama’s valley. Based on the reports we’re getting, snow is throughout most of the state of Washington this morning. First snow makes one wonder. I imagine because there is a certain amount of wonder in the snow. It is magical and mysterious all at the same time. When writing to her congregation, Laurie Rudel, a friend of ours, recognized that we all begin as children and the first snowfall brings something of that child out in all of us. This child doesn’t mean we necessarily like living in the snow, but rather, if we take a moment we all can experience our first wonderment of our first snow.
Wonderment of first snow doesn’t look the same for all of creation. Two spring kittens jump out the back door like they have done every morning since birth. Being teenage kittens, they didn’t look before they bolted out the door. After the first few bounds, they stopped and found their eye level below snow level. Not only did they not know what to do with snow—is it wet or is it dry?, for a moment they were lost.
When it came to roosting in the evening, the spring chickens who had come to the chicken coop every evening since birth, couldn’t quite find their way to the coop last evening. Now, they have to journey twenty feet from the northwest corner of the barn to the coop door on a windy-snowy evening, so their not making it to the coop might have as much to do with the wind as it does with the snow. In any case, there are fewer eggs in the laying boxes this morning.
There are not any spring goats this year. Everyone has a winter or two or three behind them, so snow and cold isn’t something new. However, if there is an animal that does not like the snow, it is the goat. Sure, mountain goats may like snow good enough, but it is a stretch to think of these we raise have much lineage with those longhaired animals. Instead, these shorthaired goats have almost no fat, which makes for great meat, but doesn’t do a thing for warmth. No snow and no rain suit them just fine.
Wonderment might come a little differently for the two-legged rational folk. This morning’s visit to the chicken coop garnered a few eggs. After gathering them from the laying box, I placed them off to the side while I checked water and feed. Three or four minutes later I came back to them and they had all frozen and broke their shells—that’s what a negative eight degrees will get you. Now, I imagine one could say that a rational person would have had the good sense to know you can’t leave eggs out in negative eight-degree weather and not expect them to freeze solid…or…it might be said…snow brings about an amazing transformation of rationalization to childlike wonderment that enjoys the acquirement of wisdom through hands-on learning. Yeah, let’s go with that, childlike wonderment, sounds like a good argument as I serve cereal rather than the promised eggs for Thanksgiving breakfast.
© David B. Bell 2010
Last Days of an Old Goat
November 18, 2010
Olga is living out her last days. Watching and living with another through end of life is hard but enlightening. The conversations I have had with nurses, doctors, veterinarians, pastors, ranchers, hunters, pet owners and social workers who experience and reflect on the end of life of another often story about the unspeakable. For each person the knowledge, feelings, emotions, and passion that well up seem the same, depending on their relationship, whether the one living out their end of life is human, bird, deer, dog, cat, or goat. While we watch and sit with Olga as she wraps up her life as we know it, we get to live through such reflections again.
Two days ago she had trouble getting up in the morning. She got her back legs under her, but could only get as far as her knees on the front end. With a little help she finally got her front legs under her. With all four legs working, she was able to leave the stall and move to the pasture. She ate awhile. When she had her fill, she sat down in the grass and spent the rest of the day in the middle of the pasture with the sun shining on her. Not bad for an old goat.
Yesterday she wasn’t able to sit up or raise her head off the straw. She didn’t have much interest in either eating or drinking and that seemed okay with her. Yet the morning got me to thinking about how to treat the next hours or days. Euthanasia is always a choice. Over the years we’ve had animals put down. But I’m also of the opinion that as long as there isn’t any pain, living out death might be best. After all, we all only get to do it once, and being allowed to live it out well should be an option for either animal or human. So, yesterday and today is being lived out along the lines of hospice, with our goal of keeping Olga comfortable, out of pain, a good bed of straw, and should she want it, water and food.
I really don’t have a clue what might be gleaned from attending the last days of an old goat, but I have an idea it is a spiritual journey.
© David B. Bell 2010
Putting the Horse Away Wet
November 16, 2010
Most everyone who has spent time around horses knows there is a problem putting the horse away wet. The rest of us probably know it from watching an old show where a youngster or a tenderfoot learns the lesson they will never forget when they put the horse away wet. Everyone has some understanding to the reason it happens; the end of the day comes along, you’ve done two days work in one and you’re just wore out. To get out and get that one last thing done seems impossible. With an animal, you have no choice but to wipe and curry them down. With equipment, well, it is much easier to walk away.
It isn’t so much that I walked away from the swather as it was I got it oiled and greased after the last cutting then put away. Enough done if there was another cutting in the next few weeks, but not enough if it were to be put away for the winter. Luckily, the weather has warmed up for few days. So, we pulled the swather up to the shed yesterday and cleaned the alfalfa and grass out of the nooks and crannies. In a number of places, seed had already sprouted and plants beginning to make their presence known, which led to washing everything down. Next the knives, rollers, chains and belts were inspected, adjusted, and oiled.
Putting the swather away for the winter isn’t the same as putting a horse away after a long ride. However, doing both thoughtfully helps lead to either being ready for the next ride.
© David B. Bell 2010
Worming goats, Intern’s, and Late Nights
June 6, 2010
Belinda and I met the midnight plane from Seattle Friday night. Well, okay, it isn’t actually the midnight flight, but it does arrive at 11:30pm, so it might as well be the midnight flight. Though a bit late for us, Frannie had left from New Orleans earlier in the day, which meant according to her time schedule she arrived at 1:30am! Frannie had just finished a weeklong training with Disciples Volunteers and would be spending the summer interning at the Yakama Mission. After a week of instruction and learning how to work with volunteers and all that goes with it, she was surely more wore out than us as we headed back from the airport.
Come morning, everyone had a good but short night’s sleep. Frannie is staying at the farm until next Friday when the Mission’s next intern arrives. To fill in time between now and then, what better to do than worm goats?
Belinda and Frannie ran goats down to the holding area where hooves were trimmed last week.
Then with syringes filled with wormer, they caught each goat, place the syringe in their mouth, plunged the plunger, and then let them out of the holding area. Doesn’t sound like much, but get a bunch of goats together who really (really!) do not like the taste of wormer and you have a little goat rodeo! With a break for lunch, and not too many bruises, early afternoon arrived and we had a small heard of wormed goats.
© David B. Bell 2010
Trimming the Hooves of Ancestors
May 30, 2010
We are late this year trimming goat hooves. An upside to the latest rain is catching up on a little animal husbandry is easier. After a few days of rain, hooves become a more pliable and workable. With a clear morning sky yesterday, it made sense to call the goats down to the holding pen and begin trimming.
We are trimming late this year. Normally we trim when the does are kidding. During kidding time they come down to the kidding barn for a day or two. Then before we let them back out with the herd, we trim their hooves. This year, though, with all does kidding in a ten-day period; there was not nearly enough time or energy to trim hooves.
Hooves differ from animal to animal. The hooves of those goats that have a lot of Saanen lineage are very much overgrown. The hooves of those goats with greater South African Boar in their lineage are not overgrown nearly as much. I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps it is tied to heritage and landscape of ancestors.
Saanans are named for Saanen valley in Switzerland. Boar goats are a crossbred goat from the early 1900’s, whose lineage probably comes from the goats of the Namaqua Bushmen and the Fooku tribes with maybe some European or Indian bloodlines thrown in. Now I don’t know a lot about Switzerland or South Africa. However, if my prejudices have some truth, then hoof growth tied to landscape of original ancestors from might make some sense.
I imagine Switzerland goats coming from mountain goat stock. Where those goats of South Africa, I think of more of a plains goat. If so, then it makes sense to me that the Saanen has an ancient need to grow hoof at a quicker rate because travel on rock and rocky soil wears the hoof down quickly. Where the South African Boar historically lives in flat lands with much less rock and therefore has less need for a quick growing hoof.
Who knows? What I do know is the Saanen and Saanen crosses have more hoof and take much more time to trim than the Boars. Not all that important, but you have to think about something while trimming hooves.
© David B. Bell 2010
Haying and Kittens
May 26, 2010
We stack most of our hay on a pad south of the house. About a quarter acre in size, the hay gets stacked on the pad during the haying season and then tarped before the fall rains. Our plan was when the last of this year’s hay was removed from the pad we would regrade the pad and put down gravel. Hopefully, making it both easier to drive in and out and load hay during the winter and keeping the bottom bales cleaner and dryer. The plan, I think, was a good one. There was only one hitch.
With about six tons of last year’s hay left, we were loading a ton of hay when we came to a nest of kittens. Their eyes were still shut, so we took hay from around them and left them alone. When the next day rolled around and we checked on them, we found their mamma had moved them. Then about a week later while loading the last ton of the stack, we ran into them again. Their eyes were open and they were staring to walk. This time, we threw a few bales of hay in the horse trailer, place the kittens in the middle of the hay, and hoped mamma would find them. Sure enough, by the next morning mamma had moved the kittens to the other end of the horse trailer. This worked pretty well until we regraded the hay pad.
We wanted to make the hay pad a little larger this year. To do so meant that if we left the trailer where it was it would sit in the middle of pad. Question was, move the trailer and maybe have mamma not come back or leave it where it was? We left it where it was and graded around it.
A few days later, a strong mewing came from horse trailer. Figuring this was normal we walked on by. Come the next day though, mewing still came from the trailer, only a bit stronger. After taking a look, there were no kittens and no mamma, save this one. Grading must have been the last straw for the mamma cat. She had moved the kittens somewhere else, but missed this one.
Today we move the trailer. In the next day or so, we will gravel the hay pad. The kitten? Well, it lives inside now. Full belly, walking around tentatively, and mewing with what we think is satisfaction. Reckon it can’t hurt to have another barn cat.
© David B. Bell 2010
A Morning of Not Waiting
May 13, 2010
They leave with first sunrise. The small northwest pasture draws them. The exodus begins with one doe fed up with waiting for me to come and load a bale of hay into the feeder. Once she begins to walk down the run, others follow—afraid she will find a new patch of open pasture and they will miss out. They walk in single file until the kids arrive. Kids stand behind nosing the stems from yesterdays feed or butting one another playfully but intentionally. Then one raises its head, sees its mother a quarter ways down the run, yells, and runs after her. Others quickly join and a melee of kicking, jumping, running, and butting heads occur as they catch up with the does.
Ditch water now runs in the ditch that runs the length of the run on the south side. The kids, jump back and forth across the ditch as if to show off goat prowess. Sometimes, a little full of themselves, two running along the ditch on either side will jump across at the same time and find one another in mid-air, then again in the middle of the ditch. Both climb out, dripping, disconsolate, cry for mamma, and run to her and the teat.
The pasture is light this morning. It isn’t a large pasture. Only a day on the pasture and they will need moving to another this afternoon. The goats have held up their end of the bargain though, mostly. The invasive weeds are for the most part gone and valve openers clear of grass and weeds, ready for the next watering. They all spread out and begin eating. Some can’t settle in on a place and constantly move trying to find something better. Some are content with the first patch of ground they come to. The kids are kids, eating and running, moving from grass to teat, with seemingly, no worries.
© David B. Bell 2010
Worms
April 21, 2010
A good rain last night and the sky looks like more will fall today. Living on the east side of the Cascade Mountain Range means we live the “rain shadow effect” I learned about in high school. There is a difference between academically learning about mountain ranges so tall that by the time a storm passes over the range it has lost most all of its water content, and tactilely experiencing it. Academic means the shadow in interesting, tactile means we don’t often get rain like last night.
When we do, then it is worth getting up early and walking the pastures and hay fields. The extra water brings the worms and nightcrawlers to the surface. A walk tells a story about how well the soil is. Worms, like most critters when they have choice, live where there is good housing and food. Worms help tell us, by their presence or non-presence, if the soil structure is good and food abundant. They also tell us if our chemical buildup is too high. Too much chemical can mean no worms. Though we do not use chemicals to control pests, weeds, or as a fertilizer, many of our neighbors do. They are careful and caring in their use, but overspray and drift does occur. So, the number and health of the worms at the edges of our fields tell an important story. It is fair to say, I felt good about the number of worms found this morning in the pastures and hay fields.
© David B. Bell 2010
