Laboring on Labor Day

Labor Day weekend means we were laboring all weekend. We are in full harvest mode. We've scheduled animals for slaughter and winter feed for the remaining stock and of course picking produce from the garden. Over the weekend we picked, processed, caned or froze several quarts of beans, tomato sauce, ketchup, including 4 quarts of peach shrub. Shrub is a beverage that goes back to 18th century made from fruit, vinegar, and sugar.

Our peaches have done rather well this year and we have been canning and freezing many, many quarts so I was looking to do something different with the recent harvested lug full. I did a search on the internet but only found recipes for small amounts that made one jar. No, we needed a serious recipe for a serious amount of peaches. Then it dawned on me, The Mennonite Community Cook Book surely should have such a recipe. I dug out my old copy handed down to me by my great aunt Sara. There, I found a recipe for elderberry drink. This was it. Fruit, vinegar, sugar, boil and jar. Then I saw the name of the person who submitted the recipe. Mrs. Warren G. Bean. It was my great grand mother, Anna Kulp Bean.

About twenty five years ago my father collected Anna's recipes and put them into a book for each of us kids so I went to the book and found the same recipe. Right underneath the elderberry drink recipe she had one for ketchup. Now we also have 3 quarts of homemade ketchup!    

Elderberry Drink

2 quarts of Elderberries 

Enough apple cider vinegar to cover the fruit and set for 24 hours

Strain through a cloth and measure liquid

add 1 cup of sugar to every quart of liquid

boil for twenty minutes

jar

"This Little Piggy Went To......"

This spring, Holley and I purchased three feeder pigs to raise and butcher this Fall. We put the rack on the truck head out to the western edge of Berks county to pick up our 40 pound, Gloucester Old Spot piglets. About an hour trip one way. We got the little guys loaded nicely in the bed of the truck and head back to our farm. Now, there is about a six inch gap between the top of the tailgate of the truck and the bottom of the rack gate on top of the truck bed. Within about a mile of leaving the farm where we purchased the pigs, Holley yelled "Stop!!" The little porkers were trying push the rack gate up with their snoots and hop out the back of the truck.

We didn't have anything to tie the rack gate down. We kept going. Holley would watch out the back window, yell "stop", I'd pull over, we push pig noses back down, and carry on. After about the fifth time, Holley suggested that she ride in the bed of the truck with them. I didn't think it was a good idea. The truck was a year out of inspection and still had snow tires on it which was illegal that time of year. I said "All we need now is to be pulled over by a cop and I would have to explain why my wife is riding in the bed of an un-inspected truck that has illegal snow tires with three little pigs and covered in pig dung." "Well officer, with all that pig dung on her, she can't very well ride in the cab now can she."

As it turns out, the pigs got motion sickness and settled down towards the front of the truck bed allowing Holley to face forward in the cab thus recovering from her own queasiness from staring out the rear window and getting back home without further excitement.

 If you want a dose of humility, Try raising livestock. It stands to reason that the animal's daily agenda will be different then yours. Most days your agenda prevails but some days the animal's agenda takes priority. One afternoon I was showing someone around our farm. We went into the barn where I had the pigs (or so I thought). They're helping turn the winter bedding so it would compost nicely. My agenda. When we came into the barn, there were no pigs. They had escaped and were happily grazing outside and bathing in the water troth. Their agenda.

Honest Poultry Men

Oh we got it bad! Real bad! Spring fever that is and we got it bad. It started on the first decent weekend in April and before we knew it, we had pulled out a row of 15 year old current plants and most of the raspberries that were threatening to take over the garden and put in 75 strawberry plants. 75, what were we thinking?!

Spring has been a bit slow to come and found us still feeding hay through most of April when I would rather have my animals grazing but the grass just wasn't there yet. The spring "to do" list was getting larger with each passing cold, damp day. But now "Freiyaahr kummt" as my people say and it is a joy.

Spring can also be felt at the Extension office where I work. I helped Emilie, our horticultural educator  unload and amazing number of large pots of mulch out of a rather small car and stacking them outside the ag center so that master gardener volunteers can help spread it around the plantings that surround the building. Each pot that was removed from the car seemed to reveal another pot. It became something akin to the never-ending handkerchief that streamed out of a clown car. Walk into the office and you will be greeted by the sound cheeping chicks that were recently hatched out of one of the several small incubators that are filling up the 4H office while the rest of us try to switch gears from winter meetings to farm visits, plot trials, programming for next year, and assisting the public with their questions as the world is seeming to arise from its winter slumber. "I found this bug on me. Can you tell me what it is?" "When should I worm my sheep?" "What is this twig? It was in my yard and my dog chews on it. Is it poisonous?" "I just purchased a small farm. What can I grow that will make me some money?" "What do I do about stink bugs!!"

At home, I am getting ready for an arrival of 15, day-old laying chicks and this would normally not be any big deal considering we used to have at any one time 1000 broilers and 200 layers running around the farm but these chicks are from rare breeds like Java, Dominique, Partridge, and Buckeyes. We purchased a chicken coop (pictured here) made by a carpenter/chicken enthusiast and his young would-be carpenter son.

My interest in poultry must be  part of my DNA. My great grandfather (whose farming diary entries are at this blog site) kept several breeds of chickens and sold fertile eggs and shipped them all over the eastern U.S. and even Canada. Inside one the his desk draws is his catalog from 1895.

The catalog offers three breeds. The Golden Wyandottes, Buff Plymouth Rocks, and Barred Plymouth Rocks. The Golden Wyandottes appear to be the most popular judging by the requests he received and his own statements in his catalog. "The Golden Wyandottes have come to the front ranks to stay. After a thorough trial of 5 years of breeding them, I must say that they well deserve the great boom they are having, by their great merits unprecedented in the history of any breed.They are an American breed and America should be proud of it." Wow, send me some! He even had testimonials in the catalog. "Dear Sir, From the Golden Wyandotte eggs purchased from you, I got 20 fine lively chicks. I am proud of them. I must now add your name to my list of Honest Poultry Men, and will try to favor you all I can in the future. I remain yours respectfully, Olney Pratt." 

I'm looking forward to raising the kind of breeds of chickens that my great grandfather would have seen in his time and will do my best to give them the kind of attention and care that he would have and be an "Honest Poultry Man". In the mean time, What do I do about the stink bugs!!

Goat Milking as a Contact Sport

After almost 20 years farming, I am now a part time farmer ever since I took a position with Penn State Extension two and a half years ago. This means that each day my wife Holley and I spend about and hour and a half doing chores when we get home from work followed by another hour or two working on other farm related tasks particularly during the growing season.

Spring is the time of year when the "to do" list looks very over whelming. We make our priorities by focusing on "food first". That is, whatever is going to feed us, takes highest priority. One of those tasks is milking the goat. If you ever owned goats, you'll know that goats have the intelligence of dogs. They also have individual personalities and temperaments which makes me question whether I own goats or do goats own me.

A few months ago, our goats birthed and Holley is in charge of milking which is good because Holley can match the persistence and stubbornness that a goat who doesn't want to be milked can display. Agnes was chosen to supply our milk needs because she is the easiest for hand milking and she is a veteran at it. Agnes had other ideas.

Everyday we had to coax her into the barn and have Nana, our Border Collie, block the doorway, grab her by the horns and drag her into the milk stand, hobble her legs so she wouldn't kick Holley or put a hoof in the milk bucket and for all this effort we were rewarded with about two cups of milk. What's the deal! Now, I can hear a chorus of farmers questioning the economics of this effort. Too time consuming for too little return and they may be right and I can certainly buy all the raw milk I want from a neighbor who produces it for a living but economics is not the point of this daily exercise.

If you are going to keep livestock, you have to learn to not necessarily think like them, but to be sensitive to what makes them feel safe and secure. I stood in the barn with my hands on my hips and goat manure on my jeans and looked at where we were milking her.

In front of the milk stand there were bales of straw. Agnes couldn't see anything except straw while she was in the stand. I moved the straw bales and we move the milk stand to where she could see her daughter while she was being milked. Like all of us, Agnes has her good days and bad days but slowly and surely, she is coming around. Last evening, Holley didn't even hobble her and she has been giving more milk.

The point I believe is the satisfaction that many people now a days receive by producing food for themselves and recognizing the amount of work it does take to produce food. Besides that, milking and feeding gives us a chance to practice what Phillip Landis, a farmer in Lancaster County, calls "high touch" husbandry. That is, daily physical contact with our animals that will give them a sense of calmness and security and gives all of us, a happier existence for our time on this farm. We don't even really need the border collie to heard the animals down to the barn and block the doorway to prevent Agnes' escape anymore, but Nana enjoys it so much.