On Monday night a mink got into our chicken coop and killed most of our hens.

It was heartbreaking, especially for Lupine who lost her favorite, beloved chicken, as well as her small business selling our surplus eggs. But mostly the loss of Lilac the fluffy-footed bantam (and all the other girls) was the heart of our sadness.

And then like magic later in the day Pete heard a peep coming from the incubator in the living room. The quail! The quail were hatching!

While their arrival doesn't erase the grief from losing our hens, it certainly provided a soothing buffer.

And one after another they hatched.

Tiny. Perfect. Quail.

 

It's hard to explain how impossibly small a freshly hatched quail really is.

And how impossibly cute.

Especially when you pop them into a vintage tea cup, just because.

 

Yes, at the moment there are seven fluffy, striped, teensy birds, peeping and chirping away in our living room. It's more sweetness than one tea cup can hold, I'll tell you that.

And the timing couldn't have been better.

 

You can handle one more post about lambs, can't you?

I hope so. Because how could I keep this much sweetness to myself?

 

We have six newborn lambs romping around the pasture. Six wooly, sweet, honey-eyed babies to watch and adore. And while Lupine likes the other five (very much), this one she adores.

Her Polkadot.

A black and white ewe lamb born last week, one of the twins that surprised us and began our lambing season this year.

Lupine fell in love with Polkadot the first moment she saw her laying still wet on the hay.

Every day Lupine visits her in the pasture, catches her up in her arms, and showers this baby with love.

 

And I believe there is nothing sweeter on our farm at the moment.

 

 

Just minutes after I posted here last Friday I went out to the pasture to see if Nutmeg had lambed. We thought she might go soon, and Pete and I both felt a pull to go outside and see if Friday was the day.

The sun was coming up, the red winged blackbirds were calling, and spring was in the air. When we arrived in the pasture it was clear that Nutmeg was in labor.

Pete ran inside to wake the kids and bring them out to watch. While he was gone I sat down on the hay and watched in awe as a perfect black lamb slipped silently out of her mama and onto the ground.

It was amazing.

A few moments later Pete arrived with a sleepy-eyed child in his arms and we watched Nutmeg clean her baby. Soon after she deliver her second lamb. This one smaller, sleepier, and white.

As we watched each of us had our own layers of emotion. There was awe and gratitude, delight and relief, and even a bit of look-the-other-way-grossed-out-ness (depending on who you asked). Because yeah, it's messy. But oh, so magical.

Usually the kids name the lambs, but these two I named. Salt and Pepper (or "Salt-N-Peppa" as they were quickly nicknamed) because we agreed weeks ago that Nutmeg's babies would all have spice names. I mean seriously. How could I not?

This brings our total to six lambs so far this spring.

Three black, three white; five ewes lambs (girls) and one ramling (our boy).

Salt and Pepper, Butterfly and Buttercup, Polkadot and Poppyseed.

We each have our favorite but we're all pretty crazy about the whole six-pack.

My mom and dad spent the weekend with us, as they often do for Easter, and even they got to enjoy these babies.

We still have three ewes to go (assuming all are pregnant, something we're still not certain of) but none of the other girls seem eminent so I think we have a few days to get our feet beneath us before we start again.

Until then we're drinking up all of the sweetness and loving on these six wooly babies.

Two of the three mamas are doing great (as are their four lambs), but one ewe seems to have a milk supply issue so we are doing some interventions. Nothing major, just a little helping along for both mother and babies.

All this to say that I'm feeling much more like a confident sheep-mama/shepherd than I was last year.

And thank goodness for that.

Love,
Rachel

Those of you who were with me last winter know that our first lambing season was not a graceful one. Early lambs, a record cold winter, and inexperienced farmers meant more heartache than we could bear.

By February I had put Pete on "farmer" detail and assigned myself house-detail because my heart just couldn't take it.

So yesterday when Sage ran into the house shouting, "Lambs! I see lambs! Lambs, mama!" while Pete was at work you would think my heart would be in my throat.

But it wasn't. No fear, no worry, just a happy sort of excited adrenaline.

We raced out to the barnyard and sure enough, there were two (perfect) just born lambs laying on the hay. (Their mama Poppy didn't let on when we fed them a few hours before, or we weren't paying close enough attention.) We had no idea they were coming! What a surprise.

And without Pete and home to be the farmer, the kids and I managed just fine on our own.

One lamb was separated from it's mama, laying warm and wet on the hay where she was born. I scooped her up, checked her nose and mouth, and headed for Poppy. My hands stuck to the fluids and membrane on her wool and carried her across the field and I realized that it was the first time I had held a baby so fresh and new aside from my own.

We move the three of them into the barn to give them a quiet place to get acquainted and – without Pete there to help – I dried off the babies (since the mama wouldn't lick them dry, likely on account of my nervous hovering) and then Sage, Lupine and I worked together to get the babies to nurse for the first few several times as that, too, wasn't going as seamlessly as we had hoped.

And all was well.

Full disclosure: while the three of us bravely managed it alone, I did send Lupine to the house a half-dozen times with questions or updates for him. "She won't lick them. Should I dry them off?" "How long before we need to intervene and feed them?" "Good sucking reflex but they won't latch. What should I do?" "What about iodine for their umbilical cords?"

By noon he was answering his cell phone, "Sheep doula hotline, how can I help you?"

Because, yeah. I called a lot.

But still. We did it! Two strong, healthy lambs and one strong, healthy mama, despite the normal bumps along the road. I could hardly fall asleep last night, thinking of mama and lambs and the others yet to come. 

I'm thankful that things went so well and – amazing even myself – I'm actually excited (not afraid) to have more lambs born in the coming days.

Oh, what a difference +45 F (versus -30) means for little lambs. And for my heart.

Welcome, Poppy Seed and Polka Dot! We're so glad you're here.

 

Love,
Rachel

A package arrived at our farm a few days ago. Inside was the promise of a brand new farm flock.

These little lovelies? They are Coturnix quail, a domestic quail kept for eggs, meat, and milk.

(No, silly. Not milk! I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.)

Eggs and meat!

We're all for diversity on our farm. And since we discovered Lupine has an egg sensitivity she's misses eggs now and again. So when we read that quail eggs can be a great substitute for people who can't eat other eggs – and even healing for people with digestive issues – we were sold.

We look forward to testing the theory, one teensy little fairy-sized fried egg at a time.

They are supposed to be easy to keep and start laying one egg per day by the time they are 6-8 weeks old.

And so we've nestled the eggs into a borrowed incubator (with a few random chicken eggs we decided to hatch out) and if we've done things right (fingers crossed) we'll have quail chicks in just 17 days.

I'll keep you posted!

 

It was a gorgeous and gardeny-sort of weekend. Right up until the weather turned.

There was compost to haul, seeds to start, eggs to incubate (more on that another time), and and plans to make.

A neighbor called, curious about our hugelkultur bed and offered to help us haul compost to cover it. We couldn't resist another adult working on the project and got busy digging and filling wheelbarrows.

I'll be honest about the hugel bed. It makes me smile every time I look at it. But hauling the sticks? That was definitely the easy part.

Without a tractor with a loader we did the work of digging and hauling the compost mostly by hand. It was a big job and we're not done yet. We lost count of how many wheelbarrow loads were brought to the bed, but after thirty or more we were ready for a break.

Sore and tired we called it a day and professed to do another round later.

I'm hopeful that we're half-way there.

And then (tireless, unstoppable) Pete set up tables and lights in the kitchen for starting seeds.

He planted herbs and tomatoes some flowers.

Because it was so warm and sunny Lupine set to work outside planting some window boxes she envisioned for her bedroom and transplanted a dandelion into a pot to bring inside, too.

Life felt so very springy around here.

Gardening! Seed starting! Spring.

And then… this.

Snow.

So. Much. Snow.

In 24 hours it went from a warm and sunny gardener's paradise to right back into the thick of winter. I'd guess we have ten inches already and it's still falling.

(And yes, I already packed away our winter gear.)

 

It's like they say here in Wisconsin. "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes."

Or, conversely, if you do.

 

 It might be time to dig the skis out again after all.

 

Yesterday we dug in on a project that has been on my wish-list for no short of four years. A permaculture hugelkultur bed.

Hugelkultur is a fancy German word that means, "Hey, sweet thing! Turn that brush pile into a garden!"

Okay, I made that up. But seriously – that's what it is. A gigantic brush pile covered in soil that turns into a gorgeous raised bed that grows gorgeous veggies without so much work.

Why bother with such epic yet untidy garden habits?

Because hugelkultur turns your plants into happy, healthy, water-conserving ninjas, that's why. Hugelkultur beds also sequester carbon (bonus!) and once built will crank out amazing veggies for years and years.

Yes, the benefits of hugelkultur are many. Here are a few favorites.

Rotting wood is a sponge.

With hugelkultur (even in a drought year) you can get away without watering a hugelkultur bed more than once per season, when the rest of the garden is desperate for a twice-a-day soaking. This alone is enough to convince me to build one. Less water pumped from the ground just makes good sense.

Bye bye, bindweed.

On my site anyway, hugelkultur should help with weed control by getting my garden up and away from my existing, questionable soil that is loaded with invasive bindweed. I'm all for this plan. (Meaning: I need all the help I can get.)

Erosion control.

And there is also the contour effect. We live in a valley. That means our entire property slopes, one way or another. Mostly to the south. Hooray for southern exposure! But gardening on a hill? You'll hear much less yee-haw from me on that.

The first year we lived here Pete build some simple stepped beds out of scrap lumber. They give us a fairly level surface in which to garden, but when heavy rains come (which they do, every summer) I worry that my tomatoes are headed to the creek.

As I learned more about permaculture, I fell in love with the idea of berms or swales to hold back rainwater and prevent erosion.

But hugelkultur swales? Even better! Running these beds parallel with the slope of the earth will help prevent erosion.

 

As you can see, the benefits of hugelkultur just keep coming.

 

A wild hair had me putting the bed in on Monday afternoon with the (less than enthusiastic but still appreciated) help of my kids.

Pete, working from home, spied us through the window and took an hour-long break to pitch in because he can't stand seeing hard labor done without grabbing his work gloves and helping, too.

Hugelkultur beds are deceptively simple to build. Here is what we've done so far, and how we did it.

1. Choose your site.

You can build a hugelkultur bed directly on the sod or on turned soil. We used our existing garden bed.

Dig down to create a less obtrusive bed, or build right on the surface. It's up to you. (We built right on the surface because in my book, more work = silly. I've got enough to do.)

2. Gather your materials.

Hugelkultur should be free.

Ours was. Three brush piles from various places around the farm plus some log-ends from a box elder that Pete cut down were plenty. Our Solstice tree even made it's way into the mix. It's a brush party!

It's worth mentioning that you don't want to use cedar, black locust, or walnut in your bed because cedar and locust won't rot and walnut will inhibit the growth of your garden plants. But a bit of pine or other conifers in the mix is fine. In fact, if you want a low pH bed for some reason (for a blueberry bed, for example) go wild with the conifers.

3. Start with the big stuff.

Log ends can be stood on end or laid down. I laid mine so that they were perpendicular to the slope of the hill for more stability yet less height.

There are really no rules here so throw some interpretive dance into the works and do whatever you want.

5. Next add branches and brush.

Now add more.

And more.

And… more.

I think we spent just under 1 1/2 hours hauling and stacking branch from all corners of our farm. Pile it up! The more the merrier.

As a bonus our farm looks great!

If you live in town and don't have a decent supply on hand many towns have a city compost where you can pick up brush and branches for free. Also ask your neighbors or the power line crew. Post what you're looking for online and see what you can gather. Heck, drive around looking for brush piles set out for pick up.

Most people will be thrilled to have you take their waste organic matter away, even if they do think you're a little strange.

6. When you run out of brush you're done with the first phase.

Yea, you!

Or, for a more thoughtful method, you can be done when you decide your bed is tall/big enough. I have seen huge hugelkultur beds and tiny ones. At 3 1/2' to 4' tall before adding soil ours is in the small to medium range.

7. Next comes compost.

(No photos of that step yet because, well, because we haven't done it yet.)

After you complete the layer of brush and wood it's time for compost, soil, an/or manure. Feel free to add dried leaves or straw at this point as well. Use whatever you have.

We'll be piling ours with composted sheep, goat, and chicken manure and hay from the barn, but you can use anything you can get your hands on. If you build your bed in the fall you can even use "hot" (fresh) manure. It will compost and settle during the winter.

8. And then plant.

Since we're excited to use this bed right away we'll be covering it in approximately 12" of compost. And then we'll plant immediately.

We'll plant cool-weather crops on the north side and heat-lovers on the south side.

I will keep you posted on our progress as we add the soil and compost and plant our seeds and starts!

If you are curious to learn more, this article is a good place to start digging in (as it were).

 

(Unrelated photos from last weekend.)

 

Moving to our farm and choosing to keep animals was a given.

Chickens and sheep, then a llama, goats and a cow.

Living on a small farm and keeping animals is something I've long dreamed of.

But there were things that came with that decision that I didn't anticipate. Like getting things wrong. Like holding so much life in my hands every day.

And with that responsibility came a depth and rawness of emotion and connection that I should have – but didn't – anticipate.

We fall in love, we do our best, and we sometimes say goodbye too soon.

We try and fail and try again.

And sometimes we fail big. And someone dies.

 

This winter there was loss. We were inexperienced. Our first lambs were born at 30-below.

It was hard.

I remember feeling like we failed every animal we lost. And I suppose we did.

I wished then that we had known more; done more; been more.

It's hard to navigate with a margin of error that is measured in life or death.

 

And then spring came and our burden lifted. It turns out lambs born at +40 F do beautifully compared to their arctic-born cousins.

And ease came. We hit our groove.

And I could breathe again, finding peace in the barnyard once more.

 

But death on a farm is not seasonal. Yesterday morning I lost my favorite farm friend, a goat I had fallen head-over-heels for during the past few seasons.

My Stellaria.

I was traveling and Pete was home when the sickness we'd been fighting took her down, but she hung on for days until I came back.

She died in my arms within ten minutes of me returning to the barn after four days away.

She was my girl, and I guess I was hers.

And as I held her tired, sick body, comforting and coaxing her to the other side of her pain, my heart broke.

 

And again I wished I had known more; done more; been more.

Yesterday more than ever.

I wished it weren't this hard.

But mostly I wished that I hadn't let her down.

 

Today I'm left with an empty stall in the barn and a chest-full of heartache. So many what-ifs, so many should-haves, so much grief.

But I'm also holding this reminder in my broken heart today – that all of this pain and regret and grief are a sign of a life deeply lived.

It hurst this much because I am connected to these animals, to this land, to these lives.

And honestly I can't imagine it any other way.

 

Less feeling would mean less living. Less depth. Less caring.

Less doing-my-best with the tools that I have and being invested in the outcome with my very being.

 

Perhaps all this heartbreak just comes with the job.

 

 

Safe travels sweet girl.

I am so, so sorry.

And you are so missed.

 

 

 

 

 

Can we get real for a minute?

It's about my garden.

And who knows. Maybe everything else that matters.

You see, I went through a major deer-in-headlights phase with my vegetable garden this spring and I think I've come out on the other side. Not because I "won" but because I stopped striving for perfection. For "pretty". For as good as someone else's.

For a while every time I saw someone's picture-perfect garden I cringed.

They have rich, crumbly black earth; I have a worn-out, compacted pasture. They have a weedless wonderland where everyone behaves; I have green anarchy – bindweed, and thistle. They have long, orderly rows of vegetables; I have chaos. They have prayer flags dancing in the summer breeze, I have 'rustic' pea trellises that blew over in the first storm.

And while I know that no one's pictures tell the whole story of weedy corners and countless hours of hard work, I also know that what we see can sometimes make us feel like we're not enough. Me, you, everyone now and then. So I thought you might enjoy seeing a little failure and chaos and imperfection from my world along with a few sweet lessons picked up along the way.

How does that sound?

Great. Then here goes.

My garden is big. The biggest I've ever had. And in truth I was completely overwhelmed this spring by how much earth was turned and waiting for seeds, and by how many thousands (yes, thousands) of weeds were quickly choking the seeds I put in regardless of how many I pulled or how heavily I mulched.

Everything went in late on account of the weeds, and I never felt like I caught up.

And now it's July. And the harvest has begun. And I still haven't caught up.

But I'm over it.

I no longer care.

I care about my garden, yes. But not about doing it "just so".

As you can see, it's crazy over here. And at some point – after freaking out this spring – I just decided to go with the flow.

Because even a weed bed can grow a wicked row of green beans.

So yes, weeds outnumber veggies here 100-to-1, and there are whole rows I've given up on. Rows I look at, laugh out loud, and then dive in to see if there might be a straggling kohlrabi in there we could have with lunch.

I literally crawl under the weeds to harvest things sometimes.

It's ridiculous and embarrassing and hilarious all at once. But you know what? I'm done fretting about it.

I'm over trying for picture-perfect. Because nothing in my life stays picture-perfect for long. And if it does there are probably tears involved by one or more people and possibly myself along the way.

And I'm positive that that cost out-weights the reward.

It ain't worth it.

So my garden in July is just not on the list of things I need to make pretty anymore.

What a relief that is to realize.

And so my weedy strawberry patch became the perfect place to watch a mama swamp sparrow raise her babies in the tall grass this June. Had I weeded we would have missed the chance.

And my overgrown lettuce bed is home to a giant mullein plant that I'm harvesting flowers and leaves from for both an earache oil and a lung clearing tea for winter. I'll be so glad to have it when cold season hits.

Lambs-quarters, chickweed, mullein, nettle, catnip, pigweed, plantain, parsnip, elderberry, and more. All volunteers taking root in my garden.

If you can't beat em, eat em.

 

I'm learning to embrace it for what it is and not freak out too much about the state of things.

And I'm thankful for the happy surprises that are growing from this acre of neglect.

This garden is a life-lesson for me if there ever was.

Lessons like: don't compare.

Perfection is a myth.

And use what life gives you.

 

Is it pretty? By conventional standards, no.

But will it feed us? Oh, my, yes.

Will it ever.

And that – I think – is downright perfect.