At Auction

Lewis and Sonja are friends in town who we get our hay from. They used to keep alpaca and dairy goats. This year they scaled down. Their hope was to sell their fiber, and value added goats milk products so that Sonja could stop working at the wood products mill a few towns over. Lewis has some acreage around town that he uses for haying. He sharpens saw blades for local small mills. They found that one commodity missing from the dream of full time farming was time. It is hard to milk goats, go to work, come home, milk goats and then try to make something from the milk before falling into bed.

So they went to auction and sold their herd.

This past weekend they went to auction to get a milk cow. Their thinking was they could have milk for themselves and Sonja could still make soap. It is a lot easier to milk one cow than to milk many goats. They have their own hay, so feed would be cheap for them, relatively speaking.

This is the story they told us when we went to get hay yesterday.

There is a big auction of a dairy farmer's livestock and equipment. Among the items to be auctioned is a 4 year old tractor. Lewis is a bit of a tractor enthusiast. He said that the tractor, brand new, was big money, upwards of 25,000. The tractor sold for 4,500. The dairy industry is in crisis and there is not much call for farming equipment.

He said the farmer's cattle were in bad shape. Many were emaciated. He said that the guy tried to hold on longer than he should have at the expense of feeding his cows. Many of the cows were young and actually sold from any where from 250.00 to 1200.00. Lewis told me that even though some of the cows were thin, because they were young meant that once they were fattened up they would be good milkers. Some of the cows were pregnant. There were several calves.

When Lewis spoke with the farmer he was told that the amount of money raised would not cover even half of the liens he has. Lewis also said that everything the farmer owned was auctioned. EVERYTHING. Furniture, appliances, books....everything.

Lewis and Sonja found their milk cow. They paid 225.00 for her. She was pregnant. The night they brought her home she had a runny nose. The next day it was clear she had a cold. By Monday morning she had died. Sonja and Lewis were out 225.00 but they said that one guy bought ten of the cows. They thought that their cow could have been stressed by all the moving and caught a cold. Or it may have been something more contagious; in which case, the guy who bought the ten cows could have ten dead cows on his hands.

It is easy to not think about where our food comes from. It is always there at the grocery store. Big Factory Farming pushes us further and further away from our food. Afterall, milk is just white stuff in a plastic gallon and it always there on the store shelve. Politics and special interest are so wrapped up in the demise of small family dairy farms.

On another note, if you live in the Northeast please look for Moo Milk. These farmers are trying to make a living. The milk may be a little more expensive. And it should be. We should pay the fair value of the products we consume.

Independence Day Challenge Year 2, The 23rd and 24th week

These autumn days are full. For a while life was on hold. Once we decided to stay in our current arrangement, life in pause became life in play. Wood is stacked. The hay loft is full. The garlic and egyptian onions are planted. Once again I tell myself we live here until we don't.

This moment, these brisk autumn days, it is time to pay attention. And this is what I see; a wooly bear wiggling across soil, its middle orange band an inch wide. Spiders invading the far corners of the house. I'll leave them to weave their winter homes. For now. I see a teenager, nearly a man, reading in a hay loft. I see a boy plowing roads in a sandbox and begging his momma to remove the leaves that have littered his roadway.

I am getting dirty in a good way. I am feeling garden muscles. I am soaking up that vitamin D for all its worth. The days grow short. There is a promise of snow. And we work towards our own hibernation.

Plant: winter rye, garlic, egyptian onions, transplanted blue hollyhocks, yarrow.

Harvested: last of the leeks, rutabaga, last of the onions, kale

Preserved: dehydrated leeks, dill, hubby made a batch of beer.

Manage reserves/ prepared: stacked wood, hay up in the hay loft, unpacked games and picture books. Knitting for Christmas; this has been a week for hats of all sorts. Something nice about circular knitting...round and round and then you have a hat. I am planning on a bulk food order this week.

Local foods: Well, we've kinda blew it with apple season. One week we were too early for picking another week we were too late. We did manage another case of apples ( at a higher price) and I may try another orchard for end of season apples. Hubby is going to pursue a local pork package out in Farmington to put in our freezer. I went to farmers market for local chicken.

Waste not: mucked out goat pen and put it in compost bin, I will try to give it a good turn before the freeze and hope to have it ready for the spring.

Eat the food: Vegetable soup, enchiladas made from local chicken left overs, local chicken dinner with brussel sprouts hubby got a farmer's market. Yum!

Dream deferred or a sign of the times. A drive up Route 15

Today is a rainy autumn day. I love these sorts of days this time of year. It is as if Mother Nature is saying, " It's okay, put down the shovel. Go inside, drink tea, knit, bake something sweet, maybe write."

And so I write.

Yesterday was my last day at work at the bookstore. Bittersweet. I loved this little job. I've worked in bookstores off and on for 20 years. But this children's bookstore was the best. I loved the picture books and loved recommending books to preteen boys. I loved that the owner let me bring the wee one with me since he was an infant. I loved that I could knit or read on a slow day. But I need more time with my family.

I left work yesterday afternoon at 4pm and drove straight up route 15. This road ends at Moosehead lake. My stop would be a church fundraiser. But it is long drive from Bangor to Sangerville on Rt 15. Not a wholly unpleasant drive but the road is long, at times, poorly maintained and there are long stretches between town centers. We are far apart in this part of the state. Yesterday was rainy too. The gray clouds really seem to make the color of those red maples pop out; those fading ladies preparing for the crone of winter. Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss is the opera on Public Radio as I drive north. The road winds through Glenburn, Kenduskeag, Corinth; towns that still share their agricultural history in the vast fields and old grange halls that will, maybe, one day, be revived when our world decides to be more local.

Along the way, I pass fields with big, round, wet bales of hay destined to be mulch. This will be a hard winter for many small animal holders. There isn't much hay and what hay there is of marginal quality. The rain delayed the first cut and the second cut couldn't come fast enough. It is one of those things on our to-do list that can't be delayed much longer. The hay loft is empty.

I pass cows loitering at their pasture fence along the road.

I pass flea markets closed for the season.

I pass general stores with gas prices 10 cents more expensive than I paid at the gas station in town. Every penny counts and after the year we've had, I am grateful for small breaks even if it is just a few dollars.

I also pass a lot of homes with For-Sale-by Owner signs in the yard. Which had me reflecting on our own home and any potential sale there may be for it...some day...maybe..hopefully..if ever. For-Sale-By-Owner is one way to come down on your asking price if you don't have to include the realtor commission. But we are not there yet. Patience. Patience.

The road is really rough if spots. I always wonder if all the noises the car makes are creaks and moans from the abuse the road gives our car. I pray, " oh please great god of machines, just keep her going one more winter."

The mind can wander on long stretches of road. Hubby and I had our heads together when he came home on Friday night. We are weary. We struggled with wacky neighbors this year. He found a great new job. We worked hard all summer trying to get the house ready to put on the market. We have abandoned many of the things that we used to enjoy for this move; considering it a sacrifice we had to make to get to Valhalla ( Farmington).We do not like being apart all week. And we don't want the emotion of the separation to cloud the choices we make. So we have decided not to take the off-grid home. These autumn months are the months we need to be getting ready for winter. In the end it became a question of economics. We have one house, we should not have two. We will revisit our living arrangement in the spring but for now we must stack wood.

My car drives in the slow lane going up Charleston Hill past the prison. The wipers are thwoking back and forth and I noticed that the wiper blade will need to be replaced. I will take care of that this week. This would normally be something Hubby would do but , now that he is gone all week I will take care of it.

Coming into Dover the road gets really rough but then I see that there is road construction ahead. A portion of the road is being repaired. I slow. I slow...

I come into this little town. There are not many empty store fronts, but there are a lot of for sale signs on lawns. The local theater is growing a bit. The mill across the road closed last year but the town has bought the building and has plans to generate energy from the mill's dam. But plans take money..so... time will tell.

10 more miles and I am at my little church. I am excited to see that there are cars lining Church street and when I enter the sanctuary I am reminded why I love this building. During Sunday mornings the sun lights up its beautiful stained glass windows. But at night, we gather outside our regular fellowship, and join as a community. I join my family for a meal, grateful for this time together.

Let the countdown begin!

Today, I harvested another 5 gallons of carrots. I am going to make another 7 quarts of pickled carrots and can some more up for soup carrots. I went down to the basement to gather the needed jars and realized that I have only 18 quarts left for the season.

This is the first time that I have filled every canning jar.

Well, they are not all filled yet. But we are going to pick some apples this week so I will have another 7 quarts of applesauce, and at least a half dozen quarts of apple pie filling. We are going cranberry picking this week. So I anticipate the last of the 5 pint jars to be filled with cranberry sauce.

I used any jars that were chipped for keeping dehydrated stuffs. I still have the last of the onions and leeks to dehydrated. So I will be scrounging around for some kinda containers for those.

Brother can you spare a jar?

Independence Day Challenge Year 2, The 22nd week

The frost has bitten and the garden is in a sorry state of affairs. There are carrots that still need to be picked. There is a new garden to plan and perennials to transplant, garlic to put in the ground. There is a very long to do list.

Inside there is a mental exercises being played. We live in a 1,000 square foot house. The new home is 786 square house. Eventually, we will add a room or two. But in the meantime, we have to decide what we will need to be comfortable without being crowded. Oh, and the pantry space is half what we have now. I am pondering creating furniture constructed from jars of homemade jam;)

I look at this coming change with some...some... trepidation. Not so much for the lack of amenities but for the paring down of worldly goods. Some of this widdling down is going to be good. Right now there are boxes and boxes of STUFF that I started packing when we knew that we would be moving. We have lived very comfortable with out it all. But some of those boxes are full of books. ( okay most of those boxes are full of books). I will have to go back and sort out the books we can not live without. This will be hard for me. We spent a night at the new home this past week and spent the evening reading to each other. So I will want some books that will be nice to share together as a family. Cookbooks, knitting books, how to books, kids books. And of course for the escapist literature that every doomer should indulge in at times, I will get a new library card.

We will need games, some dvd's to play on the laptop, art's and craft's supplies to keep our preschool creative juices flowing, photographs, hubby's tools, wee one's toys, Teen's toys and books. Oh and yarn:) And I want to bring my sewing machine....

I've been researching small design and so far the best approach I read so far comes from The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka. Now granted our new home is sorta in between the Not So Big House and the Tiny House movement, but I think that the essence of Sanaka's approach is what we need to be thinking of. Every inch of the space has to be functional but the whole space should also be comfortable and reflect our lifestyle. Crowded and cluttered is the concern but I think that if we can pare down and think about what we really need and store what we have in a way that is comfortable we should be okay. I also have been prepping the troops for the new mantra in our new home," A place for everything and everything in it's place." Oh and my favorite, "Clean as you go"

Plant: Nope

Harvested: Winter squash, last of the zucchini, leeks, kale,

Preserved: Broccoli Soup, shredded zucchini, veggie stock

prepped: batteries for the flashlights,

waste not: I gave all the really small butternut squash to my neighbor for his pigs.

local foods: not much in this category

eat the food: we are eating mostly from food storage this week.

Christmas 2009

WARNING!!!! The following post is NOT for family consumption. There are spoilers on this post.

So, I joined Crunchy Chicken's Buy Hand Christmas Challenge. I try to make most of my Christmas presents every year. I am not always successful AND I usually spend a good part of the month of December with cramped fingers and a stressed air about me.

This does not really connote a sense of giving to me.

A few years ago I read an editorial in Interweave Knits about why the editor tried to knit for Christmas. Her reasoning was that anyone could take their credit card for a walk through the mall, but to knit a gift takes a level of thoughtfulness that can not be bought. I know that when I am knitting something for someone I really care about; I am not just thinking about what color or texture of yarn would be the most satisfying to the recipient, but I am also thinking about that person while I am knitting it. I think about how warm they will be. Sometimes a strand of hair gets knitted into the fabric, sometimes my cat Lily weaves her own affection into the object. It is a sort of magic that occurs during the process.

So this year I began in February by joining a group on Ravelry ( if you are a knitter you should really check out this site, so many great FREE knitting patterns to be found). Each month there was a knitting assignment. One month was scarves, hats, pairs of something etc. Anyhow, when I started the Big Green Sweater,all that fell by the wayside but I did make a few things for the wee one. At the time, I had plotted out what I would make for those I want to give gifts too. I have most of the materials and I will not have to buy any more yarn for these projects.

Okay confessional, I have a yarn fetish. I have a substantial yarn stash. Some of it I found at the Goodwill, some a very good friend gave to me from his stash, and some I bought with the money I earned at the bookstore and from my sales of crafted items. But I confess, if today was TEOTWAWKI, I would be set for a LOONNNGG while. That being said, I am always able to make something, and I will not have to buy any yarn for gifts this year.

There are couple of quick knit patterns that I want to work on.

First are these Toasties. I've made a couple of pairs. They are really easy to whip up. I can make a pair in a couple of evenings.

I also want to make a few of these dishtowels. I will also make a dish cloths to go with them. If you want to learn to knit, I recommend starting with one of these projects. They are quick. They combine several elements of knitting without overwhelming the learner. You can find the needles and cotton for about 7.00 at some place like Joanne's or some place like that. Or a Local Yarn Shop can set you up with a finer grade of cotton and get you started on the project.

( FYI Wendy, Central Yarn in Portland carries the Sugar and Creme Cotton, they are really great and will get you started, oh and your girls will enjoy it too;)

I was going to make some handpuppets for the little kids in the family.

I hope to make a vest for the Teen and Hubby. These should take about a week each. No sleeves makes this a project that I know I can get done in time.

My nieces will be getting a new sweater each for Christmas.They are toddlers and this also should take just about a week to do.

I also would like to make my FIL a pair of wool socks. The other men folk in my home will get some wool socks. Teen needs a new hat. And hubby wants one of these hats. This hat looks a little tricky and may have to be presented as yarn in a bag that I promise to finish when life slows down after the holidays.

There are a few non-knitted items that I want to make too.

I plan to give some homemade herbal teas as gifts. A friend used to use little muslin bags for serving bulk tea. I have the needed material for making these bags. I will also include a jar of dried mint to go with the bag.

I want to find a recipe for finger paints for the wee one. I also want to make some lacing cards for him.

I will be sewing a wrap for colored pencils for the teen.

I will be putting together a small photo album of the kids for family members from over the last year.

Some folks will be receiving baked goods. I will be able to enlist the help of the menfolk in the house for this project. On the other hand, I may have to do this on my own. They eat more than they pack;)

Finally, I also resolve to not buy any wrapping paper. I found some Christmas tins at the Goodwill that I will use for some things. I also will sew up fabric bags from scraps of fabric I have at home.

okay... If you peeked you should know that I also LOVE handmade gifts as well...

Independence Day Challenge Year 2, The 21th week

Well, I have finished the wicked big sweatah'. I make hats, mittens and sweaters on a Singer knitting machine. I sell these garments at craft fairs and at a artisan coop. A man was looking for a custom made sweater similar to the one his father had. I worked out the design and have hand knitted this 48" sweater. If we can get our camera to work I will take a picture of it.

It is a good thing that the sweater is done because I need to work on a few projects for our next church fundraiser . I've also joined Crunchy Chicken's , Buy Hand for Christmas Challenge. I know, I know...this is now the third challenge that I am participating in. There is Sharon's Challenge and Wendy's challenge. But, I've been working towards a mostly handmade Christmas for the last few years. This year, money will be a little tighter for us. I would be knitting for the season anyway. Most of the projects that I have thought about will be small projects. Later today I will post my list and what sorts of things I will be making with any links that I can share.

Well, I still have carrots, squash, some brassicas, plenty of zukes , peppers to harvest from the garden. I also want to get another bunch of apples. There is a wild cranberry bog in our town.I think I will take the kids with me to pick some this week or next. Maybe try cranberry juice, cranberry jelly, dehydrated cranberries.

Plant: nope. The man we are buying the new cabin from has a three year old pile of horse poop he has offfered to us. We are going to try to get up there sometime next week and start prepping a garden space. I will plant my garlic next week.

Harvest: rutabaga, zukes, kale, field pumpkin ( boy are they big and beautiful).

Prepped/ manage reserves: I've been researching Tiny home design. We've been working and planning on things we can do with the new home. We will be going to the Common Ground Fair this weekend and spending a large portion of our time the homesteading/ alternative energy tent. Oh and the FEdco seed tent too!

Local foods: we gave our chickens away to a neighbor so I bought local eggs at the local general goods store.

Eat the food: We've done really well on this. A neighbor brought over a rump roast from the heiffer he grew. I made a roast for dinner one night, served with mash potatoes ( our own home grown) and a kale and apple sautee. The next day I made a beef stew with rutabaga and carrot from our garden.

Waste not: just he usual, composting, eating all of our left overs for lunch, recycling.