A long way from home

Since my apprenticeship ended last week, I am now officially on vacation, although some might call it unemployment. This break between farming seasons seemed a good opportunity to visit my brother and his family who recently moved to Virginia from Colorado, so I hopped on a plane to the East Coast. I visited the Washington, D.C. area when I was 6, but for all intents and purposes, this is my first real trip to Virginia. Flying on a prop plane from D.C. to the Shenandoah Valley, I survived a very bumpy, windy ride that had me worried I would throw up, pass out, or both, but I still managed to appreciate just how beautiful the area is: rolling hills, trees showing off their fall colors, and tons of green, open space.

My brother lives on a farm, but he is not a farmer. He and his family rent a 200-year-old house on a 300-acre plantation. The farm, managed by someone else, is home to twenty-something beef cattle who graze the rolling pastures, and a lot of soybeans, grown by another someone else. Having just spent 8 months on a small, diversified organic farm, seeing a vast expanse of a single crop is quite foreign. The soybeans must be tractor-planted, as they are lined up perfectly about 6 inches apart in rows about a foot-and-a-half apart and about a quarter-mile long, with no paths for walking. The beans are dried now and ready for harvest. I didn't even know dried soybeans were a crop, picturing plump green pods of edamame at my favorite sushi restaurant instead, but it turns out most soybeans are not grown for fresh eating. In fact, most soybeans aren't even grown for human consumption; rather, they are grown for animal feed, with soybean meal (what's left after you extract soybean oil with hexane) being the foundation of confined animal feeding operations.


A river of dried soybeans awaits harvest on the farm where my brother lives.

Okay, enough about soybeans. What I really want to talk about is Monticello. Yesterday, I visited Thomas Jefferson's mountaintop home outside Charlottesville. At 5,000 acres, Jefferson certainly had a large plantation. But then again, he also had about 200 slaves to help him get everything done. I'm not a history buff at all, but I was drawn to Monticello by its gardens, having seen a beautiful picture of the gardens in a recent magazine. While at Monticello, however, I gained new respect for Thomas Jefferson.  Did you know he was only 33 when he drafted the Declaration of Independence?  That happens to be my current age, so I find the feat particularly impressive as I try to imagine myself sitting down to write such a monumental, world-changing document instead of this simple blog.  In addition to being a founding father of the United States of America, Jefferson was a gardener.  And not a casual gardener who would just toss a few seeds in the ground and see what happened; he was quite methodical and kept detailed records of his plantings and harvests.  He grew 330 varieties of 99 vegetables on his 80-foot wide, 1000-foot-long terrace, growing both for food and fun, experimenting with seeds from other parts of the world.  Jefferson organized his crops based on which part of the plant was harvested: fruits, roots, or leaves, as shown in this page from his garden notebook, and I system I like, as it groups plants roughly by how long it takes them to mature:

 



Flipping through a facsimile of Jefferson's notebook in the Monticello visitor center, I was amazed that his planting records from 1812 looked nearly identical to a table in a recently published book on crop planning I had been reading just days before.  Jefferson had columns for recording where he planted a crop, the seeding and transplant dates, maturity dates, and date of final harvest.  I imagine he would have found each year's notes very helpful in planning the next year's garden.  

The garden is tended today by one full-time gardener year-round and a few seasonal assistants. They grow many of the same varieties grown by Jefferson and using 19th-century techniques, such as these wooden trellises:

Having been on the Monticello garden terrace yesterday, I think it may quite possibly be the most beautiful spot in the world to have a garden.  See for yourself:

 

 

I left Monticello yesterday inspired to garden/farm next year. Although the farm on Hurley Way is not as scenic as Monticello, it is beautiful, as anyone who attended this year's Equinox celebration can attest. And perhaps Mr. Jefferson's diligent record-keeping will inspire me to do likewise. We'll see...

 



Done!

After eight months of hard work, my apprenticeship is over. The end of the season could not have come soon enough for my left plantar fascia, which did not take well to me being on my feet all day, every day. Rest, probably the most effective treatment for plantar fasciitis, isn't really an option in the middle of a farming season, so I've been employing other modalities, none of which have worked well or for long. I did, however, enjoy four days of left-footed bliss after a cortisone injection into my heel, but the relief was all-too-fleeting, leaving me right back where I started. I'm hoping the end of the farming season will bring the chance to rest my foot so I can return to farming pain-free come spring.

Yes, that's right--I haven't been able to get this farming bug out of my system and am coming back for more! Starting sometime in the spring, I will be co-managing a 2-acre farm in the Arden-Arcade neighborhood with one of my apprentice colleagues from this year, Becca. We will technically be second-year apprentices at Soil Born, but will essentially run the farm on our own, deciding what to grow and where to sell it. The experience will be very different from this year, when I mostly did what I was told, seldom making decisions. Next year, every decision will be mine/ours: what to grow, when to plant, where to plant, when to water, when to weed, when to harvest.... I'm a bit scared of all this responsibility, but mostly really excited. I have so much to learn before the season starts, but no matter how much I read this winter, I will still have much more to learn. But then, that's the purpose of the apprenticeship--to learn.

Since my work at the farm on Hurley Way won't start until March or so, I now find myself with a few months off. I'm planning to fill my days with a lot of quilting and other sewing. I'm also hoping to work part time in the public health world, earning some doctor money to subsidize my farming habit. It's sad that I can earn as much working halftime for the state for 3 months as a doctor than I can in a full season of farming. I'm the same person, just using different skills. Why do we value doctors so much and farmers so little?

Coming home

The blog is back!  Sorry it's been so long since my last post.  I'm not sure if I've had writer's block, been too busy with other projects, just plain been feeling too old, or perhaps a combination of all three.  At any rate, I'm feeling inspired to write today, so I'm going with it.

Much has happened since I last wrote, but I can't give away all my news in one post or I'd run the risk of not having anything to blog about for another long while.  Plus, I've heard from a few of you loyal readers that you miss my posts (thanks!).  So I am rationing the news, starting with today's update about Hope Mabel.  You will recall that one of our chicks broke its leg back in July in a tractor (chicken tractor, that is) collision.  "That chick is going to die," I was told. It didn't seem right that a chick should die from a simple broken leg, so I decided to put my medical training to use on a different species and play veterinarian. With gauze and duct tape, I fashioned a makeshift cast for the chick's leg. Because the injured chick kept getting stepped on by her siblings and mom, I moved her into an infirmary consisting of a large cardboard box with a chicken wire roof. With the help of our summer campers, I named the chick Hope Mabel (as in, "I hope she gets better").

After the U.S. women’s soccer team won gold in the Olympics, I renamed the chick Hope Solo in honor of our amazing goalkeeper. Once Hope’s leg felt solid under the cast, I removed the cast and started her on a physical therapy regimen consisting of passive range of motion and weight bearing exercises. Her injured leg was very weak and shaky at first, but she grew stronger with time.

Once I began growing attached to Hope, I decided that now was the right time to build the backyard chicken coop I’d thought about for years. My confidence boosted by small building projects during my apprenticeship, I felt ready to take on the coop’s construction. I built about half of the coop by myself, then called in reinforcements when it became apparent that Hope had outgrown her cardboard box and needed a bigger house soon. My dad, an avid woodworker, came to my rescue, bringing another set of hands, much know-how, and better tools. Working side-by-side in the sweltering heat of my garage, we bonded over talk of power tools.

Hope's house.

Once the coop was built, I couldn’t wait to bring Hope home. As I transferred her from her small box to her spacious coop, I wished my new pet well. The first time I placed her on the roost, Hope nearly fell off, struggling to balance on her weak leg. One week later, Hope was getting around remarkably well. She roosted without difficulty and climbed the ladder into the henhouse like a champ.

Hope enjoys her new home.

Chickens are social creatures, and I imagined Hope was lonely after so many weeks by herself, so once I thought she was strong enough, I introduced a new chick into the coop to keep Hope company. With the help of Alison and her mom, I picked out a curious Polish chick from the litter of Hope's cousins at the farm and brought her home.  I had put off bringing home another chicken for a couple of weeks, filled with worry about Hope being picked on by the newcomer and not being strong enough to defend herself from attack.  I never would have guessed that my innocent Hopie would be the bully, but there she was, pecking at the head of the new girl, making the new girl cower in the corner.  Ever heard the phrase "establishing the pecking order?"  Well, that's what was happening.  Hope knew that she ruled the roost and let Abby know it.  (Yes, I named the new girl Abby.  Yes, after Abby Wambach, my absolute favorite soccer player.  And if I ever get a third chicken, she will be named Alex or Morgan, after Alex Morgan.  But if I ever get a third chicken, I can't tell you about it, because Folsom's municipal code only allows 2 hens.)  Hope and Abby now seem to get along just fine.

Hope and Abby roosting side-by-side at night.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've noticed that Hope is having a harder time getting around.  She broke her left leg, but now her right leg is abnormal.  The leg seems to give out underneath her, twisting awkwardly behind her.  When I pick her up and manipulate the leg, the joints feel fine, so I'm at a loss for what the problem is.  For now, I'm just keeping her under observation.  Her activities of daily living don't seem to be impacted by her condition at this point; she can eat, drink, and poop just fine.  I'm concerned that she may worsen as she grows, but that's just speculation at this point.  All I know is that this chicken is a fighter, and I'm certainly not going to give up on her. 

Chicken Little

Last week, the sky fell. While moving the portable chicken tractor through the orchard, one of the chicks didn't move quickly enough and got caught under the wooden frame as we set it down. Once we lifted the fallen sky off of the little chick, she couldn't stand up. A brief exam revealed a floppy leg with a palpable distal femur fracture (translation: a break in the thigh bone just above the knee that I could feel with my fingers). Diagnosis made, the question became one of prognosis. "That chick is going to die," I was told. Feeling like I had nothing to lose at this point, I decided to play veterinarian. It didn't seem right that a chick should die from a simple broken leg.

With a stick and tape, I fashioned a makeshift splint for the chick's leg. Because the injured stick kept getting stepped on by her siblings and mom, I moved her into an infirmary consisting on a large cardboard box with a chicken wire roof. Unfortunately, the first splint fell off within a few hours (waterproof first aid tape is a waste of money) and its replacement didn't fare much better. My third try was the charm. Trimming the chick's feathers out of the way, I wrapped her leg snugly with gauze, then created a cast out of strips of duct tape. The cast is still in place after a week, so I'm pretty satisfied.

With the help of our summer campers, I named the chick Hope Mabel (Hope as in "I hope she gets better"). Hope does seem to be getting better. She is eating, drinking, and pooping, as well as hopping around on her good leg. On an online forum about chickens, I read about chicks with broken legs making a full recovery, so I remain hopeful that this chick will grow up into a strong layer. I don't actually know if the chick is a girl, but I am working under that assumption because this seems like too much work to put into a rooster destined for the soup pot. A layer, on the other hand, is well worth the investment of time and resources. Here's to hoping...

Hope Mabel Chick sports her gauze and duct tape "cast."

To market, to market

"To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

To market, to market, to buy a fat hog,

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.

To market, to market, to buy a plum bun,

Home again, home again, market is done."

This nursery rhyme gets at my newest task on the farm, especially if you change "buy" to "sell": delivery girl!  I never thought I would get paid to drive a cargo van, but life is full of surprises.  Our farm has several markets for our produce, including a CSA, the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, the food bank, our own farmstand, and the Natomas farmers' market. 

Chris, one of my fellow apprentices, beautifies our Saturday farmstand with his chalk art.

Every other week, I cover deliveries to the Co-op and our CSA.  Lately, the Co-op has been purchasing our summer squash, cucumbers, and new potatoes.  Once our tomatoes hit, they will be a super important outlet for this cash crop.  Our CSA delivery is on Tuesday, with drop-off sites across the street from the Co-op and at our farm on Hurley Way in the Arden-Arcade area.  I load up the van with boxes of produce, check the inventory to make sure I'm not forgetting a box (having to come back to the farm because you grabbed the wrong box is no fun, trust me!), and head out. 

Squeezing the van into a tight parking spot.  Just don't make me back up.

The Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op is a great partner of our farm, and also makes a great 16 ounce iced decaf single shot americano with room for cream for just $1.50.

Driving the van takes some getting used to, for several reasons: you sit up really high, you have huge blind spots because the van has no side windows and because you sit up really high, and the van is wider than my little Honda Fit.  (The van also has a much bigger gas tank than my Honda Fit.  The first time I filled up the van with gas, I had time to wash all the windows while the pump ran, and ran, and ran.  When I returned to the pump to hang up the nozzle when the tank finally filled, I couldn't believe that the display read only 29 dollars.  I must have used the world's slowest pump.  Then I looked at my printed receipt and realized that the 29 was gallons, not dollars!)  My least favorite part of making deliveries is having to back up the delivery van.  Visibility is very limited, and if I am parked in a rightward slanting spot, I literally cannot see cars coming when I back up.  I often park on the street and walk just to avoid having to back up the van in the Co-op lot.

That's 29 gallons, not the 29 dollars I'm used to!

I enjoy the deliveries a lot.  I get a break from manual labor, get to sit in an air-conditioned environment, and get delicious iced coffee at the Co-op for $1.50.  Oh, and I get to drop off our awesome produce to our customers.  After I do my Co-op delivery through the back door, I usually re-park the van and enter through the front door as a customer--I can't live without Michaela's tortillas or iced coffee!  I enjoy strolling through the produce section and seeing our products on display, proud of what I have helped to grow and harvest. 

Our CSA provides a box of organic vegetables once a week, on Tuesday or Friday.  We pack around 9 different vegetables, fruits, and herbs into each box, along with a newsletter describing what's happening on the farm, what's in the box, and a recipe using some of the ingredients in the box.  The farm staff take turns writing the newsletter, but I wish I could write it every week.  I had my first chance a couple weeks ago, but I don't get another turn until the end of August.  Guess I'll just have to keep blogging until then.  While I enjoyed writing the digest, typing the digest was a nightmare.  I went through 3 computers in our office to find one that wasn't virus infected or super slow, and that had the right software.  At the state, we used to complain about budget constraints keeping us technologically behind the times, but life at a non-profit is much worse.  If any of you out there have an extra CPU that you aren't using, feel free to donate it to Soil Born so that I don't have to pull my hair out next time it's my turn to type the newsletter.

A recent CSA box with kale, collards, kohlrabi, lemon cucumbers, carrots, and garlic visible. 

By the way, it's not to late to join our CSA for the summer.  If you'd like a box of farm-fresh organic produce grown in Sacramento, look no further than here. 

Irrigation

"Food grows where water flows."  Driving I-5 from LA to Sacramento and back every few months as a college student and driving Highway 99 between Sacramento and Fresno several times during my tenure at CDPH, I saw this sign on the side of the freeway countless times.  I never gave it much thought at the time, but the rhyme made it catchy and memorable.   While the signs on I-5 were making a political statement about water rights and peripheral canals, now that I work on a farm, I can appreciate just how important water is to growing food.

Each week, one apprentice is assigned to irrigation duty.  This past week, that apprentice was me.  Not having covered irrigation before, I imagined it would be a very part-time task of just turning the water on a few times.  I was wrong.  Irrigation on a Sacramento farm in June is nearly a full-time task, with lots of pipe needing to be moved, filters flushed, leaks patched, and sprinklers tweaked.  And did I mention pipe needing to be moved?  Pipe moving is definitely not one of my favorite tasks.  At Soil Born, we water crops primarily with very efficient, ground-level drip tape that puts water right at the base of our plants.  However, some farm watering is done with overhead sprinklers, which spread water fairly evenly over a wide area.  We use sprinklers to water beds with germinating seeds or to irrigate a field before it is tilled, for example. 

Those of you with yards at home might be thinking, "Big deal.  Just turn the sprinklers on, already!  Turn the dial on the Rainbird to ON and you're good to go."  Not so fast.  We don't keep the sprinklers set up in the field all the time.  Rather, we assemble a sprinkler setup in place when and where it is needed.  A typical setup consists of 17 25-foot lengths of aluminum pipe, each hand carried and carefully placed where needed.  Working by myself, I usually carry one pipe on each shoulder, precariously perched at their balance point and uncomfortably pressing into my acromion process.  That means I need to make 9 trips to move a pipe setup from point A to point B.  It's a bit tiring in near-100-degree heat, not to mention that the pipe is usually burning hot from the sun.  Gloves are a must.

Overhead sprinklers irrigating a field before disking.

Irrigation is an important responsibility.  Food doesn't grow where water doesn't flow, so forgetting to water during the summer could ruin a crop.  Luckily, there is an irrigation schedule that tells me what should get watered on a given day and for how long, plus an iPhone in my pocket that can be easily set to remind me to turn water off and on (although I learned the hard way this week to make sure to set AM and PM correctly on the alarm function!). 

Turning water on and off is not a mindless task, either.  Our overheard sprinklers and drip tape use water that is pumped from the river, filtered, and then run through a maze of pipes and valves before it ends up on a plant.  There is a specific protocol that must be followed when turning water on and off, or you risk breaking the expensive pump and filters or blowing out the underground pipe or above-ground drip tape.  Adding another layer of complexity, the drip tape and overhead sprinkler systems operate at different pressures, so you can't run both systems at the same time, requiring each day of irrigation to be thoughtfully planned. 

Our sand media filters that remove particles from river water.

Irrigation manifold with numerous valves to control pressure and flow.

One of the perks of being on irrigation is that you can run through the sprinklers to cool off.  One of the drawbacks is that if you aren't wearing waterproof shoes, your socks will be wet all day long.  Not fun. :(  I only made that mistake once. 

Cross-cover

Yesterday was a busy day on the farm.  Instead of the usual 4 apprentices, only 2 were working yesterday, leaving me to do the work of 3 apprentices for much of the day.  I was covering my own area, integrated pest management, plus the animals and the greenhouse. 

The day went like this:

• Check on the germinating plants in the greenhouse, which need constant moisture.
• Clean the cow pens by adding fresh straw to any wet/poopy areas.  Scrub livestock water troughs and refill with fresh water.
• Feed the piglets. Move their enclosure to fresh pasture.  Fill their water dish.
• Herd the sheep and cows in from the pasture where they grazed overnight back to their pens to spend the day in the shade.
• Feed the big pigs.  Fill up their water trough.
• Set ground squirrel traps in the orchard, baiting them with chicken feed.
• Water plants in the greenhouse.
• Clean the cow.  Milk the cow.  Filter and bottle the milk.
• Water the plants in the greenhouse.
• Feed and water the piglets.
• Eat lunch, including dessert. :)
• Move the plants that didn't sell at the plant sale back to the greenhouse.  Water the plants.  Inventory remaining plants.
• Help turn on overhead irrigation in two blocks.
• Water plants in the greenhouse.
• Spray down the big pigs and make a wallow for them to cool off in.
• Check ground squirrel traps--all empty. :(
• Collect eggs.
• Fill cow and sheep water troughs in preparation for their night graze.

Phew!  Needless to say, I was pooped by the time I finished at 5:30.  I felt much better after a shower, but still pretty tired, so I spent the evening watching TV and reading.  I'm really excited to have the next two days off to rest and relax.

On one hand, covering three areas in one day was empowering--I felt like an actual farmer, getting done what needed to get done, moving from task to task with little direction.  I felt confident and proud of how much I had learned to do over the last few months.  On the other hand, the non-stop craziness of the day was a bit stressful, reminding me a bit of my months on the trauma service as a surgery intern, rounding on 30 or so patients while answering endless pages and responding to incoming trauma codes.  And at least that job was air conditioned!

Our three piglets, Emmer, Quinoa, and Farina, enjoying their breakfast.  Their brother, Bulgur, left the farm last week to become a breeder.

Empty ground squirrel trap.  These are live traps that do not kill the squirrel.  It's a "squirrel motel"--the squirrels get in, but they can't get out.

Baited and camouflaged squirrel trap placed near a tunnel (upper right).

Milker's eye view of Phoebe.  We won't have Phoebe milk much longer--she is drying up as her calf gets older.

Filtering Phoebe's milk to remove any stray hairs or skin flakes.

Weeding, welding, and quilting?

That's right--all in a day work.  If you've been wondering why I haven't been blogging, I've been a bit busy on the farm and at home.  My activities lately are quite an interesting hodgepodge.  Last Thursday, I spent the morning weeding a bed of beets in the leaf-root block.  (I'm sure I did other things that morning, too, I just can't remember what.  Hand weeding is slow, but not that slow!) That was followed by an afternoon of welding class.  Until that afternoon, I had never welded a thing in my life, but given the amount of welded things in this world, I figured it couldn't be too hard.  I was wrong.  Just cutting metal proved challenging, let alone trying to join two pieces of metal together.  We learned three kinds of welding in our hands-on class: oxyacetylene, arc, and MIG.  The oxyacetylene setup consists of a tank of oxygen, a tank of acetylene, and a torch/wand. 

Oxyacetylene welding kit.

Getting started is a bit tricky and requires your brain to be engaged--the acetylene has to be turned on before the oxygen and its pressure kept below a certain psi or explosions can happen.  Once the acetylene gas is running, you ignite it using a sparker (chemistry lab flashbacks!), making sure to get your hand out of the way of the flame quickly!  Then you add oxygen slowly to make sure you don't extinguish the flame, adjusting the oxygen until you have a one inch or so cone of blue heat.  To cut metal, you hold the tip of the cone over the area to cut, heat it up until the metal begins to liquefy, and then use the flame to push the liquid metal along the cutting line.  Wild stuff.

Next came arc welding.  Arc welding is weird because it uses electricity instead of a flame to heat the metal. 

Our arc welder.

The challenge with arc welding is that you are practically working blind.  To protect your eyes from the intense light emitted, you have to wear a face shield with very tinted lenses. 

A fellow apprentice models welding safety attire, including face shield, leather coat, and gloves.

Until you touch the electrode to the surface to be welded and start conducting electricity, you can't see a thing.  Even when the electrons start flowing and the metal starts glowing, you can only see things that are really hot.  As if working half-blind weren't enough of a challenge, the stick of metal you are using to weld (the electrode) gets shorter as it melts.  So you have to lower your hands as you go to keep the tip of the electrode near the surface to be welded.  It reminds me a bit of tetherball in the sense that the rope gets shorter as it winds around the pole, and your arm swings have to compensate.  I was never good at tetherball, and I don't think I will be good at arc welding for a similar reason.  When I wasn't burning a hole in the metal to be welded, I did manage to create a very lumpy and uneven bead of weld.  I have a long ways to go before I can fix anything metal, that's for sure. 

My attempt at arc welding.  On the right is a hole I burned in the surface to be welded when it got too hot.  On the left is a lumpy, almost bead.

After welding class, I headed home to prepare for a night of quilting with my fellow apprentices.  One of the Green Corps teens had a baby recently, and we are making a baby quilt for him.  It's a teaching/learning quilt, with me demonstrating each step of the quilting process for my colleagues, then letting them have at it.  The "see one, do one, teach one" approach used in my medical training also works with quilting, I've learned.  At the end of the night, the quilt was in one piece, and now needs only to be ragged and laundered before it can be gifted.

Fabrics for the baby quilt.

The juxtaposition of welding and quilting seemed perfectly natural to me, but I imagine others must find it bizarre.  Sometimes I feel like a farmer, and sometimes I feel like a farmer's wife.  What can I say?  I'm just me.

Staying cool

It's hot. We may be blessed with dry heat here in California, but it's still heat. Gone are the days of sitting in my air conditioned office oblivious to the weather outside. Now, I am intimately aware of the weather because I spend all day in it.

"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice," begins the poem "Fire and Ice," by Robert Frost.  Given a choice, I'd take ice. My reasoning is that there you can always put on another layer, but there are only so many that you can take off (at least in public!). Surprisingly, however, our response on the farm to the heat is not to minimize clothing. Rather, most of us wear long sleeves and long pants to keep the hot sun off our skin, and a big hat for shade. For hydration, most of us wear Camelbaks, drinking water from a tube attached to a backpack reservoir, allowing continuous access to water and keeping our hands free for work.

My Camelbak, which holds 70 oz of water.

But given how much we sweat working in the field, just drinking water isn't enough. All that sweat means salt loss, and the lost salt needs to be replaced. My preferred electrolyte replacement beverage is Gatorade. Initially, I tried to carry a small bottle of Gatorade with me, but it always seemed to get left behind. I switched to a small jug with enough to share, which made my coworkers happy, too.

Drinking fluids helps, but it's not enough. I also want shade and a cool breeze. Since these can be hard to come by in the middle of a vegetable field during a Sacramento summer, I decided I'd have to make my own.  Alison and I spent a couple days of our vacation designing, buying parts for, and building a hydration and cooling station for the farm.  Using a large, two-wheeled Rubbermaid cart as the base, we added a plywood shelf with drilled cupholders, a spot for a 5-gallon jug of Gatorade, two battery-operated fans, and two pressurized personal mister bottles.  Inside the cart, there is space for two lawn chairs, a small cooler that holds wet washcloths and Otter Pops, and pretzels (for salt).  On the side of the cart, we mounted a 9-foot umbrella.  So far, the hydration station has been a big hit, with the misters being the most popular component.  With just a little bit of pumping and flipping open a valve, you get delivery of a cooling mist that feels AMAZING on a hot day.  I highly recommend these little gems to anyone who spends a fair amount of time outdoors in the heat.  It's almost as good as A/C!

Get one of these personal misters--they rock!

Building the hydration station

My coworkers demonstrating use of the hydration station

It sure is a lot of work to stay cool as a farmer.  Perhaps we should all do what the pigs do and just lounge in the pool instead!

Barley repurposing his water dish as a pool to beat the heat.

Road trip!

Aah, vacation.  I didn't need this vacation like I've needed vacation in the past, but I'd be lying if I said that having this past week off of work hasn't been a pleasure.  I get 5 days of vacation during my 8-month apprenticeship.  One could argue that using all 5 days during the third month of the program is perhaps not the smartest approach, but Alison had this week off, so it made sense to take our vacations at the same time.

We spent the first 3 days of vacation on the coast, which was a great escape from the heat of the Valley.  With overcast mornings and daytime highs in the 60's and 70's, the weather invited all kinds of outdoor activities and one last chance to wear a sweatshirt.  Cool spring weather is a favorite of Alison's, Dakota's, and mine.  Dakota loves being co-pilot on road trips, sitting in the front seat or sticking her head out the side window to watch and smell the world go by.  When she tires of standing and sitting, which happens pretty quickly on long trips, she sleeps.  My car (a Honda Fit) is the perfect car for a spoiled dog, with its magic seats that fold into several configurations, including one with the front seat opened flat.  Once padded with pillows, it makes a bed comfortable enough for our "princess and the pea" pup. 

Dakota, my 6-year-old lab, loves car trips

We stayed with Alison's brother just outside Pescadero, near Half Moon Bay, which meant we got to spend lots of quality time with Alison's 4-year-old niece, Natalie, and much of that time outdoors. Mornings on the beach, afternoon hikes in the redwoods, and strawberry picking were all on the list of activities.

Pistachio State Beach, a great dog beach

Alison, Natalie, and me rock climbing on the beach

The farmer part of me was particularly excited about picking organic strawberries at Swanton Berry Farm, petting the baby goats at Harley Goat Farm, and tasting local honey at a roadside stand. 

We picked organic strawberries at Swanton Berry Farm in Davenport

Our 1.54 pound strawberry harvest

Petting a friendly kid.  All the little ones tried to suckle my fingers.

Natalie kept trying to feed the baby goats straw.  I tried to explain the difference between hay and straw, but she didn't get it.  I myself just learned the difference last month.  In short, straw is bedding, hay is food.

An ingenious baby goat feeder.  I wish we had rigged up on of these instead of baby bottles for our piglets.  Way less bottle washing, and Bulgur wouldn't have to push his sisters out of the way to drink his fill.

Driving back from the coast was a brutal reintroduction to the heat of the Central Valley.  I fell asleep covered with a blanket in the Bay Area (in case you were worried, I wasn't driving), and woke up sweating somewhere inland.  How rude!  By the time we reached Sacramento's 90-degree heat, I was seriously considering turning around and heading right back to the coast.  I know the Valley's heat and sunshine make the crops grow, but I sure wish I could somehow work in a climate-controlled bubble while tending to those crops!

You can't run away on shearing day

Today was a big day for the sheep at the farm--time for their annual shearing.  You would think that given the recent heat spell, the sheep would be excited about get summer haircuts, but this was not the case.  We literally had to drag them kicking and screaming to the shearer.

The sheep crowded at the back gate to the shearing area, trying to avoid their haircuts

Preparation for shearing began yesterday, when I cleared out an animal pen we were using for storage to create a shearing area.  Last night, the sheep were brought in from the pasture a bit early, placed in the shearing area instead of their usual pen, and fasted overnight until the appointed shearing time of 1:30 this afternoon.  There are a couple of good reasons to fast the sheep prior to shearing: 1) they weigh less, making them easier to handle, and 2) shearing involves placing the sheep into odd positions in order to reach all of the wool, and a sheep with an empty stomach is less likely to vomit.


A lamb peering out from the shearing area

We have 9 ewes and their lambs, but only the ewes were sheared today.  Before you can shear a sheep, you must first catch it.  We used a shepherd's crook for this (up until today, I thought those were just for looking cool in a nativity scene), grabbing a sheep by its hindquarters and pulling the sheep where you want it to go.  I was not very good at this, or else our sheep are just extra stubborn, because every time I hooked a ewe, she laid down instead of letting me guide her. 

One at a time, we brought each ewe over to the shearer, Gary, for her haircut.  Gary has been shearing sheep for about seventeen years, and he makes it look easy.  It is not.  After watching Gary shave several of the sheep, I made a feeble attempt at sheering the flank of a ewe.  Standing over her with my legs strategically placed to hold her down, I held the clippers in my right hand and used my left hand to hold the skin taut to make shearing easier. 



My attempt at shearing

You have to hold the clippers much closer to the skin than feels comfortable in order to get a close shave.  Combine the closeness of the blade with the squirming of a 200+ pound sheep and nicks and cuts are inevitable.  I was assured that these cuts all heal without event, but part of me wonders if these nicks are part of why the sheep were not thrilled about shearing day.

After shearing, the sheep were pretty stirred up, I imagine partly from hunger, partly from thirst, partly from not being in their usual environment, and partly from having just been twisted into all sorts of crazy positions. 

We did what we could for the first 3 issues, giving the sheep hay to eat, water to drink, and leading them back to their usual pen, but the sheep were still pretty agitated, suggesting that they just needed some time to recover from the stress of the day.

Shorn sheep breaking their overnight fast

The sheep look so much skinnier now that they have been shorn.  We will take the fleeces to a local wool processor for cleaning and then sell most of the wool, keeping a bit for our own use.  Several of the farm staff plan to spin some wool and knit or weave with it.  I've never done either, but this year is all about learning new things, so look out--you might just get a knit hat for Christmas!

Outlier

This evening, I stayed late at the farm to help bring the animals in from the pasture into their pens at night. To kill time between 5 (when the normal workday ends) and 7:30 (when the animals are brought in), I decided to watch the piglets' entire bottlefeeding session.

What I saw was fascinating. Although all 4 piglets are the same age, give or take a few minutes, they are definitely not the same size. One piglet, Bulgur, who happens to be our only male piglet, is significantly larger than the others. That's him on the far left in the picture below.



Bulgur on the far left, much bigger than his sisters

No, I didn't need to watch an entire feeding session to realize that Bulgur is big; what the feeding showed me is why. Bulgur is a champion suckler. Once the bottles are inserted into the feeding station, Bulgur goes to town, chugging down the warm cow's milk. Once he's made a significant dent in his bottle, he pushes his slower-suckling neighbor out of the way and starts drinking her bottle, which has more milk in it than the bottle he left behind. Once he finishes that bottle, he moves on to another, pushing his little sister out of the way, again. This little sister, the smallest piglet, is a slow suckler and has only finished about half her bottle in the time that Bulgur has downed almost 2.

Thus, Bulgur's small advantage in suckling speed drives a cycle of perpetual advantage. Because he suckles faster, Bulgar gets more than his share of the milk. Because he gets extra milk, he grows faster than his siblings. Because he grows faster than his siblings, he is bigger than them. And because he is bigger than his siblings, he can push them out of the way and drink their milk. And the cycle repeats.

Malcolm Gladwell, I've found you another example of an outlier. Much like professional hockey players in Canada, who are disproportionately born in the first few months of the year, Bulgur has taken an initially small advantage and over time, accumulated a significant advantage. In the case of the Canadian hockey players, birth month becomes an advantage because kids born in the same calendar year play in the same league.   Kids born in the early months of the year are older than their teammates, and often stronger and faster. They do better in the league, and are selected for all-star teams. On the all-star team, they get extra practice and game experience, so they become even better players. Over time, they continue to get better faster than their younger teammates.

The question that I am now left with is what to do about Bulgur's advantage. If we don't intervene, and continue to feed the piglets four bottles of equal size, Bulgur will continue to grow at his sisters' expense.  One option would be to feed Bulgur separately, so he can't steal his sister's milk. Another option would be to give Bulgur a bigger bottle in the hopes that he sticks to his own bottle. A third option is to switch their feeding method entirely, such as to drinking from a saucer, meaning less bottle washing for us and perhaps loss of Bulgur's suckling advantage (although something tells me he will be a champion lapper, too!). And of course, we can just stay the course and allow for competition and survival of the fittest.  But such a course certainly doesn't seem like natural selection to me, given how much human intervention there has already been with this litter of piglets. 

After watching the piglets bottlefeed, I decided to explore the area around the farm.  Soil Born is right along the American River, but I hadn't walked down to the river until this evening.  I'm sorry I waited so long.  I found a spot right by the river to sit and watch the water flow by, listening to the ducks quack and watching the sun slowly sink toward the horizon. 

Sunset along the American River

On my way back to the farm, I spotted a doe with two fawns crossing the bike trail. 



Deer approaching the bike trail behind the farm

The farm really is a beautiful place, in an equally beautiful setting.  I am so glad I took this leap of faith.



Soil Born Farms' American River Ranch, as seen from the American River Parkway