Health Issues & Thanks to our Farm Sitters – July 24, 2019

Many many thanks to our farm sitters for caring for our farm while we have traveled to various doctor’s offices recently.

We were in Eugene last week for a MRI guided needle biopsy.  Patricia has been waiting six months for this and our GP called at 10PM the next day to say that she was negative for boob cancer.  I have never been so positive about something negative.
Some of you know that Patricia was recently diagnosed with Hashimoto’s by our GP.  That diagnosis was confirmed by a ND on Tuesday and a FNP with a specialty in women’s health on Wednesday.  Hashimoto’s is an autoimmune disease, but a relatively benign one that predominately affects women (80% of cases) and is usually brought under control by a combination of diet and thyroid medication.  Basically, her thyroid is trying its best, but her body is producing antibodies against the active version of the hormone.

The symptoms are “brain fog”, fatigue, aches, and extremely low energy and it also causes food sensitivity and infertility.  Although she has had symptoms for some twenty years, she didn’t realize this was actually a disease until the symptoms recently became much more severe.  Folks can become symptom free with diet and medicine. It tends to take several months to find the correct dosage, as a change in symptoms can take several weeks to a month to detect with each change in dosage.

New CSA – Spring 2018

New Garden Bed – Before

Well, it has been a crazy Spring, by all accounts.  Most farms are delayed due to the recent cold weather and planting was rough this year with the sudden warmth in March & April.  What a year to start growing food for people, right?

 

New Garden Bed – After

That said, we are doing reasonably well.  The cucubits (i.e. melons, cucs, and squash) were eaten from top to bottom by striped beatles, a surprise for me, since that has never been a problem before.  Have you ever felt a squash leaf?  They are rather large and rough when they are older, but just like babies, they are soft and fuzzy when they are young.  Hence, they make for a delicious meal for the beetles.  Fortunately, I had backup plants.

The garlic is growing well as are the onions, leeks, broccoli and such.  The lettuce and chard are doing quite well, but still small due to the aforementioned weather.  Expect to see some of these in mid-June I think.  Garlic scapes will soon follow.  Anybody know about scapes?  Hardneck garlic sends out a curlycue straight out of the top, which can be harvested simply by pulling on it.  Dice like a green onion and have easy-peasy garlic flavor!

Enjoy

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Bailey – Late Summer 2017

Bailey – Deciding that a Winesap apple is delicious

Bailey has become one of the four musketeers!  She follows the big female goats on all of their adventures outside of the fence. Of course, at 24” high, she isn’t stopped by any gate in the sanctuary, but she never leaves unless bidden by Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.

 

Bailey w/ Chad – the smallest goat talking with one of the biggest

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As friendly as she is with all the goats, Bailey has unfortunately become less friendly with the humans.  As this behavior is probably just mimicry of the older female goats whom she hero worships, we intend to catch and hug her frequently to remind her that not all the characteristics of our heroes are admirable.

New Pond, We have a bigger pond! – Fall 2018

The Big Digger

All eyes are on the progress we have made this year at Morriplum Farm Sanctuary.  One of the biggest is our new pond, which was made bigger and better for wildlife by Dirt Hog Construction; a special thankyou to Jon for following our plans and delivering exactly what we wanted.

Basically, it was made bigger and better for wild birds.  There are eight peninsulas where before there were none, an island, a beach, a shallow gradient, a bigger berm, and a 4-5’ swimming lane.  The latter is for me, so I can get back into shape and increasing the size of the berm helps stop the leakage of water into our neighbor’s horse paddock, but the rest is for the wildlife.

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The Peninsulas

 

The peninsulas are 3X as long as they are wide (5×15’), which is listed as ideal for nesting birds that don’t want to see their neighbors nest.  This kinda makes the thin walls at the no-tell-motel look like Fort Knox.

The beach and shallow gradient is also apparently ideal for wild birds, with no depth deeper than 3’, except, of course, for my swimming lane.

The berm will be fenced off from our grazers and will also allow for nesting.

The Island Sanctuary w/in a Sanctuary

The island is pretty much, just cool.  Perhaps someday we will make a bridge to it, but probably we will just leave it “for the birds”.

The week after it was finished, we had a record 13 egrets and blue herons in one day. The hundreds of birds that have come since then attest that we most have done something right.

 

It is all done! – Egrets & Blue Herons looking for a free lunch

With a little dusting of snow

30th Birthday blog – February 8, 2019

Such a big birthday, 30 is…ok, fine it is really my 40^th….sheesh, would you believe 50^th?  Yes, I turned 50 and promptly had a nervous issue with where I should be by now and frankly, not wanting to be 50 years old at all.

Have I done enough science, enough fun things, enough travel, enough, enough, enough…  After some belly aching for a month or so, my thoughts focused on the tree on the right, which is dead, twisted and broken.

Sigh, but really, if you reframe it, that tree on the right has seen a great deal, traveled, wised up, and truly enjoyed life.  It is also home to two families of woodpeckers.   Although I tried to extend the simile to myself, I couldn’t think of anything pecker-ish or even pecker adjacent about myself.  My thoughts extended to the fact that I have done life in kinda the reverse order, seeing the world from the seat of a bicycle, being an activist, an entrepreneur; learning to dance latin, ballroom, swing & blues; being a gardener, truck deliverer, rocket scientist, geneticist, and chemist.

Also, when I FINALLY got hitched five years ago, the server decided that I was the only one too young to have an alcoholic drink, knocking roughly 25 years off my actual age.  So, why not just reframe, but readjust?  I am now the tree on the left as well as the right, young, tall, strong, and ready for more life!

Fall Fruit to the Goats – November 2018

Audrey – The first musketeer

 

 

Come fall fruit season, the goats get pushy when I bring out the ripe pears and apples.  Even the normally standoff-ish goats become my best bosom buddy.  They especially love ripe soft, even gushy, pears, but they run for apples too.

Friendly Fritz as he is aptly named

 

In past years, they get the leftover pears and let me tell you, there is pear juice over everything, their faces, me, and the ground.  I can’t feed them fast enough as the sweet gushy goodness goes down in a few gulps.

 

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Pollock – another of our all female musketeers

 

This year, we fed them apples and that is easier, although you have to match the size of the apple to the size of the mouth it is going in.  Goats will want to take the whole apple and munch on it.

 

 

Eventually, they will get it down, but it takes some time and worries me a bit.  It turns out that it is just as fun to give them manageable bites and you can get some petting in at the same time!

Winter morn on the farm – December 2018

 

The fog is heavy and close many mornings this month afore the holidays.  It is usually pea soup heavy in the morning thus that we wait until nearly noon to let out the critters.  We have a perimeter fence, of course, but no sense risking them out when they can’t see a predator that potentially sneaks through an unknown hole. Also, they don’t really want to come out of their cozy beds in the straw.

It is this time of year that we supplement with the May hay harvest that has been stored in the barn for the past six months.  With their thick coats and all that straw, they appear mostly oblivious to the cold.

In fact, the sheep and the alpacas frequently are out in the rain, their lanolin/fiber coats repelling most of the rain.   Their coats are so thick that in Spring and Fall, they prefer to be out of the barn as it is too warm!!!  So, we built the new structure we call the “sheep shed”, “goat grotto”, and the “alpaca alcove” (extra points are given, here on the farm, for alliteration) which keeps the rain off and the wind down.  Although it hardly looks warm to us, it was the number one item on the wish list of the sheep and alpacas this holiday.

 Note: all new structures on Morriplum farm share the same green roof with brown trim

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Quaker CSA Year 2

Conquered the cucubit beetles and brought home the melons and squash… roughly 1000 lbs of squash! Totally rocked the tomatoes and had some bonnie basil.

We didn’t quite get everything right, but growing organic vegetables to support my family and seven others was an enjoyable feeling.  Folks only had to pay $50 upfront with whatever they felt like it was worth by Fall. This method allowed us “room” to experiment and possibly fail.  For the most part, it was a success.

This year we will do it again!  Although it will be a labor of love with some financial benefit.  What I mean by this is that I’ve decided to grow all I can in the “efficient half” of the garden.  Long straight rows with minimal weeding will grow all manner of veges to feed about 15 families.  Our new greenhouse will help get seeds started easier.

So, announcing the Quaker CSA, Year 2,

Start Date: mid May

End Date: mid October (approx. 22 weeks)

New this year:

• Full Shares (4 people) & Half Shares (2 people)
• Half Shares every other week (11 weeks total)
• Swapping of veges you don’t need (Farm pickup only)
• Sharing a full or half share is encouraged, but it is your responsibility
• Extra seed starts available in Spring
• Recipes from our Farm Kitchen
• Farm Tours: Monthly w/ Home Brew in the Bar in the BarN
• Home Delivery within radius, there is an extra cost associated
• Payment upfront, but payment plans available upon request

Pickup: Saturday at the farm OR Sunday in Ashland

Payment: $600 for a full share, $436 for a half share, $218 for a half share every other week

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Kerfufalies – Part I

On the farm, we don’t usually need much excuse to go to sleep after a long day hauling feed & fence posts, but somehow a bedtime story is a special treat.  “Really”, you may ask, “this is not farm related”, but our bedtime stories are all about the farm and are always 100% true………….

or mostly true as near as we remember………..or at least true adjacent, perhaps.

I start to become a little suspicious of their veracity when she tells me that the stories are related to her by the sheep or the goats.

Patricia has told a great many stories to put me to sleep and this first one is a favorite.  The story of Kerfufalies must have been related to her by one of the several mating pairs of geese that raise their goslings on Morriplum Farm Sanctuary.  Kerfufalies (aka Joe) is a goose that seems to have his life in perfect order and the owl who wants to know how he manages to do so.

Let me know if you like it and I’ll see if Patricia will release more.   Here you go, enjoy!

Click this link: https://innerfireouterlight.box.com/s/d72qxev6y6fxlcl1t0ggm6hv6h4ve4us

Bailey – Winter 2016

 

 

Such a sweet goat, Bailey came to us this November.  She and Maverick (Turkey) came together and were quite close, until she heard the “Call of the Wild”.  No, not the audiobook, but the cry of the other goats.  Well, actually, she started talking the instant she left Farm Sanctuary’s van and immediately 16 ears perked up and 22 ears did not.
That is, all eight goats instantaneously came to her side, while all 11 alpacas and sheep didn’t seem to notice.  She was immediately accepted and this little goat has never stopped talking.  Oddly, every other goat has stopped, so we call her the “spokes goat”.

Bailey is a miniature goat, now full-grown at 30 lbs, she is most beloved by her big sister, Azul (about 50 lbs), and the biggest goats in the herd (about 200 lbs).  I suspect, i.e. independent confirmation remains lacking, that Bailey’s horns just barely reach the bellies of the big goats, allowing her to scratch them automatically, when she runs under them.

 

Maverick – Winter Holiday 2017 – First Annual Holiday Story

Maverick giving me his “I am a handsome & impressive turkey,” look.

Maverick lives with the chickens, roosters and hens and all appear to respect him, for he gives them protection.  Today, a falcon came into the run, probably after a small bird who was, in turn, after the free food.

Seeing his size, the poor falcon became frantic and couldn’t find its way out again.  After reminding the falcon of the open door, I looked under the coop and found 17 chickens and one rooster huddled behind Maverick.

God love my turkey!

He doesn’t get to mate with 20 of his favorite hens, but he keeps a closer eye on them than does our rooster, Justin.  When they wander through a gate, he waits until they come back.  When they are sick, he doesn’t move from their side.   When one of his flock needs something, he chirps at me and once my attention is gained, leads me to the problem.

Remember Maverick this holiday season!

Bandit Ducks – Summer 2017

We have 11 new ducks, new to us at any rate.  They are Muscovy ducks, but that is all we know about them as they always wear a mask to keep their true identity a secret.  The red mask around their eyes identifies them as the only domesticated duck that did NOT descend from a mallard.  “Like ducks to water” does not apply so readily to these South American tree ducks that wag their tails and nod their heads in a language, which relies heavily on body language.  They don’t quack, but they do have a vocalization that sounds like a hoarse whisper.

We just finished surgery on all of their feet to rid them of bumblefoot, a painful foot infection.  A thumbnail sketch of this process: force the duck in question to take a “spa day” in a bucket of warm water and then quite literally, scoop out the infection.  This is a two-person job, with one person doing the surgery and one person holding a very strong and very wet duck for 20 minutes.  Which job would you rather do?

Even though they would rather perch in a tree than swim on a pond, they are messy birds.  They appear to scoop up dirt in their mouths before they drink water, so once they heal, we would like to situate them near the pond where they can be as messy as they so desire.  I imagine that this is like shipping a kid off to college.

Unlike geese or chickens, their eggs are mostly yolk, but like geese, their eggs are large and slippery smooth, so I am always careful to hold them tightly.  When I occasionally trip and juggle my egg stash, Patri just laughs and tells me this time it is me that is “butt of the yolk”.

Maverick – Winter 2016

We just got a turkey! He is big and white, one of the broad-breasted turkeys that our “civilization” has evolved to be heavier than he should be. Naturally, his ancestor would have been about 10-15 lbs. In the last 70 years, they have bred them to have so much weight, specifically breast weight that they can walk, but only barely. They cannot mate! Imagine, dear reader, if you could not mate?

Maverick has a snood on the top of his blue (yes, blue) and red head (combined with his white feathers, he is the most patriotic of all animals and historically was proposed to be the national bird by Mr. Benjamin Franklin). When he is calm-ish, it is short, pink, and sticks strongly and straight up! When he gets excited, which is every time he sees me or a visitor to the farm, it fills with blood and becomes dark RED, LONG, and limp, yes limp. It goes from 1”ish inch long straight up to 6-8”ish long and STRAIGHT DOWN. Yep, some boys get long and limp when they get excited…. 🙂

During mating season, Spring & Fall, he pecks at people more than usual. All other times, he pecks only occasionally and, if he remembers to peck, then only briefly and only with visitors. During mating season, this behavior increases exponentially (in the common sense, not the literal sense of the word. That said, I suppose it could be in the literal, aka scientific sense, I just haven’t quantified, i.e. measured, it yet.)

Why does he peck at people? I am not sure, but I expect he thinks we are female turkeys or romantic rivals. Either way, he just wants to know where he is in the pecking order, so he knows with whom he can mate.

To deal with this, we pet his head and give him a hug; this seems to pacify his “urges”. To this day, we aren’t sure if he thinks we are higher ranking or lower. Either way, the hugging and rubbing his head seem to have solved the problem. Oddly, my wife has found that this technique works on me as well! So thanks Maverick! Your presence has enhanced our marital communication.

That said, if I find my wife snuggled with you, I might be a bit miffed. 🙂

Alpacas – Summer 2017

(-best read with the batman or superwoman theme song in your head, just FYI-)

They can jump over grass as tall as your knee! They can dance and prance too! They are supppperrrrr alpacas!

Now folks we are going live to….to the pasture, where our intrepid local spokes-sheep, Willow, has a few words to say about fly season this year. Yes thank you Scott, Willow here in Morriplum farm’s pasture where the grass is very very green and tasty, but the fly season is badddddddd this year. So baaaddddd that the tall sheep (Your listening audience knows them as ‘Alpacas’, I am told, but to us they just look like tall sheep.) have to wear eye masks. Their eyes being bigger and dreamier (i.e. more watery), so they are prone to flies. We have already had two ‘tall sheep’ be quarantined for fly-strike and pink eye. Fortunately, our humans, Scott and Patri, got to them in time before they lost their eyesight entirely.

Here is a picture of what they look like. Now you can see why all the visitors to the sanctuary laugh and ask them, “So, what is your superpower?”.

Little Red- Winter 2015

Our first resident of the farm. No seriously, THE FIRST resident! We closed on the farm in February 2015 and it was wonderful. All the exclamation marks in the world would not be enough to describe our elation, at least my elation. You see, I have always dreamed, always since I was very little, that I would be part of a farm. With that introduction, you would think that my next sentence would be an explanation of this premonition. But, sadly, I have none. I hope to never have to say that sentence ever again, as I thrive on explanations and knowledge.

 

OK yes, I’m an Aspie, but still, even I was surprised to find a little red hen on our front porch in the coldest of winter months. This event was completely unpredictable and to this day, we have no idea of how she got there or better yet, how she survived until we found her or even how she knew that we would be kind to her. Nevertheless, the first thing we did was pet and love her, of course. Being the empath I am (you have no idea of the conflict this poses with the multi-degreed research scientist that I am, by the way), I petted her and fed & watered her.

 

We were not entirely moved in before her home was built. A few months thereafter, we gave Little Red a few friends and she no longer called us her flock, as she did for the first few months. She no longer fell asleep on our front porch, perched between us, as she did once and she no longer followed me everywhere or rode around on my shoulder. She also no longer knocked at our door to ask us to come keep her company. She did assume command of her flock, AND her two roosters, and to this day is head chicken. Although, she no longer runs over to us when we creak open the front door, she does let us pet her and occasionally pauses to remind us of her respect whenever she isn’t too busy with her duties.

 

We could not keep Little Red company as often as she wished. Hunting for bugs and such just wasn’t on our to-do list for more than a couple hours each day. So, when she laid 24 eggs in two weeks (she got ‘broody’), we sadly decided that it was time that we found her some friends.