Goslings.

The goslings hatched a while back, and they are super cute. The goose sat on a clutch of about a dozen eggs and five hatched.

Yesterday the kids went out to find that there were only three goslings.

The neighbor came over while the kids were out there. She keeps a pretty close eye on pretty much everything that goes on over here and is always willing to share her opinions on our animal husbandry techniques.

Apparently, a couple of the goslings were caught by predatory birds. Ravens we think, maybe hawks. I’m still not entirely clear on that. At any rate, it was explained to my children that this is, of course, all our fault for leaving food out where the predators could get to it. It was only a matter of time ’til they came for the goslings.

Well, OK, but where else should we put food for our animals except “out” where they can get to it? I’m a little frustrated, both at the loss and at the way my kids were spoken to. Uphill battles on both fronts.

The goslings have been adept at finding small holes in the fence. Brian just brought some smaller gauge wire to mend all the holes we can find. When the goose and gander are with the goslings, I don’t think any animal would dare get close. Since the goslings were able to get through and into the old pig pasture, they were unprotected. That oversight I am willing to cop to. Leaving food out?  Sorry, can’t fix that one.

Sadly, dealing with predators is part of farm life. We have dealt with predator pressure before.  I realize that predators are part of the circle of life. The ravens or hawks or whatever they were took the goslings back to a nest to share with their own babies so that they might live and thrive. Since we like having goslings, we’re sad to see the process. On days like this, the circle of life just plain sucks.

Goslings.

In our new little place we have a couple dozen hens and we also brought a goose and a gander. When we bought goslings last year, I bought a few Tufted Buff geese because I thought it would be fun to hatch our own geese on the farm. At the time, I didn’t realize we’d change plans and decide to take a farm break so we could prepare to travel around in an RV for a while.

Fast forward a year and we are almost ready to go and we have these two geese who managed to escape the Christmas table, and they are here, fulfilling the original plan we had for them.

Our Tufted Buff geese had been pretty sweet and gentle, but when spring began here we saw a definite change in behavior. The gander became especially protective of the yard, even before the goose began laying eggs.

Daily we watched for a nest, and daily we were disappointed. Finally, she showed interest in one corner that was pretty much the busiest part of the yard, nearby where we pass daily to feed the chickens.

The nest location led to quite a racket each morning at feeding time since she was right there close to the fence, but she had picked that site and she was happy enough with it. I figured that she does actually like us enough to be close, but she wants to make sure we know she is serious about protecting her space. The gander was even more dedicated to making sure that the love of his life was safe. They both hissed and honked any time anyone came close, and the gander liked to chase along just to make his point.

When the phone guys came to dig up the pasture, I suggested they enter another way or wait and come back in a couple weeks, but they didn’t think that little ole gander could possibly be any trouble for such burly men as they were. As a result, one of the men got nipped in the hind parts and ended up taking a few steps with a gander attached to his backside while he tried to get loose. It was pretty funny.

So the goose sat and she sat, and finally one day, as we were heading to town, her efforts were rewarded. We drove past to see 5 fluffy goslings milling about. Within a few days, they were sneaking out through the fence line. That seems OK with the parents as long as nobody it out there, but as soon as we get close, the goose calls her children to her.

Spring on the farm–always fun, always full of wonder.

Goslings outside the pen.

Back inside, getting a lecture from Mom about wandering off.

Bella helped build a nest house.

Last week I wrote about how we felt it was very important for our children to learn to do farm chores, and I shared some of the methods we used to help our kids learn to do chores.

Today I want to give a list of what our kids mastered. There may be more chores than are listed here, but I think this is a fairly comprehensive list:

Chore helper.

Ages 2-4

Chore helper. At this stage, the kids come along and help either an adult or an older child. Tasks involved carrying the egg basket, helping to fill feeders, turning hoses on and off, opening and closing gates, catching chickens, and random singing and dancing.

Filling grain barrels.

Ages 5-7

This is where we gave our children more individual responsibility. When helping with chores, they were responsible for a greater share of the chore. Some tasks they did independently included feeding hay, filling waterers for poultry, scooping grain, filling poultry feeders, raising chicks and ducks.

Total responsibility for raising the chicks went to the kids.

Ages 8-12

Milking the goats and the cow, feeding pigs, turning bedding in the chicken houses (deep bedding during winter), caring for the rabbits, herding the cows, helping to trim goat hooves, plucking poultry, helping with building fences, unloading feed, pulling T-posts, filling the automatic chicken feeder, moving pigs from one pasture to another, assisting with basic construction, washing eggs, sizing and grading eggs, packaging eggs, working at the farmers market stall.

Moving hoop houses.

12+

Almost anything an adult can do.

The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund just put together a great graphic that shows the state-by-state legal availability of raw milk across the U.S.

RealMilk.Com lists information about raw milk availability along with contact information for farms that have registered with the site.

Localharvest.org also has a search feature where you can find farms that sell raw milk.

Trying to keep track of your definitions? I recently posted “Know Your Milk Words” giving some basic dairy definitions.

Drink up!

Sweet, fresh, raw milk.

As parents, we did most of the research and then recruited the children to help with age-appropriate tasks. We believe that making children responsible for tasks teaches them to become responsible. In addition to establishing a good work ethic, mastering chores helps a child to build self esteem when they see that their contribution is important.

Teaching a child to complete a chore takes much longer than just doing the chore ourselves. There are times when it is so much easier to just park the kid in front of a TV and finish things up, but in the end it is better to train the child. Eventually, if you train a child to complete a task, you can turn that child loose and watch them use the skills they’ve learned.

Children do have skills and a capacity to help on their own level.

So, how do we get the children to mastery level?

Brian shows off his stellar turkey catching technique.

Provide a Model–First, we model the chores. Sometimes, that meant just having a tagalong child. There are some tasks that kids aren’t ready for. We never let that stop us from having that child come along and watch. Modeling good attention to detail still benefited the child.

Atticus learning to be delicate when handling eggs.

Work Together–Often times a chore that was new to our kids was new to us also. There were many tasks we learned together. Working together allows the parent to assess the child’s competence on a given chore and also to provide guidance and feedback.

Construction goes pretty slow when kids are the builders–but they sure are proud of their contribution.

Stay Positive–There are many factors that come into play here. Some tasks are difficult and you will see your children struggle to get them done properly. My son Max likes to try things that I (Rose) think are above his ability, but we let him try. Sometimes he surprises me. Sometimes he has to go back to something more his level. If I try, I can always find one part to praise even if he wasn’t able to do the chore properly. In addition to limits on ability, there are also attitude issues that can interfere with chores being done properly. Praise the positive, help a child correct the parts undone (as long as the child is able to do them).

Milking the goats requires patience and attention to cleanliness.

Expect Excellence–We have high expectations for our children, and we expect them to complete whatever they attempt to the best of their ability (note: this does not mean perfectly. It means to the best of their ability). This means we check up on chores, clearly convey our expectations, and, when necessary, re-assign those chores. The best time to re-assign a chore is when the child is getting started with something they really want to do. The motivation to get done properly increases exponentially when there is something more interesting waiting.

Giving treats to the chickens is always fun.

Motivate and Reward–To motivate, I like to use those “I” statements. For example, “I have ice cream for everyone who helps catch chickens.” Works wonders. But it isn’t practical–or even healthy–to give a tangible reward for everything done right. Verbal recognition goes a long way. When people complimented us on the quality of our eggs (and, let’s face it, Godfrey Family Farms eggs were simply incredible), we always made sure to give credit to our kids for their contribution to the farm.

Chores? What chores?

Be Persistent–We are all inclined to goof off here and there. Kids are masters at that, and you have to expect that they will lollygag around. Yes, I said lollygag. There is simply no other word that completely sums up the actions of a 6-year-old boy who takes 30 minutes to do a chore that would take you 5 minutes to get done.  Don’t be discouraged when you have to go back again and again and, yes, again to retrain, redirect, and reinforce a skill. It is all a normal part of the process, and it is so worth the effort.

Next week, I’ll give you a list of all the things our kids learned to do around the farm and the ages we saw them master these skills. I think you will be amazed.

After the trip, our plans are….still being formed. We really enjoy small farm life, so we expect to keep raising animals, but we aren’t sure on what scale. For now, we hope to use this blog to share the knowledge we gained as well as to record for ourselves what ideas worked. We’re also keeping up on Pinterest, keeping track of farm-related ideas we’ve tried or would like to try.

So, enough about us. Let’s talk pigs.

Piglets

Pigs love mud. They love to lie in mud. They love to root in mud. They love to make mud. This creates a problem because a trough of water soon becomes a challenge to a pig. He either wants to climb into the trough and hang out or he wants to dump the trough over to make mud. Or he wants to do both.

The old trough system–didn’t work.

We always wanted our pigs to be happy. “Just one bad day,” we said, and that was the day they met the butcher (actually, more like a moment because we worked hard to make sure they didn’t know what was coming so they wouldn’t be stressed).

With that goal in mind, we often set up a mud hole for the pigs, but they still needed access to clean, fresh water that they could not tip over.

Rooting–a natural pig behavior.

Brian, being the genius that he is, looked around and found some suggestions for waterers. We settled on a plastic 55-gallon drum (that had been used for food–I think it was olive oil, but I forget–not used for chemicals). He ordered a little nozzle, drilled a hole near the bottom and then secured the whole thing so that the pigs could not knock it over. Once it was filled, that was kinda difficult, but if it got down to half full or so, they could push it over, so having it secured was essential.

A garden hose keeps the water drum filled for the pigs. Use a float valve to keep it full or top it off as needed.

Minor dripping was fine, it was never enough to create a wallow in the watering spot. The pigs were happy, and it significantly cut down on the workload for us. Double win!

The valve had only minor dripping. The pigs quickly learned how to push it just right to get all the water they wanted–without making a mess.

We like to use all the animal–to the extent that we know how to do that. As far as tanning goes, would have been cheaper for us to buy hides from China, but we wanted to do our own. So we salted the hides and shipped them off. They were so beautiful that I wanted to post the results of the tanning process.

I am having my kids work on their photography skills, so here are a couple photos they shot. We’re still working on composition and thinking about backgrounds.

Icelandic sheep pelt

Baby loves the sheepskin.

Sweet, fresh milk from our cow

The thing I miss most about our farm is the fresh milk. It helps that the freezer still has a good stock of meat that we raised, so I have not had to purchase meat. Maybe when that runs out or when we start our cross-country RV trip, I will have a different perspective, but for now, fresh milk is what I miss most.

We sold our cow several months ago and I still find myself forgetting to buy milk at the store. It was always so simple to just go out to the pasture and just get some more milk. Twice a day, every day, we had a fresh supply.

A few weeks ago, on one of the days that I did remember to buy milk, I was at the store with Brian and he had been in charge of getting the milk. We buy organic when we can, but it isn’t always available. If we can’t get organic, we get the milk that is labeled as not containing artificial hormones. If we can’t find that, we just skip milk.

So there we were, buying milk. At the register, I checked the label. It didn’t have the “no rBST” logo on it, so I handed it back to Brian and kept unloading the cart. “This one has hormones,” I told him. He took a look. It did say “Real California Milk,” but that doesn’t mean it is free of  hormones. He lugged the milk back to exchange it.

The cashier and I started talking about milk. He was a youngish guy, early 20′s maybe. As he ran the rest of my items across the scanner, I told him how much I missed having fresh, raw milk. His extended family had a farm, he told me. He liked to visit, but “farming is hard work,” he said, “and you don’t make a lot of money at it.” Yeah, tell me about it. “True,” I said, “but you get to be rich in a different kind of way.”

Brian got back with a new gallon and put it onto the conveyor.

“This one has hormones, too,” the cashier said. “I think they all do.” He pointed to the label. “See?” he said, and then he tried to pronounce “homogenized.” If he had not been pointing at the word, I would not have recognized what he was saying.

I jumped at the chance to show off my milk knowledge. If you are wondering about milk, here’s my short version:

Homegenized–Homogenized milk has been all shaken up so that any cream is mixed in with the milk. If you leave fresh-milked milk alone, the cream will rise to the top. It is skimmed off for cream, half and half, and butter. Any cream left in the milk is blended in with the milk by some magic process. I think they shake it up while singing Elvis tunes, but I’m not sure. When we had our milk and wanted to homogenize the milk, we’d just shake the jar. Whatever was left in the jar would separate again after a few hours.

Pasteurized–Pasteurized milk has been heated to kill pathogens that might be in the milk. People who drink raw milk argue that killing the pathogens also kills the beneficial bacteria and enzymes that are in the milk.

Ultra Pasteurized Milk–Ultra Pasteurized Milk has been heated to a higher temperature and that high temp has been maintained longer than for regular milk. I think this milk will last forever in some form. Kind weird. It is getting harder and harder to find cream or half and half that is not U.P.

Raw Milk–Raw milk is milk that is fresh from the cow. It has not been heated. Producers must be extremely meticulous to make sure that the cow’s udder is cleaned. In addition, a good producer will make sure the milk goes only into clean containers and is refrigerated promptly. Raw milk is our favorite, and milk from a Jersey cow…oh, my, it is delicious! Raw milk is controversial because it is illegal in many states (yes, I’m serious), and there are restrictions against bringing milk across state lines, selling, and even more restrictions.  There have even been raids (guns drawn, SWAT Team kind of raids) of farms and co-ops where milk is available. Your tax dollars in action, folks.

Our friend Steve learned about milking a cow.

Organic–Organic milk is produced from cows that have been fed organically certified feed. It does not guarantee that the cows have had any access to pasture and fresh, green grass, but it does mean they have eaten feed that has not been genetically modified and that they have not been given artificial hormones to increase milk supply.

rBGH/rBST-recombinant bovine growth hormone or recombinant bovine somatotropin are synthetic (you know that synthetic means “fake”, right?) versions of a hormone that naturally occurs in cows.  People who are in favor of injecting dairy cattle with rBGH or rBST will tell you that since it is a man-made version of a hormone cows make anyway that it is safe. People who don’t think it is a good idea to inject dairy cows with chemicals will tell you that the use of artificial growth hormone increases the risk of mastitis in cows (and thus increases the chance of having pus in the milk and increases the need for antibiotics for the cows to cure the infection) and they will also tell you that the hormones can affect developing children. If you want to opt out of dairy products that contain artificial growth hormones, please remember to check packages of butter, cream, half and half, ice cream, and cheese.

I’m all out of milk words. Whatever choices you make about your dairy products, please remember to check your labels and make sure you are getting whatever it is that you want to purchase.

The beginning of compost tea.

Compost tea (not to be confused with a good Darjeeling!) is a lovely way to feed plants both in the garden or in the house. And making compost tea is almost as easy as brewing a nice cup of Earl Gray.

How to Brew Compost Tea

• Grab a bucket and head out to the compost pile.
• Add compost. You don’t really need a full bucket, just add a scoop or two.
• Fill the bucket with water and let it sit for 24 hours.
• Strain out the liquid and save.
• Use the compost there to brew another batch of tea, put the compost back into the compost pile, or use it as mulch to feed your plants.

Uses of Compost Tea

Compost tea can be used as a foliar spray. Strain it well, put it into a spray bottle, and spray onto the leaves of plants for quick absorption of nutrients.

You can also use compost tea to water plants, just pour it onto the roots to feed and water the plants all at the same time.

Manure Tea

If you have manure that you want to use in the garden (and seriously, you want to use manure in the garden!), you can use the above steps to make manure tea. Great benefits and you don’t necessarily have to compost the manure before using it.

Manure as Fertilizer

Good soil yields great crops, so if you want to have the best veggies in the neighborhood, you’ve gotta get your hands on a load of crap. Literally. Here are 6 reasons you’ll want to dive right in and use manure to fertilize your crop.

1. Ultimate Recycling Project

When we had our milk cows, I learned that cows produce approximately 50 lbs of waste per day. I never measured, I was willing to go forward in blind faith. That’s a lot of waste., just waiting to be added to garden soil. In our case, we let the cows serve as on-the-move distributors for us, fertilizing the field. When we needed an amendment for the garden beds, we picked up a load from around the farm and moved it into the garden area. Don’t have a cow of your own? Garden stores sell bags of steer and chicken manure.

2. Manure is Natural

Using an organic substance such as manure to fertilize your garden means you have no chemicals to worry about. No suiting up in chem gear, no keeping the kids off the lawn or out of the garden for 24 hours. Sure, you might want to wash your hands after you finish up, but that’s no big deal. In fact, since manure is a safe amendment for the soil, your kids can join you in the garden while you are working. The only caution you should observe is that manure is best when it has aged a bit. If it is too fresh, it may burn the roots of your plants. The exception to this is rabbit manure which can be used fresh outta the rabbit.

3. Manure Replenishes Soil Nutrition

Plants draw their nutrition from the soil. If we harvest without replenishing the nutrition supply, the soil becomes depleted. Adding manure to the mix makes the soil ready to feed the plants that will be growing in the soil. Manure also attracts beneficial insects that can help to aerate the soil.

4. Healthy Soil Yields Healthy Plants

Healthy plants are more resistant to common plant diseases. When plants have what they need, they produce an abundance of high quality produce. And if you have gone to all the work of growing a garden, you might as well reap abundant benefits.

5. Manure Amends and Lightens Soil

For soil that is too sandy, manure adds mass that helps to hold water in. For soil that is too compacted, adding manure works to loosen the soil and make it more porous.

6. Natural Fertilizer Connects Us to Life

Using manure as fertilizer reminds us of the interdependence  all living organisms. Plants feed animals, animals feed soil, soil feeds plants, and the cycle continues. There’s something comforting in that.