a house full of honey

No one ever tells you that when you extract honey from the frame, your entire house smells like warm honey. I walked in yesterday, and in that holy time between planting a new raised bed garden and a hot shower I walked through a house smelling like beeswax and dripping honey. It's not a strong scent, and it doesn't make you feel sticky, but instead makes your entire house smell the way clutching a warm cup of tea on a cold winter day feels. Like somehow you have captured future comfort and placed it in a vase on your dining room table to tease your senses.

I only have one hive and I just recently added a third-story addition to the healthy work commune outside my kitchen window. A few nights ago I built the wax frames on my living room floor, and today I went out to set the small hive body on top of the two already full of comb. Since I was already out there working the bees I decided to harvest a wee bit of honey to kick off the summer. I brought out my 5-gallon brewing kettle, a knife, and a handful of sheep's wool from the recent shearing. After a proper smoking, I used the knife to help pry open the inner lid to the hive (fused with comb to the top hive body) and get to those beautiful frames. The bees do not bother with you if you remain calm and the smoke keeps them a bit disoriented. I used the knife to pull out just two combs from the center of that 6" deep box and used the wool to gently brush them back into the hive and off my pilfered nectar. The wool worked wonders, and since all the honey was capped in wax nothing stuck. I set both of my frames, and feeling like a fat and happy bear, waddled off back into my house with my bounty.

Inside I use a very delicate method of extraction. I grab a large serving spoon and scrap the entire frame in 5 or six scrappy passes into a metal colander inside a stainless steel bowl. As the honey filters from the mashed-up wax it sinks into the bottom bowl. It takes about an hour to be totally drained and then I do a second straining with cheesecloth over another steel pan. It's crude, but it works. I got a full quart of honey from those two little frames. I poured it into 8-oz plastic bears and set them in my cupboard. They will wait in that perfect state until teas, fresh baked breads, ice creams, and batters call them home.

I had to post this picture of my kitchen sink. What a happy mess. Milking, canning, cheese molds, meat grinding, and honey extraction gear all laid out. It reminds me that my little kitchen is not just a place were ingredients are prepared but a place where ingredients are made. It's a place of production as much as consumption. It's where I spend most of my time, and where my eMac and iPhone stereo dock are housed as well. Audiobooks, blogging, stories, radio shows...it all happens in this heart's center of my homestead. My kitchen is my playground, office, and HQ. Right now empty combs are setting in a brew kettle on my stove while coffee heats up and the sight of those things makes me feel like this rainy day is going to pass by just fine.

Enjoy your Saturday. Make something!

it was once a lawn

I was mowing the lawn yesterday afternoon listening to the adventures of Claire and Jamie in Paris, and enjoying the work of it when I stopped to notice the grass. Or rather, noticed the lack of it. Don't be mistaken, there was plenty of green below my feet, but three summers of chickens, geese, ducks, rabbits, turkeys feeding and opposite-feeding on it have created a whole new world. There's a whole new type of lawn below my boots. Now where there was once just domesticated lawn grass there are clovers, timothy, fescues and legumes. There are dandelions and violets, sprays of nettle and burdock. What was once a chemically treated and seeded bit of living astroturf has changed into bonefide pasture. It is a result of the work of seed, manure, and natural lack of sprays and artificial inputs has created something very different than a lawn here.

When I was done outside, it was hard to tell. All mowed down it is uniform and even, it appears to be suburban curb appeal. But when it starts to grow from rain and sun things seed and flower and leaf out. It looks wild! I watch the poultry pick and choose what deserves eating, they look at that lawn with decision, not random plodding about. It's something else. I turned someone else's decoration into a buffet. Not bad work of three springs. It was once a lawn, and now it is a pasture.

boy, has this ever become important lately...

Making The List!

GOOD Magazine is doing a series on Young Farmer's across America and I made the list! They used a collection from Farmplate's Young Farmers Series and I am proud of my good company. I've sat on panels with some of these folks, shared billing in essay collections, and a few are even fellow New Yorkers. You can see the list here, and check out GOOD Magazine online, this coming Monday, to see their slideshow and story!

See the Profiles Here!

do any of you use these/like them?

much ahead

I stopped using my alarm clock. I trust myself to get up on time and I always do, usually earlier than the alarm's jarring rattle and in a better mood. That alarm makes me feel like my sleep is being taken from me, but when your body stirs of its own volition it's easier to accept. This morning I was out moving the sheep to new pasture by 5AM. By 6AM the dogs were walked, fed, and the goat was milked. Chickens and rabbits were fed, hutches and tractors moved, and I was packed up for the gym by 6:30.

I've been running in the mornings and it suits me. Before breakast or coffee, I get a mile or so in just to start the day with a heavy sweat. As the summer goes on I'll add milage, and since there won't be an office to rush to I can spend my mornings as I please. My plan is to start my new weekdays in this order: chores, running, breakfast, writing. Then quit around noon for the rest of the day, dedicate that time to other endeavors like webinar production, errands, outdoor work, and so on.

It'll take some adjusting and some serious discipline, but I am ready for it. I have a contracted book to finish by September and am on the prowl for new offers and titles. I have goals of all sorts, really.

Here's to the first summer of the rest of my life. I am terrified and thrilled.

archery practice this sunday

This Sunday there will be archery practice at the farm from 1-3PM, my team is holding a practice here. Beginner's welcome and no need to be a member of the SCA to try it out or take part. Loaner bows and arrows available. Come over to the farm to give it a shot. Literally.

storms and superstitions

Yesterday the storm came in like a wolf crashing through a glass door. Sudden, violent, and sprays of water and power everywhere. I was out behind the goat pen thinking about the particulars of a Midsummer Bonfire when I looked up at the clouds swirling low in circles. It was scary.

I live middle-elevation on the east side of a small mountain. I get to see beautiful sunrises, but sunsets belong to the west and in the winter darkness starts to fall around 3PM. Since most summer storms come from the west I don't feel or see them until they suddenly burst through the trees and down into the open pastures.

Yesterday I was caught off guard and nervous, since the weathermen were predicting random tornados. As clouds of pollen and leaves swirled, trees whipped, branches fell I ran inside. But don't think for a second I didn't take protective measures. Of course I had extra water, batteries, flashlights and candles for the power outage that would surely come (and did), I mean PROTECTION. I mean, something a little more encompassing than a flashlight.

I'm a superstitious person, always have been. I was raised in a home where ghosts, angels, saints, and saviors were very real things. Water turned to wine at a priest's spoken word and my slovak grandmother taught me to never kill a spider in a house. So in that tradition of cultural wisdom I did the old Three-Branched-Cross on the farmhouse door. I took a branch of Birch, Basil, and garlic prong and tied them to a cross on the front door. Any cross will do. You can tie these plants to a crucifix or tied two equal-armed branches together with twine. I took the braided and tied Brigid's Cross off my wall indoors and tied the herbs to that. It seemed proper. Brigid is both a Catholic Saint and a Celtic Goddess. She protects, blesses, and heals. I hung the cross and branches from the farmhouse door and said a prayer and let authorities higher than my own decide if it was Ancient Goddess, Saint, or Savior in charge of the tornado averting.

I will say this. I felt safe indoors and no damage came to this home. No animals were hurt or crops torn and bent, and just down the hill trees fell in yards and power-lines burst. I'm not saying it was divine intervention, but I am saying it never hurts to ask. And if you have birch, basil, and garlic nearby - a cross and some twine, it sure beats calling the insurance agent.

Bedlam Farm, make it YOURS

Bedlam Farm is for sale, the home of author Jon Katz and Maria Wulf. It includes a beautifully restored Greek revival farmhouse with wood stoves and a screened porch. Outside are 92 acres, perfectly restored and painted red barns and outbuilding, including an artist's studio with another wood stove. It all looks over the Black Creek valley, an AMAZING VIEW, and it just reduced below $400,000. This seems like a steal if you can make it happen. If I could swing it, I know I would.

Details Here

i'll miss you, Doc

last night's blackout...

A Year of Workshops at Cold Antler Farm!

I have decided to offer a Season Pass for Cold Antler Farm events and workshops. For the price of Antlerstock and another workshop and a half you are welcome to come to any Cold Antler Farm event for a full Calendar Year. This includes Antlerstock, special speaker workshops like Plan B, and upcoming events such as Beekeeping, Soap and candle making, the Farmer's horse and Backyard Rabbit workshops. I host at least 10-14 events a year and even if you make half you will get more than your money's worth!

Cold Antler Farm workshops are how I make a living now. Your support gets you not only this continued blog and its posts, but an entire community of like minds from all over North America. Antlerstock alone is becoming a homesteader's Woodstock! Two nights and days of workshops and events here in Veryork about traditional skills, livestock, timber, and crafts.

I hope some of you decide to invest in a whole year of learning, community, and continued support of this little mountain freehold. Email me if you are interested, please. I promise to get back to you right quick.

And always, open to barter for labor, livestock, or good of equal value.

P.S. Workshop pass includes most things, but special events like fiddle camp or soapmaking that require entire kits or instruments and books would still require some supply costs.

they mean so very much to me

I got a call from Brett tonight from the Smokies. He's down there in East Tennessee producing a Timbersports Special for ESPN, but he had a break and heard about the poor weather and checked in. I think the southern heat and humidity is getting to him. He sounded absolutely worn out. I told him he's too Anglo for that kind of heat, and to use traditional Scottish methods of sun protection such as going into a pub. He laughed.

I was glad he called because he happens to be in those holy mountains at a very special time of year. There's a peculiar species of firefly down in those humid hollers, a variety that synchronizes their lights. You can view them best at this magical old summer camp called Elkmont, a kiss from North Carolina's border.

Elkmont's history is interesting. Before it was taken from the original vacation-homeowners to become part of the national parks, folks just lived there. Most of the residents were very wealthy people from Asheville an Knoxville. They built docks and fancy cabins in the Victorian style and now they are all abandoned. But if you are quiet, and still, you can almost see them out on the edge of the docks, watching the same show with a bottle of decent wine and some close friends in the candlelight. The place connects you, and it stays with you. I have only see this once but it has burned itself in memory as one of the best days of my life.

I know of no place or experience on earth as mystical, as affirming, and as transcending as standing in the middle of a lush eastern forest at night and every six seconds having the entire world glow from tens of thousands of tiny yellow lights. You stand there among them in darkness so black you can't see your hand in front of your face, and then, a flash of light as warm and inviting as a campfire fils the forest so bright around you that bark ridges appear on trees.

"Visit Elkmont", I told the man before hanging up. And I assured him if there was one reason he met me, this was it. He had to experience it, no excuses. You can't be that close to that level of beauty and stay in a hotel room.

He said he'll go Monday night. I wore him down.


photo from larry's photography blog

storm warnings

A series of storms are heading in. I left work early to get critters fed and milked before the hail and winds whip. I've been aching for a proper storm, as it clears my head and heals my farm. I can meditate to the sounds of thunder and rain as grass and vegetables grow, flowers bloom for the bees, and the horse shakes out the dust-come-mud from his mane and tail.

Every rainfall is a new beginning.

Backyard Barbeque Workshop! 2 Spots left!

So this is a workshop I'm really excited to share with you. I'm taking last years' backyard Barbeque Meat Bird Workshop and upping the ante. Come to the farm for a full day of summer fun and slaughter. On June 16, 2012 the farm is open for chicken school! It will kick off with a meet and greet, then from 10:30 to 11:30 we'll go over the basics of chick care and raising. This workshop will feature Freedom Rangers, meat birds an animal apart from the standard Cornish Cross, and everyone who signs up is welcome to take home 5 chicks to raise for the table. After we discuss everything from brooders to coop plans, we'll break for a light lunch and tour of the farm.

After lunch we'll go through backyard butchering, step-by-step, from killing a chicken to wrapping it correctly for the freezer. This is not a workshop for the faint of heart, but you will learn the steps and supplies needed to prepare meat birds at home. After this we'll talk about the importance of pasture-raised poultry, both for our own health, and the health of the animals and planet. We'll discuss the birds role here at Cold Antler and with the help of Axe Man Brett, build a portable chicken tractor for the pasture. he'll show us all how to construct our own chicken tractors for backyard-meat production on grass instead of stationary pens. Mine will be made to follow the sheep from pasture to pasture via pony power! Yup, Jasper will drag it for me!

Workshop ends, followed by a private party with a campfire and BBQ of Cold Antler Farm raised chickens, stay for music and stories into the night.

Email me to sign up, limited to 15 people, camping optional

2 spots left!

the hive needs a third story!

My bees are thriving and outgrowing their two-story home. You know what that means, friends? It's time for an addition! Tonight I'll be hammering together the eight frames and sheets of wax I bought from Betterbee in Greenwich for the shallow hive body I'll set on top of the lower two. It's a pretty straightforward project, something any mildly competent human being with a hammer and nails can accomplish. Mine will end up looking like a honey-laden piece of Jenga homage sculpture. When it comes to my carpentry skills, I am a pretty decent writer.

I'm not kidding folks, I am horrible at construction, of anything really. It is a skill and mindset I do not have or really wish to attain. The attention to details, the sharp pointy things, the saw blades in circles of whizzing death.... Hand me a leash, t-post pounder, baking sheet, or a saddle and I am in a comfortable place. But construction and the world of woodwork is as strange a place to me as Narnia. Actually, I take that back. Talking lions and swords and fauns? I can handle that. Construction is as strange a place to me as Home Depot.

So I'll figure it out. I'm not concerned. And as long as the frames fit inside the shallow the bees will have their way with them anyhow. In a few weeks they'll be thick with comb and hopefully, thick with honey too! I want to make candles this year from the wax. When Kathy Harrison was here she gifted me a pair of gorgeous beeswax candles and I am going to ask her to come teach this skill for a two part workshop in cold press milk soap making and candle making in the fall. I think folks will love seeing the process from milking Bonita and hand picking mints and lavender here on the farm to setting the molds. I can't wait for that workshop! Crafts from your farmstead not only keep you a little more independent, but make use of so many bounties you already have around. And homemade candle and soap baskets are never a tiresome gift. Certainly useful, certainly appreciated.

Homesteading isn't just about livestock and gardens, but these other skills such as hive management, candle making, and soap making. Carpentry too, of course, but I resign myself to the inevitable. Jenna with a saw is a dangerous combination! Perhaps someday I'll hone in the basics but for now I'm content to barter for that work instead. Plus, I like the work parties and employment/barter opportunities it brings to the farm. Brett will help build the new pony shed and go home with four sheep (Atlas and some gals). I get a professional building and he gets a starter flock. A snazzy bit of shared skills and critters. Not too shabby.

behind in emails

I am so behind in emails. I can't keep up with them all. Right now it is especially hard because of the combination of ending my office job and figuring out what is ahead. But if you just resend what you want me to reply to, or remind me (always remind me!), I would appreciate it and do my best to reply. If you don't hear from me always follow up.

Also, I rarely if ever check Facebook for emails, so please don't use that!

training day

Today was a full day dedicated to Merlin and his trailer-stubborness. I was warned when I first picked him up that he was a fussy loader, but that day we left his old farm he walked right into the trailer as if it was the land of grain and honey. A few weeks later we loaded him up again for our first ever trail ride and again, not a single problem. I quickly learned this was our honeymoon period.

March 1 was just three months ago. In those three months he's been professionally trained and so have I. He's been on trail rides, arena practices, and won a ribbon in a sanctioned dressage show. I'm proud of all those things but I am most proud of events like today. With the help of Milt, Horse Expert Fantastico, Merlin was broken of his trailer woes. It took some "tough love" but within twenty minutes he was walking up (sometimes jogging up) with me without so much as a tiny fuss.

How did we do it? This might sound primal, but it was damn necessary and not nearly as rough as it sounds. Horses are not Golden Retrievers. We weigh 175 pounds and they weigh a thousand. We needed more help, so Milt took a long rope with a snap at one end and ran it all the way through the trailer and out a window, then back around to him. His plan was to pull the horse forward using that pulley system while using the rope end near him as pressure and a block from behind. So Merlin was being both urged forward and pressured at the same time by this rope system. The rope on his halter was not meant to yank him, but keep him from turning around. Milt stressed that the HORSE had to decide to be on the trailer, not us. He fought for a while, feet planted firmly on the ground. We waited. Whenever we stopped the pressure he moved forward and got grain. Then Milt said to give his bum a few smacks with a crop, that it would be the last straw of annoyance and he'd load up. So there we were. Me in the trailer with the short lead rope, Milt pulling back with all his might(on the rump rope, not the horses face) and using the rope around his rear, and Patty with a crop smacking his great ass.

After he realized that he could resist and be smacked on the butt with a light crop with a rope pressing into his hindquarter or walk softly up into a bucket of grain he stopped being such a mule. All it took was two times with the rope method and then over and over we did it with nothing but a carriage whip if we needed some reinforcement from behind.

When the trailer portion of the lesson was over Milt rode him for an evaluation and to test him crossing over water. We walked down the driveway to a meadown across the road and Milt put him through his paces. He walked, trotted, cantered, and went through waist-high grass without eating.

Since Merlin isn't thrilled about streams, Milt basically made him stand it one. He started pawing the water, taking great spraying mouthfuls and loving it! Then without any issue he walked right up and down the rocky stream! What a sight, all that was!

We also got to try on a driving harness and hitch him up to a forecart. Sadly, no driving today as the rig wasn't pony-modified and too large for him. But we learned what he needed (24 inch hames, a 23 inch collar pad, and a haflinger-sized harness). It was still a treat to see him hitched up, calm as a saint, and waiting for a chance to drive down the road.

I think this pony will do it all. I really do.

P.S. This sounds rather violent. It wasn't. We were not causing Merlin emotional or physical pain. The "force" was the pressure of a rope behind his hindquarters and another on his halter holding his head so he couldn't turn around. The "whipping" of the crop was the same tap I give him in the dressage arena. I trust Milt, who trained Steele (who used to jump out of round pens and rear up in the cart harness!) and I trust Patty. No animals were harmed in the loading of this pony.

P.P.S. For more information on our exact technique used, check out pages 400-401 of Storey's Guide to Training Horses under the section "Loading the Spoiled Horse!" It explains the halter rope pull and rump rope method of loading in detail.

HE DID IT!!!

hoof and boom

today is about horses and thunderstorms. I have to finish up cleaning out and restocking the rabbit cages quick so I can be over at Patty and Mark's farm by 11Am. A natural horsemanship trainer (and experienced driving instructor), Milt, will be there. Milt has had a long and calm life with horses and he is going to evaluate and ride Merlin after he teaches us the best way to load him up into a trailer. It'll be....interesting, as the last time we took a field trip with Merlin it ended up with us standing for an hour in the hair begging the beast to step into the transport. Milt thinks he has his number, and can teach it to us. If we can beat the rain I'll spend this hot Memorial Day on the back of my black horse in some distant hayfield by a percheron and his lady, smelling thunder and fireflies just hours away.

More later. Happy Memorial Day, fellow travelers.

the dusty road

Dear readers, this is an audio-accompanied post. I want you to click this link, and turn your speakers on. As you read the story let the music be your soundtrack. Minimize the window and turn the volume down if it distracts you, as that distraction was not my intention.

There are so many travelers on the dusty roads tonight. We are all of us, the same. A kinfolk of shared hopes and dreams. We have all been so far away from our first homes for so long that we have started to see the road as all there is. We grow weary, and our horses make our bodies sore, and every day on this dusty road we feel ourselves moving forward but the destination has yet to arrive.

It is late and we are all exhausted. Yet in the distance, just over that rise of that gently sloping green hill, you can see the glow of campfires. Above the ruckus you see the white flag with the crossed shovel and hoe and you know it is your people. You can see the tops of tents and couples in lanterns glow, walking from the circles around the bale fires to their camps. This place is not our destination, but a respite along the way. A chance meeting of fates and faces. You don't know anyone personally, but every eye you meet you see yourself: another dusty-road traveler, making their own long journey to their farms.

You arrive under the flapping white banners, and a Camp Greeter walks out, smiling and hailing arms. "Welcome to this meeting place! You can set up your bedrolls and tarps over there. Set down your weapons, and find your pots and bowls." This is music to your ears. You heard rumors of this place, and finally you can rest and commune with your guard down. A gift to tired travelers on dangerous roads. A gift greater than any.

Some people have children, and others have dogs. Some are alone, save for their horses hobbled by their tents. Some move in clans of several families and some are lonely pairs. But tonight we are all sharing the same balefire and grab little metal pails to carry coals from it back to our camps. We are all thus nourished from the same fire. We bow our heads in a thousand different prayers in thanks for its burning.

Whatever your destination know that the day is passed, the fight has stopped, and there is nothing more you can do but rest and heal. Set aside the day's anger and fear. Whatever haunts you is not welcome here, and it is too late in the day to do anything else towards that fight. My dearest friend, you can relax.

Be mindful, that every stranger you meet here has their own story in their leather bound journal they clutch tight against their breasts. Assume that every single traveler you meet in camp is wearier than you, hungrier than you, and farther from first home than you. Only when you accept that everyone else has it harder can you open up your hearts to them and share a leg of lamb off the spit or ladle them a bowl of rabbit stew. Only when you understand we are all pilgrims, just passing through this road to our home farms, can we understand we are all the same.

I too am on this road. I too am walking home. Home to where our families, animals, and crops are bountiful and our minds are free from pain. Home to our dream farms! Home to our promised land, those places and hopes we clung to in our troubled sleep. Some nights on the roadsides, in tents battered by wind and rain, we nearly want to quit. We want to turn back. And yet every morning we roll up our wool blankets and pack our horses and ride along that dusty road. We are people of faith in the work. And all we want is to work more. It confuses others on different paths, and that is okay.

Because there are other paths out there, other tribes just like us. People who are setting sail for courses into the unknown realms, they are the hungry adventures. There are people waiting to board trains to the cities, guitars and portfolios under their arms, in search of successes and creative communities. There are packs of motor cars lined with men and women heading to the schools and universities of greater studies. Sometimes they put the tops down on their beeping engines and put goggles over their eyes, scarves blowing in the wind. You see them kick up their heels and shout in joy.

But we are the riders, the agrarians, the people all leaving those cities, towns, universities, and seashores to find a place where we can rest ourselves into peaceful labors of food and stock. Our hearts are out in the fields, behind a team of drafts or in gardens of black soil and healthy vegetables. We know of no better party than a barn dance, clink glasses of hard cider under the strings of lights in the rafters, and the fiddles make our hearts lighter. We are the riders of the dusty road. When it stops the earth will be so rich no dust can manage. Our horses hooves will step upon the furrowed rows of corn and wheat and we will weep from joy.

Gentle Traveler, friend on the path, you look as tired as I am. May I ask you this much? Set down your weapons, soften your hearts. Take long, deep, breaths and just look around. Everyone is like you, like me, hard traveling and desperately homesick. Look at you, you still don't get it? Soften your jaw, my dearheart. Let it move lose in your clenched face. Breath. Feel the softness of your cheeks, sun burnt and perfect. Feel that gentle skin between your eyes and nose rest and soften too. Breath. Now, smile. Smile and breath deep. You have reached a mighty camp this day. A tent city of hearts all beating for the same dream.

In a few days we will all pack up and move down that path again. But now just take time to realize you may rest, and be kind. Be especially kind to yourselves. Be proud of the dusty road. So many never left for this road, even if they wanted to. So many angry hearts watch behind dirty windows as your horses pass by. So give them some rabbit stew, as well. Leave it on their porches and kiss your palms before placing them on their doors with a blessing. Everyone is a tired traveler, even if they never leave their doorstops. Some of them are the most tired of all...

We will get there. We will all find home. But tonight let's eat, and water our horses, and share in some stories and songs. There are people dancing around the fires, hand in hand. Storytellers eyes light up around the packs of children. Couples rest heads on gently rising chests leaning against strong trees. No one is anything but grateful and that makes this place holy. Let's be gentle and warm, and find that place inside ourselves to understand the Dusty Road is home tonight. And there is no finer place to be than on the path towards a better home.

And someday, gentle traveler, we will share that cider under those barn lights. And when we do the road will be a memory, our hearts light, and there will be no regrets for the lambs we shared at camps like this. No regrets, just love and patience. Those two make the road a little easier to bear.

Always, those two.

tomorrow, horses.

This is my farm, my story, my livestock, and my life. I share it the way people who tell stories always have. People have been sharing autobiographies and family tales since time out of mind. Blogs are a new thing, but the honesty's the same. Sitting around a cave wall pointing at hand-smudges of bison or typing into a Mac: we are sharing stories, our lives, the process.

I got a few phone calls today from a good friend. I told him about the sheep that died, and we talked about how upset it made me, and what that upset meant. It was a good, long, talk. The kind of which I have sorely been lacking. I'm so grateful he's a part of my life.

Spent most of the day at Common Sense Farm, enjoying their first ever Spring Farm Festival down at their beautiful 200-acre farm right in Cambridge's heart. So many people and animals, so many kids running unshod through the green grass. Gibson came along and took a swim in the pond and enjoyed the people and fruit-tree digging. I got to meet a lot of new people like local farmers and neighbors.

It was the kind of event you don't see anymore. A large outdoor gathering without cell phones or polo shirts. Just people and their kids running in wild packs playing games and smiling like foxes.

It was a good day here in Farm Country. And if the weather holds out tomorrow, and the thunderstorms hold their breath until dusk, Merlin and I will be out on a trail ride on the hillsides of Livingston Brook Farm. Tomorrow is horses. I can't wait to be back in the saddle as it has been a few days. I even emailed the SCA's equestrian folks to see how Merlin and I can start competing in events. If I borrow a friend's trailer I might be able to bring him to War Camp at the end of June up in the Adirondacks! We will see!

Also, I am looking into buying a digital camera, or bartering for a decent used one. Any suggestions? Please email me with trades (like a workshop day for a used, but serviceable, Cannon or Kodak of proper agency). I am feeling like these iphone shots aren't doing my experiences justice.

Common Sense Farm Festival Today!

I haven't seen this many beards in one place since the barnbuiding scene in Witness!

weekend warriors

and the day has just begun

I nocked my wooden arrow and raised the bow as I pulled back on the 35-pound bow. It's woven, waxed linen string amazes me. It is all it needs to send my arrow blasting 30 yards ahead of me. I hit the 4-point circle on the target and want to jump up and scream HEEEEEELLL YEAH, but I don't. I have four more arrows to go and this is a Royal Round, and another 2 rounds after that at other targets.

I'm happy out there. I'm wearing a long green Irish dress over a white chemise with a leather hip belt. On the belt is my tankard (igloo coolers of water everywhere, BYOT) a leather bag holding money, truck keys, and my phone, and the red favor of the house Lancaster. This event is based on The Wars of the Roses and everyone has to pick York of Lancaster when they sign in. I picked red, not because I'm a huge fan of the Tudor's, but because it looked damn good on my green dress. I shoot another arrow and it flies into the hayfield. By the end of the day I'll break one arrow and lose two more. It happens. Losing arrows is a great incentive to hit the target more.

It's 10AM and feels like 4PM. I got up early to do my chores and check on the ewe who was found caught up in the brambles after shearing. At sunrise I had walked out across the field with a walking stick in hand, Jasper at my side. The ewe was sitting up, eating grass and had enjoyed some of the water with maple syrup I offered her. I was so happy she made it through the night. Jasper nuzzled her, as he had since I cut her free the night before. An odd sign of friendship between two species. With the help of Bridget from Virginia (who had visited for shearing and spent the night in her bus in my driveway) we used the blue garden cart as an ambulance and carried the frail beast to a solitary pen near the other sheep. It was quite the haul but we got her inside safe with water, grain, clean bedding and I said a few prayers. Prayer never hurts.

With the goat milked, dogs walked, sheep in hospital, animals hayed, grained, and watered there was nothing to do but get dressed up and the truck kitted out with bows and arrows. I left the farm at 8:00AM and had already been working three hours. My breakfast was some green juice and a small bowl of granola with goats milk. I was fortified, armed, and in a dress for the first time in months. I felt a combination of excitement for the War of Roses down in Concordia (Albany) and worry about the ewe. But at this point she had nothing to do but fight. So I left her, cursing myself for not counting the sheep when they came in to be shorn. I just called the woolly mass in and penned them and in the chaos of preparing for company and the shearer arriving early I didn't realize one ewe was gone. A quarter mile away in a bramble, she was stuck. It was my own fault. One simple act: counting sheep, had made all the difference in her chances.

Bridget asked if I would write about it? Or if I ever held back events on the farm because I didn't want to share bad news? An honest question. I told her I would write about it. What happens on this farm is an open book. I make mistakes and I share them. When lambs die, dogs get sick, or gardens fail I write about it. When I fall off horses, am scared, or broke: I write about it. I don't think people who are serious about landing on their own farm someday just want the sweet side of farming. I think they want to know mistakes happen, animals get sick, die, and all I can do is learn from mistakes and not make them again. I know now I will never bring home one new lamb alone to this farm again (pneumonia). I will never eat a pig with a bright yellow-cyst-covered liver. I won't plant broccoli without a goose fence. I won't forget to keep mothering ewes well grained to avoid Ketosis (Lisette). But in two years here and 20+ sheep later I have only truly failed four in five years of living with sheep. May that number ever diminish.

I think about the ewe between arrows, but my mind goes blank each time I take aim. I'm not good at this, but I have learned so much. I learned how to string my bow and tighten the string too. I learned proper form and sighting and the types of bows and tools. When my second round was done and score sheets filled in to be sent off to our shire's head of archery, T'mas nodded and said I looked like an archer. He said that with the white rose of York hanging around his neck, too.

When I got home later that day I found the ewe dead. She didn't make it. She was frail, thin, weak. I carried her into the hearse that had been an ambulance hours before and moved her out of the pasture fencing. Too tired to bury her I covered her with some old wool. I had driven four hours, spent all day in the sun, came home in a rush to see to the dogs and goats and was just exhausted by the time that ewe was out of the pen.

This morning I buried the ewe in a grave under the compost pile behind the goat pens. She was set in the earth and covered with the well composted bedding and manure of the pigs from this past winter. By next summer the pile will just be black soil around the skeleton of a horned sheep. I'll fork it out, grateful for its wealth in the garden. I smiled a bit, thinking of those vegetables of the future. The amazing red tomatoes and brilliant pumpkins and almost laughed at the idea of death being an ending. This organic compost is as alive as any galloping horse or flying hawk. As alive as you and I. It's just the next form in the circle. Earth must be fed.

And when I have a beautiful vegetarian meal next summer of garden tomato sauce over roasted peppers and onions and how those vegetables were grown over the blood, bones, manure and corpses of a farm's livestock. There is no such thing as an organic "vegetarian" meal, of course. The vegetables just ate the meat first. It was their turn, simple as that.

I sighed when the work was done. The ewe under the piles of brown, wet, soil. The water yet to haul for the living. Hay deliveries to be arranged, a soapmaking workshop to plan, and in a few moments I'll be down at Common Sense for their Farm Festival and people will see the three lambs of this farm's crop and feed them bits of grain and stroke their fluffy heads and I will be so proud to be the person who introduced their parents, got them into the world, and found them this ideal home. I don't know of a more balanced life than starting your day with an ovine funeral and ending it with a lamb in your arms.

Whew....and the day has just begun....