Fall Equinox and some cow stuff

Happy Fall Equinox! What a beautiful time of the year! I love it, the light is so soft and rich, the trees are all in color, the days are sunny and crisp, the evenings and mornings so cold that I can see steam rising from the bucket when I milk Opal.

We have some good news: Jasmine is pregnant, and there are good chances that Opal is as well. Jasmine got pregnant the first time we inseminated her, in July, but Opal came into heat again and we had to inseminated again a couple of weeks ago. Jasmine should have her calf in April, and Opal in June if she is pregnant. So the herd is growing, although we most likely will not be able to keep all of the cows because we are land limited, and can only sustain 3 or 4 cows on the pastures we have right now.

Speaking of pasture, we have the cows nextdoor right now, on a field we're renting from our neighbor. Unfortunately the pasture quality is not that good over there, and we're seeing quite a drop in milk production. I'm getting closer to 2 quarts (liters) a day now, instead of the 3 I had become accustomed to our our pasture. But this is a learning experience, and I have come to honestly believe that every setback has a lesson to learn if we're open. In this case, I learned that we should've managed that pasture differently early this year, and I have a few ideas how, and if we had done that it may have been much more lush and productive by now. So that's something to take forward for next season.

Another recent setback I had is that Opal kicked me in the chest yesterday when I was by her side milking her. I think flies were bothering her, or I may have unintentionally hurt her teats somehow. I don't know, but I was quite taken aback, and I fell on my butt, although nothing hurt at all. I'm not sure what the lesson is in that, but today I was more careful. I don't think she wanted to hurt me, it was more of a "get off" kind of thing because of something I must have done wrong. In any case, I did slap her side and yelled a firm NO!

So we're learning a lot about cows and pastures these days. It's exciting and a little overwhelming. There are so many variables in farming, whether you're doing vegetables, or managing rotational grazing, or something else. The first step is always to get a clear grasp on the most important factors affecting production, and the only way you can do that is through intimate experience. Reading and conferences help, but there is nothing like getting to it and letting experience teach. After getting some idea of the main variables, the fun part starts, where you start tweaking them, one by one, or more than one at a time, whatever fits your system and your schedule, and see what difference that makes. That's were data recording and analysis comes in. It's amazing what a few plots of data gathered from the field will show you. So engineering did pay off, see mom and dad? All those years in college, and I can make some pretty fancy graphs now. And what better stuff to plot than vegetable yields, or milk production?

Last Friday Ed and I went to a cow conference in Massachussets. The "conference" was outside on pasture, in one of the most beautiful places I've been to in a long time: up on top of a mountain, with veiws of ridges like waves in the distance, a small country road traveled, we were told at the rate of one car per day sometimes, cows on green meadows, and people passionate about what they're doing. So it was a lot of fun, and Ed and I were joking that this was our big getaway for the year, but joking aside, it was a beautiful one.

That's the news from here for now.

Peace

The Harvest

This season has been exceptional. Our harvests of most crops, not all, but most, have been much higher than expected, and pretty much off the chart relative to previous years. It’s been a dry season, and without irrigation it would’ve undoubtedly been our worst. But, with a good well and irrigation, the crops did amazingly well. Many fungal diseases that affect us every year and lower the productivity of the plants, were only minimal this year due to the dry conditions.

I’ve been busy preserving the bounty over the past few weeks. Every day that I was not out in the field harvesting and preparing for the CSA, I spent in the kitchen, canning, freezing, fermenting and so on, in an attempt to store food for the winter. The shelves are almost filled with pickles, tomato sauce, apple sauce, apple chips, jams, etc., and the freezers are full as well. I feel blessed by this abundance. The earth gives us so much!

Here are some pictures of things I tried my hand at lately:

Sena harvested wild Concord Grapes, and I made this apple juice from them. I also made kombucha flavored with the juice, and grape jelly, which was quite a hit.

These are husk cherries (in the background with the husk, and out of the husk in the foreground). We grew them for the first time this year, and were very surprised at their sweet, pleasant taste that reminds me a little of pineapple. We ate many raw, and some, I made husk cherry jam with. The jam came out great - the kids like it on yoghurt or pancakes. My favorite way of having it is with cheese and black tea. I made a delicious Feta this week, and topped it with some of this jam, had a cup of tea on the side, and that has been my sustenance, body and soul.

Husk Cherry jam.

Peace

Down-home like