This life is HARD with a capital H. Slow life? Yeah, right. If you want a farm to settle down into retirement, think again. What you really want is one potted plant and a cat.
Life with four kids on a farm, homeschooling, isn't nearly as slow as I dreamed. It will take a Type A controlling personality (like someone I know) and flip her upside down and throw her out sideways. Plan A never works on a farm. That isn't being a pessimist. It's just the gosh darn truth.
But, ohhh, the things my kids get to do. The life they live. Anni took Hannah with her to milk the goats today. And here's the video they took. PLEASE watch it to the end when Hannah goes to say something but it appears she is the one making the goat noises!
When I think of throwing in the towel, I think of moments like this and the good outweighs the bad (most of the time).
"A farm is a manipulative creative. There is no such thing as finished. Work comes in a stream and has no end. There are only the things that must be done now and things that can be done later." Kristin Kimball
The 48-hours preceding this picture are so numerous and so exhausting and so tear-inducing, that I will spare you the minutia.
Instead I'll summarize by saying:
Life can kick your butt.
Motherhood can kick your butt.
And it's when you feel your butt is thoroughly kicked, that your farm decides to wind up and kick you again.
We had a mother sheep randomly reject a baby at the worst possible moment -- literally as I was driving into town for a ballet/karate/graduation trio.
We have a chicken brooder that must be finished by this week ... like, it has to be because there are 500-something chickens arriving that otherwise won't have a place to reside for the first two weeks of their life.
I could give you the reasons the brooder isn't done, but it doesn't matter really, does it? I could tell you of the grand conspiracy that weather plays in your plans when you need it to most cooperate.
"A farm asks, and if you don't give enough, the primordial forces of death and wildness will overrun you. So naturally you give, and then you give some more, and then you give to the point of breaking, and then and only then it gives back, so bountifully it overfills not only your root cellar but also that parched and weedy little patch we call the soul." Kristin Kimball
That's what I was doing when this picture was taken. I was giving ... again, even though I didn't want to. It was getting dark. The rain was falling ... hard. I was already soaked through from ...
... oh wait. I didn't tell you that part.
6pm. I've just got dinner for eight on the counter ready to go, when I hear my husband calling for me. Well over 12,000 steps into my day, the men were feverishly trying to finish up the brooder, when my husband (who, shall I add, had just finished his 3rd night shift in a row and was operating on a pittance of sleep) asked me to grab a few kids and move the sheep into "The Arena".
We had five sheep that are going to the processor tomorrow morning. We are on the schedule. We have to go. (Covid has backed processors up so much!) And so we need to catch them. "The Arena"is a much easier space to catch sheep as it has hard fences. (I never knew a "hard fence" could make me so happy. Seriously. Giddy.)
So I ask Isaac to watch Hannah, and I recruit Sidge and Abigail. We jump into the side-by-side and launch off down the dirt road, the sky appearing a bit ominous all of a sudden. Moving sheep across the farm is no small task. And it becomes even harder when it starts pouring rain and the temperature drops ten degrees in a matter of minutes.
That ... was icing in the cake. Moving and catching sheep in chilly rain when you aren't at all dressed for it and completely unprepared for it.
So that's what I had just completed when JB snapped the picture of me on the steps outside our home. I had to go put the chickens to bed. It's about a quarter-of-a-mile walk. I could have taken the side-by-side, only we had accidentally blocked it in, and I didn't feel like moving a truck to get another vehicle free.
I decided to walk. In the cold, wet, weather. I had just changed my clothes to dry off from our previous endeavor and just didn't want to get all wet and rainy again. So I put my boots on without socks (because they would have required me to walk into my bedroom and that felt too difficult), threw on my bath robe, and grabbed one of the girl's umbrellas.
We can't skip closing the chickens. A predator could get into the egg-mobile and decimate our layers in one fell swoop if he/she saw fit. So walking I-a-went even though it was completely and utterly the last thing I felt like doing.
"The threat the farm has got on you, the one that keeps you running from can until can't, is this: do it now, or some living thing will wilt or suffer or die. It's blackmail, really." Kristin Kimball
Today, I added another item to my list of things I never thought I would do. #Icantbelievethisismylife. Today, I helped install a soffit. Now, granted, I didn't even know what a soffit was until I had installed it, but still ... I did it. (If I am being truthful, I am still not sure exactly what makes something a soffit and what makes it just part of a roof. But I'm going to add it to my resume just the same.)
Dad and JB feverishly working to the finish the new chicken brooder before half a thousand of those little guys arrive. We had an older brooder that we retired, and this one will be sturdy and "stand the test of time." I told John: "We shouldn't have torn down the other one until we built this one." He said: "If we didn't tear it down, we'd never build this one. Sometimes, you gotta 'throw your hat over the fence' a bit."
It's crunch time here on the farm. Summer is always crunch time. We have over 500 meat chickens arriving in just a few days. We have a brooder that is not finished. We must get it done before those baby chickens arrive. Like ... must. Like, not getting it done is notan option.
Which means: all hands on deck.
My hands aren't very good at building a brooder. So, instead, my job is to get other things done to alleviate the pressure on Gramps, Jacob, and JB. Things I normally wouldn't do myself on the farm, I'm trying to get done so that they don't have to worry about it. If I can solve it myself right now, I do. I leave the petty things to my own brain.
We used to school through the summer. We tried. But in the end we found that the summer is when the farm needs us. We need to be available to the farm during that time.
So, now, we will tie up our school year on May 28th. The kids are counting the days. Maybe I am too. Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart.
Yesterday I said to Jacob: "I wonder what I would do all day if I wasn't trying to educate my children."
I thought about it. I would read more. I would write more. I would farm more. I'd see my friends a little more. And maybe I'd watch a movie now and then. As it is, I watch zero TV or movies. If I have time, I'd rather read, or write, or sleep.
I keep wishing we didn't find ourselves in these farming predicaments. But weather slows us down. Mistakes slow you down. Other things pulling on your attention slow you down. And the truth is, a farm requires you to "up your game." You can use your own brooder forever. But it's falling apart. And it's wet. And the rats can get into it.
The fact is, a homestead, in its truest sense, is a BIG commitment. And it requires you to throw a lot of hats over the fence. You want sheep? You gotta just go and buy some. There is no going "half-in" on raising sheep.
Kristin Kimball wrote about what farming requires in The Dirty Life when she said:
“It’s
never the way you think it’ll be .... not as perfect as you hope or as
scary as you fear. A man we know bought up a big piece of good land
nearby, a second home, and once, at a dinner, I heard him say, ‘In my
retirement, I just want to be a simple farmer. I want ... tranquility.’
What you really want is a garden, I thought to myself. A very, very
small one. In my experience, tranquil and simple are two things farming
is not. Nor is it lucrative, stable, safe, or easy. Sometimes the work
is enough to make you weep. But most days I wake up grateful that I
found it — tripped over it, really — and that I’m married to someone who
feels the same way.”
She made this letter H in the garage with her big brother, Sidge. Seeing her pride, their teamwork, and the skills my children are acquiring here on the farm, makes my heart soar as a mother.
It isn't just the farming and outdoor skills. It's the fact that Grampa and Grama live here too, and Grama is going to do a Home Economics class with my boys next year.
Yes we are learning to read and doing math. As a former English teacher, I put great effort into the "book" education my children are receiving.
However, for the last 20 years (maybe more?) our society has gradually shifted to rewarding "book learning" and placing it "above" other work. We encourage it. All kids should try to go to college. They should get jobs. Real jobs.
Who decided what a real job was?
What is wrong with being a farmer? A welder? A mechanic? Why do we somehow view these jobs as "less than" professions?
Our country is facing a chronicwelder shortage. By 2024, we will be facing a deficit of 400,000 workers. This is because of welders aging out and new welders not entering the workforce at the same pace. This is because our country started encouraging everyone to go to college. The trade schools were deemed as a place where the "not-as-smart-kids" went. But welders average between $32 and 51,000 a year ... They usually make $17-$21 an hour. It isn't a shabby profession. And it requires less schooling, less debt, and guaranteed employment.
And yet, we don't encourage our children to be welders.
Why?
Kristin Kimball articulated my feelings on this topic nearly perfectly for me in her book The Dirty Life:
“I had come to the farm with the unarticulated belief that concrete things were for dumb people and abstract things were for smart people. I thought the physical world — the trades — was the place you ended up if you weren’t bright enough or ambitious enough to handle a white-collar job. Did I really think that a person with a genius for fixing engines, or for building, or for husbanding cows, was less brilliant than a person who writes ad copy or interprets the law? Apparently I did, though it amazes me now.”
What happened to learning how to cook? To forage? To build? To operate machinery? To tend animals? To kill those animals? To garden? To hoe? To fix an engine yourself? Welders. Boat mechanics. Plumbers. These are good professions.
Here's a video of my son, Sidge, learning how to drive our tractor. Sidge is a smart kid. He may want to go to college. But if he just wants to drive a tractor? That's okay too.
My husband went to college. So did his father. But his father has spent his career building and tending to homes as a contractor. They are currently using those skills (accompanied by our great friend, Jacob) to build a brooder behind our garage:
This brooder would cost soooo much more money to hire someone else to build it for them. But they don't need to because John's father has acquired skills that he has passed (and continues to pass) onto his children ..
Mr. Lloyd at our house today getting his stitches out (so sorry I got it sideways!)
I pull into the driveway to show Grama Joni the property our friend Anni bought. She purchased seven acres behind Mr. Lloyd's house last year, and in the next few months, she'll be leaving her home in Knoxville and spending her life here with us in Bulls Gap.
I have no idea how old Mr. Lloyd is. Like most of the older folks around here, their life story isn't the first thing they want to talk about. They laugh when you ask them their age. And many times, your questions are lost in the space between your mouth and their ear.
Mr. Lloyd with some of the fish he caught.
We see Mr. Lloyd, messing with a tree in his front yard. He sold that acreage to Anni to simply his life. "Less to mow," he told her in his "Lloyd-voice" a mixture of laughter and shyness all rolled into one.
But you wonder if he knows something. Is he simplifying life because he knows he's near the end of it?
He doesn't have children. We think he was married once, a long time ago. But we have no details. He has a girlfriend who comes around, and they seem to be good friends. He attends the tiny Presbyterian church across the street from his house with the other "veterans" of the area ... John's parents attend there also. Two-dozen folks all at least 70 years of age. Most of them raised their children in this church and then watched them leave the rural area for bigger things.
As I swing around his house to show Joni the property our friend Anni will be calling home, Lloyd comes waddling over. I say waddling because like many of these Appalachians in their later years who have spent their life doing hard-labor work, their knees are going. And it causes them to walk with their legs swinging a bit out to the side. I've grown used to the gait and don't really think much about it now ... unless I am writing in recollection. Like I am now.
Lloyd's face is drooping on one side. He dropped a muffler on his cheekbone last week, and John said he was really lucky not to hurt himself more than he did. With the blood thinners he is on, it could have been bad. Because Mr. Lloyd lives alone, he does carry an old cell phone -- which is more than a lot of the locals do. If you want to reach them, you call their house phone and wait for them to finally be in from their farm and answer.
The bruising after the muffler incident was so bad, Mr. Lloyd drove right over to see my ER-doctor-husband who initially let it be but later, put a few stitches into his face to remove the hematoma that was sort of "stuck" under his cheekbone.
(John often does medical consultations in the driveway for our elderly neighbors. They'll be sitting on their four-wheeler or side-by-side, and John will check them out from the seat of their farm vehicle.)
Lloyd will often catch fish for us in our pond, clean them, and hand them to Grama Mary: "I don't eat much fish," he'll say in his normal mixture of laughter and sing-song words. The fish is his way of "paying" for John's help. But he'd never say that. Neighbors here don't keep track of how they help each other our here.
Today, as I point to the goats peering through the fence at us in Anni's yard, Mr. Lloyd asks me if we eat lettuce. "Of course we do!" I say, and he pulls back a clear tarp and hands me a pair of scissors. "My hands don't work so good anymore," he says, "But you cut yourself out there some lettuce." Underneath are beautiful greens -- a basic romaine and a black-seeded Simpson -- more than he could ever eat himself. I know Lloyd doesn't spray his food at all so I begin cutting, and try to stop, and he tells me to keep going, and I keep cutting and keep handing it to Joni.
He tells me just to go home and squeeze some Mayonnaise directly on a piece and that it will be delicious.
The next night we will go home and Joni uses that lettuce to make a delicious salad -- avocado and tomato and mango mixed with Mr. Lloyd's greens.
And I think to myself: "How many people in our world have gotten to accept fresh lettuce from their elderly neighbor who was born and raised on the same street he now grows his lettuce on?"
And I think to myself: "I could never, ever, not live right where I am."
While home was never Tennessee and it certainly wasn't rural and prior to my late 30's I never ate anything that didn't come from the grocery store, the life here in Appalachia has now wound itself deep into my bones, and I know I can't ever live anywhere else.
I know the world pictures old racist white folks. But that isn't what these people are at all. They really don't care at all what someone looks like or what they do for a living or where they work. They just love their neighbors.
And feed them lettuce.
There is a culture here and a people here that sits so deeply inside me. I've lived and loved many other places. But as the sun sets on my farm, and I sit on the porch without TV or radio or the sound of anything but simply ... Earth ... I know I will die right here just like Mr. Lloyd will. I pray that there are young people around me who will come and eat the lettuce out of my garden that I hand them scissors to cut out because my fingers don't work so well either. I hope they will come see me and enjoy the silence and solitude with me.
Before I became a farm”her”, I had zero appreciation for hoses. How happy they could make you. Or how out of your mind they can make you. Or how expensive they are. Or how quickly they can get a hole. Or how important it is to purchase thicker hose. (Very hard concept for a cheapskate.)
Example of hose crisis: you have to run water to your sheep in the pasture. You get four hoses all lined up only to discover that hose three has an end that is slightly dented.
That slight dent means they won’t connect. So you swap it with hose four but it is also dented (which was why someone had picked it to be the end of the line) and now you can’t get water to your sheep without finding a whole ‘nuther hose.
That’s challenging enough on flat land. But we have tons of rolling hills.
Pulling hose and winding it up to move it is a better workout then CrossFit. Seriously. Don’t pay CrossFit. Pay me and come pull hose here at the Bauernhof.
Other lessons learned:
1. I still don’t understand how a very nice circle of hose can end up tangled.
2. Cold hose means it doesn’t cooperate even more than before.
3. Frozen hoses = really stinky.
4. Hoses a few feet short will make you scream up at the sky and do some sort of rain dance before trudging off for another hose somewhere. However, that hose won’t connect because we all know the end of the house is dented.
Oh and completely unrelated lesson learned: throwing a shovel of crappy hay into the wind is a bad idea. Don’t do it.
I've decided that my life is absolutely a reality show.
There are cameras.
I'm not sure where they are. But they are somewhere. I'm sure of it.
We had one of our favorite sheep: Tamarind, deliver a really big baby. That really big baby most likely was cleaned by Tamarind and got a first feeding before Tamarind's uterus prolapsed.
I heard excessive baa-ing from the sheep paddock this morning. John went to investigate. He found Tamarind in very bad shape.
So he brought Tamarind to the house.
Abigail is holding the baby lamb who is wanting milk -- badly. Tamarind is on the "operating room" table. (Which also happens to be where we eat dinner, but that's neither here nor there.)
In the end, they couldn't save Tamarind. John first tried to fix the prolapse. Then he considered doing a hysterectomy. In the end, they had to put her down. The good news is, we were able to take her to the processor so she will not be wasted. The other good news is, John said he learned a lot and thinks that maybe next time he will be able to fix the prolapse successfully.
The other good news is, we were able to hold piano lessons completely normally. Our piano teacher is a fantastic sport. She never seems phased by our reality TV lives!
My daughter Abigail snapped this picture this morning from under the comfort of our porch. It's far away and grainy, and I look far from my best, but it tells a story.
Our long-time wwoofer, Jacob, and I had moved our meat chickens and found three chickens that for unknown reasons were close to death. This is not completely uncommon -- especially as we near in on processing day. Often, we just put the birds down and drop them in the woods for the other animals to eat. We really strive to not have anything go to waste.
But this morning, Jacob had another idea. We could skin these chickens and cook them up for dog food. And in the process, I could learn how to skin birds.
I really did not feel like participating in this activity on this particular morning. But I am constantly learning and needing good teachers. Skinning is something I have never done so I told Jacob if he wanted to do it, I was game.
So after spending an hour on animal chores, we came back to the driveway and put these chickens down and then skinned and gutted them.
This picture was taken right after I skinned my chicken. I watched one and then did one.
Skinning was surprisingly easy. Way easier than I thought it might be. It took about ten minutes per bird from start to finish. Put the chicken down, skin the chicken, cut off head and feet and wings, and voila!you have free dog food.
These moments of new things are plentiful for me on the farm. And I can't help but have out-of-body experiences where I look down on myself from above and think: Is this really me? Am I really doing this? How did I get here?
The short answer:
I fell in love with a teenage boy who played mental chess with me for two decades and somehow subliminally convinced me that this is the place I wanted to live and raise my children.
Yesterday we processed 59 turkeys on the farm. Processing days are long and hard. We are on our feet a lot and are usually incredibly sore the next day.
But here's what we've learned in five years of processing chickens and turkeys:
COMMUNITY MAKES IT MORE FUN!!
We put on music and buy some junk food (the kids will do nearly anything for Gatorade!) and we simply enjoy spending time with each other.
We have one rule:
SHOW THE ANIMALS RESPECT!!
Outside of that, nearly anything goes.
This year we had our normal crew:
Our family of six
The grandparents
Kotynskis (so valuable!)
Jacob (family now!)
Anni (family now!)
Jessica & Bailee (this was their THIRD processing day!)
Erin Law & her two daughters!
That's 22 people. We worried this might be too many people, but it was anything but that. It was perfect. Everyone did their job and did it so well.
So what were our jobs?
Well, Isaac and I started off on the turkey catching portion of the job. Normally, when we do chickens, the kids do this entirely themselves. But these babies are BIG (like 15-25 pounds!) so we need an adult on this job. Here's a video of what this looks like:
About halfway through the day, I relinquished my job so that I could move into the garage and start working on packaging. We realized the tour chill tank was almost full of birds so we had to start moving some out. Here is a video of Erin Law taking over my job:
Erin Law and her daughter Allie took over catching. Little ol' Allie was actually able to catch and carry these guys over to the kill cones. We were so impressed. Here is a picture of Allie in action. This kid is a rock star when it comes to strength:
From there, the turkeys are killed, put in a scalper to loosen their feathers, and then put in a plucker to defeather them. Eddie and Did worked on the station to get the birds into the kill cones and put them down. (They were so big it took two people.) Gabe and Anni ran the scalded. Anni ran the plucker. And then they went to the table where Jacob and JB handled all the evisceration necessary to get to your table! Here is a video I took to show all the stations so you could get an idea of what is going on:
After that, Grama and a rotation of girls helps clean the bird of any feathers. Here are a few pictures of that process:
Abigail, Bailee, and Ana
Allie and Haley
Here is a video of Abigail teaching the never-been-a-farm-kid-but-quickly-learning-the-ropes-Bailee how to "quality control":
The girls also helped keep up on the chill tank. We use frozen jugs to ice our tank to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on ice. Here is a picture of the girls at the tank:
And here is a video of them moving a bird from the table to the chill tank:
We then went to the garage with the birds and Hannah Kotynski, myself, and a smattering of children helped package the birds and get them in the freezers. We had enough freezer space which was great news!
While all this was going on, Jessica Price was keeping the house in tip-top shape. With 22 people going in and out, it's taking quite a beating. But she kept people fed and happy and clean while we all worked outside.
We took 15 turkeys which would be broken down for the Kotysnkis and ourselves into ground meat and brought them into the house where JB broke them all down to grind the meat. Here's what that looks like:
Once again:
#Ican'tbelievethisismylife
But once again, I am amazed at how much more fun things are to do them with community. People make it fun! Teamwork makes you feel less alone.
I really hope we can keep this team together for the long haul! It was a great combo of people, and it went soooo great!!!
300 chickens on a Sunday. Processed 175 of those chickens. Total adults: 9 (Kotynski family, grandparents, Anni, and my friend Jessica and her daughter who helped keep all the people in the house in order!) Total children: 10 Started at 7am. Finished processing all the chickens by noon. Finished with all the packaging by 3pm. Finished with most "incidentals" by 5pm. I don't love processing chickens. But I do love getting all of our chicken FOR THE YEAR done in just eight weeks here on the farm. This coming Saturday will process the final 125. We keep 150. We sell 150. Those 150 we sell pay for the 150 we eat for the year. We try to make it a party. We eat junky food and play music and just try to make it the best time we can. One of the funnest things is to see the kids able to do harder and harder jobs each time we process. Sidge totally took over the heads/feet/gland cut-off station. And Gabe moved into eviscerating this time. In addition, Isaac was a ROCK STAR at chicken catching while the girls really helped with quality control (getting all the feathers off before they go into the chill tank.) Here's a video of Sidge doing "his thing." (This video is not for the squeamish!)
"I have no obligation to deal with slime."Terry Sanford
Arabelle has been sleeping on the porch each evening with her pups. I've debated leaving her gate open so she can potty as she does so choose, but that means I worry about the pups being exposed to any predators that are wandering our yard. So I choose to get up when she cries and let her do her business. And after she is done doing her business, I shut the gate back up to keep her and the little eight puppies safe. Last night, she left to go potty and wasn't coming back. I went to my bed and laid down. When I came back, I walked out onto the porch and stepped in something very wet and gooey. At first glance I thought it was poop. It was not. It was slug. I would have rathered it be poop. If you have never had slug slime stuck to your body, count yourself lucky. That stuff will not come off. And if you are lucky enough to have the slime perched between each of your toes, you are even more lucky. My only choice, at 3:30 in the morning, was to climb into the bathtub and grab a towel and begin to scrub slug slime from between my toes. Absolutely disgusting. Take it from me. I'll add that to my farming 101 book. Slugs. #Ican'tbelivethisismylife
"His love of food was part of what eventually led him to farming. The only way he'd be able to afford the quality of food he craved, he said, was to become a banker or grow it himself, and he couldn't sit still long enough to be a banker." Kristin Kimbally
The whole point of this farm was to raise food that we could eat. Food raised the way we thought it should be raised. I love this farm. I love our food. And I love that I married a man who can cook. Tonight he made a meal for us and these ingredients came from right outside our door: Heritage Pork Tenderloins Homemade Chicken Stock Homemade Turkey Stock Swiss Chard Bush Cherries Clove Currants Lemon Squash Pattypan Squash Music Garlic Red French Shallots Rosemary Genoese Basil Lemon Thyme Sage
"You know you own chickens when you watch them play in the yard more than you watch TV."
I find my Blog morphing. As my kids get older, I find that there "funnies" and "life" are a little bit more off limits. They will in fact even say to me, "Don't post that." Although I will share one funny from today. Abigail had two friends over. She wanted a piece of gum. I told her, "If you are going to have a piece of gum, you have to offer both of your friends one. It isn't nice to not share with guests. They'll feel bad." My little dry-witted Isaac piped in, "Unless it's broccoli." That made me laugh. Hannah also said today, "In Karate, the boys make the letter E sign with their hands." Very true. The sign for E and the bent finger move you make in Karate does have a lot of similarities. She also told me, "I either wake up when it is dark out or light out." Another very true statement. But I digress from what I started this Blog post to do. I wanted to show you what putting the animals to bed at night looks like. You have to do this at the just right moment. If you show up too early, the chickens will have not gone in their house. You can go too late, but then you need light (and a guard dog because it can get a little spooky wondering what is out there with you in the pitch black.) Here's what it looks like to put the chickens to bed at dusk on the farm:
And here is what it looks like to put the guineas to bed (in case you missed this post.) Many days I look at my friends in suburbia and think, what is their life like at dusk. It's different. But in the end, it's all about choices and what we decide to put our time into. I choose chickens.
