"Don't wear a bra; it will only collect detritus that you'll forget about until it litters your bathroom floor, shower drain, and washing machine."  July 2015 Hay Bucking Calendar Girls Recently, it was the Buck Moon, so named (according to Granny) for bucks growing new antlers this time of year. To me, it means hay bucking time. We have about 6 acres of hay that we have cut once a year. We don't spray herbicides but, instead, switchback across the hills pulling out weeds ahead of our neighbor's tractor. Remind me to come back to him in a later blog post. The only toxic weed we have to worry about is tansy but it is easily recognizable and even easier to pull out. Remind me to come back to that too.  A good place to roll in the hay. First, I'd like to share a few things I've observed over the three seasons I have spent making hay while the sun shines. I sprinkled in some dos and don'ts too for good measure. 1. Hay smells sweet and sneezy when it's growing in the field. But, when it's cut, it is knock-your-socks-off, let's-go-roll-in-the-hay, did-someone-spike-this-punch?, mother-smelling-baby's-head sweet. No one will think twice if you suddenly barrel roll down our hay field hollering, "I'm aliiiive!" after it's freshly cut. 2. The animals go crazy too. Last year we had four juvenile red tailed hawks, a blue heron, two owls, a pack of coyotes, and our dogs drunkenly gorging themselves on the newly exposed rodents and snakes. The hawks were like loud, underage teenagers who snuck into a dance club, embarrassing themselves with their catcalls and high-fives. 3. Don't wear your favorite black tank top on hay bucking day. 4. Don't apply sunblock willy nilly here and there. 5. Don't wear shoes with any gap large enough for a blade of grass to penetrate, including at the ankle. 6. Don't wear a bra; it will only collect detritus that you'll forget about until it litters your bathroom floor, shower drain, and washing machine. 7. Don't wear anything with pockets. See above. 8. Do design a magical hay bucking outfit that protects your arms and legs from scratches while simultaneously keeping you cool in 90+ degree sunshine, patent it, and sell it to hay farmers for an exorbitant price. We will buy it. 9. Do volunteer to be the person who stands on the truck bed, stacking the hay bales higher and higher. You can finally make use of those skills learned playing Tetris. Hot tip: Stack the second level perpendicular to the first so it hangs off the side of the truck bed, then stack the third, fourth, and fifth in a Mayan pyramid on top of that. 10. Avoid being the Mayan sacrifice if half the pyramid sloughs off when the truck makes a sharp right. Remember to tuck and roll. 11. Remind the person throwing the hay bales up to you to bend at the knees and could they please try to land it twine side up and would they mind handing you that water bottle? Thaaanks! 12. Do lay back and watch the blue sky while the truck bounces across the field. You are sailing on a cloud ship. You are Laura Ingalls in a hay wagon. You are star dust, accumulated miraculously for this one moment in time and never again. Quit daydreaming and get back to work. 13. Do leave enough space between bales in the barn to allow room for air flow, rodent nests, and inexplicably lost hand tools. Rodents are better than spontaneously combusting barns. 14. Don't get your foot caught in those spaces when you've stacked the bales five-high. 15. Do leave a stair step to the top of the barn pile so you can reach the top bales and collect the cool owl pellets and bat corpses for later dissecting. The top corners of barns are like secret natural history museums. 16. Do have an eight year old keep count of the bales. 17. Do keep your own count in your head. 18. Do sell your additional bales out of the field. Let your customers do the lifting. 19. Do use the "clean and jerk" method for lifting and tossing bales up high. This tip comes from my husband and I have no idea what it means. I assume those of you with more experience in weight lifting will understand? Personally, I like the "grab, grunt, heave, push, try-not-to-fall-over" method. 20. Twenty is a nice round number, but I really don't have anything else to say about hay.  Prepackaged winter meals for the hungry ruminants in your life.
0 Comments
Maybe this is a good time to teach you the secret art of reusing baling twine. Our bales are in small, 50ish pound rectangles bound tightly with two orange lengths of twine. I don't really understand how the mechanical baler ties those knots. I think there are little elves inside. The twine itself is some sort of polyvinyl petroleum product that will outlast us all. So, it's important to find secondary uses for them once you've snipped those ties with the nearest handy sharp object and tossed the desiccated grass to your eager ruminants.
The first step is to collect the twine in a designated place so it is ready for whatever future project you need it for. Do not leave the twine in any grass, lettuce patch, blackberry bramble or other plant matter where it will become entangled and lost until the lawnmower finds it. I would never do that. Likewise, don't leave it on the barn floor to trip your spouse or drape it across their bike wheel or the cab of their truck or under their pillow. And, in seriousness, don't leave it where your animals will eat it because it can block their intestines. I've heard some sad stories. The second step is to make some stuff with your twine. Here are some ideas:  The Starfighter makes sense. Keep reading. 1. Tomato trellis. This design can be used for a single or double row of tomatoes. It is a build-as-it-grows design and will end up looking like a crazy twine-spinning spider has made its web through your maters. Pruning the leaves off the center of your plant will help air flow and prevent mold.
2. Plan a Straight Fence Line: The shortest distance from Point A to Point B sometimes needs a map. Instructions: Push stakes in the ground where your corner posts will be (Points A and B). Tie lengths of baling twine together into one long rope. Tie the rope to the stakes. Voila. You can also use this to plant straight garden rows if you are a control freak as well as an obsessive compulsive baling twine hoarder. I wouldn't know about either of those things, obviously.
3. Crochet a Rug. Need a primitive, chabby chic, utilitarianique (my term, copyrighted) place to wipe off your Wellies? Instructions: Baling twine is sturdy stuff. Tie the lengths together and wind the whole rope into a ball. Learn to crochet (just ask Granny). Crochet a rug. Don't worry about the long ties. They add character. (Pretend I took a picture of a baling twine rug. At this point, it's still in the design phase...) 4. Use Baling Twine for Everything Else. Tie a sack closed. Keep a gate open. Keep a gate closed. Cinch a bed roll. Wrap a present. Tie your hair back. Replace the leash your dog lost. Play chase with your cat. Make a peanut butter rap trat, I mean rat trap. Tie a tarp down. Cinch up your fat pants that are only good for gardening now. Expand the buttonhole of your skinny pants. Hang a cabbage for your chickens to peck. Zigzag twine through the holes of a cattle panel to keep your bull-headed alpaca from sticking his head through and getting it stuck. Curse the twine and the alpaca when it doesn't work. Crochet a hammock. Weave a basket. Patch the cane of your old chair. Embroider a detailed replica of the unicorn tapestries. Give it to your kids and tell them to go outside and use their imagination. I hope this How-To Hoe Down has inspired you to hoard twine like a pro and justify that hoard to your spouse and perhaps remind them of their own torn up T-shirt hoard if they still give you grief. See you next time.
Count off time. Let's see a raise of hands from my fellow aspiring homesteaders: How many of you have learned a major life skill from YouTube? WikiHow? My online search history reads like a homestead improvement library shelf, if such a heavenly place exists: "How to... make apple cider vinegar, ... whitewash a chicken coop, ... tat, ... sprout fodder, ... make herbal salves, ... replace a sill plate, ... cut hay with a scythe, ... decoct essential oils" When my husband asks what I'm watching, I tell him my "farm porn."  Yep, found the recipe online. Works wonders on humans and creatures alike. It might not be romantic, but I think the internet age is saving small scale agriculture. Many of us growing slow food are learning skills our grandparents would have considered common sense. OK, I don't know if every grandparent knew how to decoct essential oils but I bet they knew how to boil an egg (Yes, I did look it up once. Bring the eggs, a pinch of baking soda, and room temperature water to a rolling boil. Remove from heat and let sit 11 minutes. Transfer to ice water. You're welcome). Whether the culprit was megafarm mechanization or refrigerated transportation or genetic engineering or a globalized economy or the culture of upward mobility -- whatever is to blame, the accidental consequence was an entire generation of farmers skipped. Young folks fled the farms or just couldn't make a go of it. Opportunities beckoned from the cities. Comfortable suburban living was just a bulldozed farm away.  Found photograph The problem is, with that generation gap, we carved a gaping hole in our collective knowledge. Grandparents might have told stories from their farming past but rarely did those stories include detailed instructions for propagating grape scions or floating horse teeth. Parents were no longer teaching by example the proper way to prune a cherry tree versus an apple tree or rotate a crop with nitrogen fixers or cure nuts or dye wool. As my grandma once said, "Young people today would never survive another Great Depression. They only know how to push buttons."  Andy teaching Hazel his love for honeybees. I know. I know. I can hear some of you clamoring to prove me wrong, shaking your 5th generation farmer heads. I know I'm generalizing. Plenty of you learned to buck hay from your daddy or can peaches with Aunt Trudy. I can't tell you how many people stepped forward with their own fond memories of a childhood on the farm when I was trying to buy our farm. I heard all about their summer jobs picking beans and raspberries, of lambing season and butchering season. But, by and large, they were telling these stories on a lunch break from their city job or across their desks at banks, dentist offices, bus terminals, etc. The nostalgia in their stories revealed to me how far removed those experiences were from their lives today.
 Above: A painting by my grandma of one of the houses they built in California. Below: The house as it stands today. My mother's parents were farmers in Oklahoma. The Great Depression drove them to California a la The Grapes of Wrath. Grandpa became a union carpenter (by reading a how-to pamphlet, I might add) and Grandma kept house, sewing clothes for her three baby boomer daughters. They counted their pennies and their blessings and, honestly, their grudges too. They built several houses themselves and dabbled in every trade and hobby that "tickled" them, from painting and woodworking to cake decorating and hunting. They traveled the world in retirement and brought back souvenirs and stories of new friendships from China, Egypt, India, and beyond. Their grandsons were all taught to fish and I, the only (and favorite) granddaughter, was taught to sew and crochet because fish guts were icky, duh. The proudest achievement of my grandmother and the quality most valued in her "offspring," as she called us all, was education. She was the first in her family to graduate high school and my mother was the first to graduate college. I was praised above all else for being smart. Farming and homemaking skills seemed somewhat irrelevant, even backward, in this modern world that changed so dramatically over their lifetime. I hope I don't sound blameful here. Our family was just balancing on the same tectonic shift that everyone else in the twentieth century was navigating. How do you raise your kids with the skills you think they'll need when the ground keeps changing under your feet? Also, my stellar education has done nothing but open doors for me. I can still conjugate in Latin and I can hold my own at a dinner party with scientific study-quoting, English literate, art historian egg heads. Try me. Now that I'm raising a daughter, I am acutely aware of how precious education is, what a privilege to be born at a time when girls have the right to choose the direction of our lives and are given the tools to do so.
Had I shown an early interest in gardening or cooking, I'm sure my grandma would have gladly helped me learn. Had I pointed to a wood planer in my grandpa's wood shop, rather than the cool little wood spirals it left on the floor, I'm sure he would have showed me how to use it, rather than shooing me out with my handful of wooden macaroni (which made awesome mermaid hair, BTW). But my interest came too late. How I wish my grandpa was still here to help me with our barn repairs. I hear him turning over in his grave every time I hammer a nail in crooked. My biggest regret is not asking them more questions. Now, as I try to wrap my head around how to mend a split corner post or raise a wall to repair a foundation, I am left feeling totally inept. The tasks that Grandpa tackled with a cheerful whistle are the most daunting to me now. I know I am willing and capable of learning (I am "smart," right?) but I'm also smart enough to know when I'm in over my head. So now, when it's shearing time or I want to make my own beeswax candles, I crawl onto Granny Google's soft lap and type in my query: "How to... halter train, ... stretch a field fence, ... fell a tree."
 Hanging out my dirty laundry, so to speak. A blog is an inherently egotistical enterprise, as is any memoir or self portrait or even just rolling out of bed, polishing up the various unruly bits and stinking up the world with opinions and status updates and the like. It all makes me a bit uncomfortable, this "having a voice" business. But, at the same time, I can't seem to shut up so a blog seems like another good medium for making a fool of myself. (Side note: As I write this, a slender spider is starting its morning web beside me. As it spins and weaves for its survival, I could swear it was doing so with a little self-satisfied flare. Its long legs are curling around its thread in a delicate dance that can only be described as joyfully self-aware. OK, maybe it could be described differently but this is my blog and I am trying to justify this exercise in narcissism so I say that even the spiders enjoy some healthy self admiration.) So, what direction should I point this shiny, new blog? What great wisdom should I impart? With what amusing anecdotes shall I entertain? Do the people of the world need my recipe for Savory Pie a.k.a. Harvest Quiche a.k.a. "That Again, Mom?" (Comment your vote) Should I detail the clumsy (and costly) path of dumb luck that led me to this charming farm with its beautiful, crumbling old barn and its fickle trickle of a creek? Or should I thank the people who didn't openly laugh when I told them our plan for living off the land? (I'm lookin' at you, Mom and Dad). Well, this is a homesteading blog on our farm's public website, so I'll at least try to temper my opinions on foreign affairs (of which I have a lot) and on Hollywood gossip (of which I have none). Any future fashion category will be limited to Carhartts (who need to improve their women's line, BTW) and Bogs Boots (which go with absolutely anything, I say). Likewise, any horoscopes will be plagiarized directly from the Farmer's Almanac. I might also have some Feng Shui design ideas for stuffing old feed sacks into every possible corner and for reusing baling twine to engineer chic tomato trellises, gate latches, and hair ties. And, as my favorite shovel knows, I've also got plenty of material for some head-in-the-clouds philosophizing and some down-to-earth moralizing, You wouldn't believe the ideas one can dream up (and mutter) while turning a compost pile. So stay tuned, people. This blog feels like it might get real Ladies' HomeSTEAD Companion on you, complete with an inadvisable advice column. Why not? I'm always writing down the profoundly absurd quotes from my life that should perfectly illustrate some questionable parenting tips, marital advice, and survival techniques (the latter two being mostly interchangeable). My family says (nervously) that they're willing and this is a family farm, so it's perfectly on topic. I'll leave you today with a little teaser of what's possible to come: A Quote from Barn on the Creek Farm to Illustrate the Art of Crisis Management: Tune in next time, patient readers. I'll be sure to anthropomorphize more invertebrates and detail the cost/benefit analysis of DIY fence-building. SPOILER ALERT: Staples for fence post-inflicted head wounds cost $750; no lasting brain trauma: priceless.
Let me introduce myself. I'm Becca, head gardener, poop scooper, and public relations associate at Barn on the Creek Farm. You'll recognize me by my ever present garden accessories: I always wear an assortment of blisters, calluses, and sunburns to get the job done.
I've been gardening to feed my small household for fifteen years and every year I think, Gee, I wish my garden was bigger. This year's vegetable garden is planted with a row of hard-lessons-learned, a patch of let's-try-this-new-way, and a whole crop of oops-that-worked-out-wells. My favorite tools are my strong but well worn back and my rusty old stick-to-it-iveness. The mustard needs picking and the coop needs cleaning, so my first blog post is short. I'm glad to meet you and I hope you come back. |
The Happy Farmers, Andy, Becca, and Hazel.
Tintype photo by Giles Clement
AuthorSome people buy a gym membership. I haul 25 pound bags of alpaca manure a quarter mile up a hill to my garden. (And I like it). Archives
April 2019
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
Proudly powered by Weebly