Shearing Day

Valley View Ranch on the Lower North Fork Mattole River, in Petrolia

Just before our vacation, I was called for shearing day at the Sweet family's Valley View Ranch. It takes a lot of hands to complete all the work needed to complete the annual clip. The sheep are sorted and gathered before the crew and shearers show up. 

Ewes gathered and ready to be sheared.

Brian shearing one of the 120 he sheared that day.

Brian, from Ireland, arrived without his shearing partner, who had had a livestock emergency and had to return home. Once he got started, we had plenty of people to keep up with the skirting, which is the cleaning off of the really funky and gross wool on the edges of the fleece: poop, brambles, insects, seeds, leg hair, and sometimes, even pieces of barbed wire. Shearing day this year was hot and dry, but it's fun work, full of a lot of teasing and camaraderie, as we wade through piles and piles of wool.

After skirting, the fleeces are bundled up in a baler that stuffs them into a bag for transportation to the wool pools, where they will be sorted and sold.

Brian single-handedly sheared 120 sheep that first day. Hats off to Brian!

Before the fleeces go to the market pile, if, as I'm skirting I find one I like the feel of, I pull it aside. I select fleeces that appear in good condition that also feel soft. It's a very qualitative process. Some of them feel coarse and dry, while some feel buttery and light, and these are the fleeces I want to turn into yarn. Next week, I'll begin working on the more detailed skirting, to prepare for sending the fiber to the mill.

Skirting fleeces in the shade.

Ewes finished being sheared. They always seem traumatized, but once they get let out, they frolic and jump,
and are so happy to be done and, I think, relieved to be free of their winter coats.

Chicken Egg Surplus

On our return from vacation, the chickens have ramped up their egg laying such that we're back to a surplus. We are getting 15-17 eggs a day. One of the main permaculture ethics is to turn a surplus into a resource. So we've been doing just that, selling our extra 4-5 dozen a week, to contribute to our feed costs. Then we can subsidize our three dozen a week habit, and continue to enjoy all things egg: deviled eggs, quiche, souffle, benedict, and pancakes.

Now I know why we have that tradition of doing stuff with eggs at Easter! The chickens are in full out production mode.

Chickens as Garden Tools

That concentration of chickens are in the raspberry bed, working their magic. In the background, you can see where they cleared last year's summer garden to dirt, where the black irrigation lines are.

Here's another two gals, working in the bed. The upright sticks are the raspberry crowns, and you can see that AAAAALLLLL around them are weeds. That's the white electric fence in the background.

A few months ago, we finally got around to purchasing a moveable, electrified poultry fence for our chickens. This not only expanded their available foraging area, but now allows us to move them around our orchard and garden area to where they might be most useful. Their natural scratching habit lightly cultivates the soil, they find and eat weeds, grass, and bugs, slugs, and snails, and then they poop, fertilizing the area in their wake. It's a pretty cool equation.

Just before we left, we moved the fence to enclose part of last year's garden. It was already overgrown with weeds and grass. In the six weeks we were gone, they brought that entire area down to bare dirt. I don't really recommend this as a general practice, but it's pretty amazing what they did.

So just today, I was pruning back my raspberry canes, since I never quite got to it in the fall, and the crowns were very grown in with our sheep sorrel weed and several types of grass. None of our grass species is very easy to deal with. They are all very difficult to remove, especially once they crop up in the root ball of a plant you want to keep. I was feeling a little overwhelmed with it until I thought, "hey, this is what the chickens are for!" So I enclosed the area, and immediately, the birds went right for the raspberry area, since there is mulch under there. They scratched and scratched down to bare dirt. Once they do that, I can remove them by moving the fence again, and then mulch heavily. Bye bye, weeds and grass. I'll post another photo in a little while so we can see how it's changed.

Baby Sweaters

For some reason, I haven't really mentioned anything about my knitting obsession on this blog before, but it went into high gear last fall, when I helped host a knitting workshop for beginners and intermediates. I've been knitting since I was about 9 or 10 years old, but I've only begun attempting actual projects in the last 6 years or so.

These last two years or so, I've started knitting baby sweaters for all the cuties being born around these parts. This one above I love, it's so warm AND has a hood. Essential for Mattole babies.

I've also been knitting socks, hats, scarves, fingerless gloves, and I even tried a pair of mittens. I don't know why, but following instructions to create something just lights me up. Weird. I know. But fun.

I'm so excited about it that I've started contemplating raising my own fiber animals so I can raise some of my own yarn. We have a great local fiber artist who knows a lot about it. We've discussed what it might look like to get a local fiber cooperative going, and to create a micro brand of yarn. A fun pastime, contemplating what's possible, and how delightful it would be to knit with locally-raised Mattole yarn.

Fall Garden

The fall garden in the Mattole is really where it's at. All you Central Valley peeps have your tomatoes in June, and all you Calistoga folks have your corn seven feet tall by 4th of July, but on the coast, here in the Mattole hole, we have the September/October garden peak. I tend to forget this, when nothing is ready by our Leo Party in August, when my aunt asks me what is ready. Usually only cucumbers. And she doesn't like them.

But once things fully dry out in the indian summer, and the sun is low and hot, we start our tomato pump, and the zucchini ride, and the corn is happening too fast to eat it all, and we STILL have cucumbers. And the winter squash is almost done, and the raspberries and strawberries are still happening, the green beans are still giving 4-5 pounds every three days, and the eggplant has at last begun to make fruit, and the peppers are even turning red, THEN I remember why I labor over those little seeds in flat, struggling to keep them warm in March, when they really should be snug in their seed packets in the shed.

All that, and we already have some of our winter crops, like carrots and beets. It's really a tremendous feeling of abundance to have all this food coming steady out of the garden. We've got extra people here, and we are not short on veggies. I don't really need to buy anything at the store but avocados, lettuce, and cabbage. And we'll have some of our own here soon.

And did I mention the egg machine? If you want eggs all winter, it's imperative to have April chicks, because they will lay eggs through their first winter. At the last minute this year, I bought 12 more laying hen chicks one April day when I was in town. Barred Rock beauties. We've been seeing a few pullet eggs here and there for a few weeks, but two days ago, we suddenly came in with 16 eggs in one day. Usually, we get 7-9. But now we have overlap, the new girls are all beginning to lay, and the old gals haven't quit for the winter yet. Hello, souffle!

I haven't posted a recipe in ages, but here's a summer favorite, to use up some of these veggies:

Cucumber-Cherry Tomato Salad

4-5 sweet garden-fresh cucumbers, cut in half, and sliced

2 handfuls Sungold cherry tomatoes, cut in half

2 sprigs fresh basil, chopped

~ 1/8 cup fine olive oil, or to taste

~ 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, or to taste

~ 1/4 tsp. salt

a few dashes of toasted sesame oil

Mix together in a bowl, and enjoy heartily, around a table filled with family and friends. There really is a lot of latitude with this recipe, I make it a little differently every time, and the quantities of dressing are VERY inexact. Do what tastes right to you, the basic flavors carry through. Bon appetit!

Chicken Egg Jackpot

A few days ago, Ella and I went out to the chicken run to let them out of their stylish, turquoise horse-trailer coop, and lo and behold, there was an egg lying quietly next to the chicken water dish. Oooo! Ella, Look! So we collected it, and I was SO delighted that our little hens have begun to lay eggs!

For weeks, we've been hearing the characteristic call the chickens make when they have laid an egg, but we haven't yet found any. We would rush out and have a look around the coop and the run, and walk away empty handed. But the best part of the above story is that later in the day, when I went to make a delivery of kitchen scraps to my grateful feathered buddies, I noticed an egg near the back of the trailer, and when I bent down to pick it up, I noticed a whole PILE of eggs under the bumper of the trailer! There were a whole dozen in all, two of which Ella broke before we got them all put away in an egg carton.

So the next morning, I had my first all homegrown breakfast from our land, some fresh tomato cooked into home grown scrambled eggs. Mmmmm. Nothing like it.

Here's to chickens and their fabulous ability to create so much useful resource for us humans.

The OTHER Downside of Animal Husbandry

...is when one of your animals didn't get the message about how to treat the other animals. And, especially when this doesn't happen at a convenient moment. This one hen kept getting out of the chicken pen, and this morning, the dog, in trying to herd the bird, mortally wounded it. On my way back from the house site, with Ella in arms, the two of us preparing to go to pre-school, I caught a glimpse of the dog carrying a chicken in her mouth.

Ooooooo, bad dog! She dropped it, and I went to catch the chicken, who had run back to the pen, and when I caught her saw a large flesh wound that wasn't going to heal. So Drew had to quit what he was doing and dispatch her, and butcher her, while I took Ella to school. I guess we'll be having chicken for dinner tonight. Darn it, it was a hen, too.

I guess we'd better figure out how the chickens are getting out.

The Downside of Animal Husbandry

When we brought home our chicks last April, we knew some of them would be roosters, but that only one could stay. Too many testosterone-touting red-combed dude chickens are bad news for the ladies of the house. They argue, and take out their frustrations at not being top dog on the hens, trying to prove who's who. And they all crow, which some feel to be a rather endearing and acceptable trait. But when you live 100 feet away in a tent, and one of them wakes up because the moon is full at 2 AM, let alone when ALL of them wake up at the crack of dawn like they're supposed to, the matter takes on a little extra urgency.

So at last, today, our three "extra" roosters met their maker. Neither of us thought it was a good idea to let Ella witness the actual slaughter (though we could have an interesting discussion another day about whether or not this is so), so I took her out visiting, while Drew stayed home to operate the guillotine. Which brings me to the "downside" of animal husbandry. The remaining chickens are terrified of us.

Many people try to intimate that "lower" beings have no feelings, don't think any advanced thoughts, or grieve, etc. There are many variations on this theme. But the mood in the chicken pen this afternoon is decidedly morbid, as though they are mourning for their lost comrades, even though they were a pain in the rear. When I went out with a bucket of kitchen scraps, they all took cover under their trailer. Ordinarily, the moment they see the silver bowl from a long ways off, they come running to the door, eager to see what goodies I have brought. Not today.

The problem, for me, is my ability to empathize with their grief and discomfort. If someone came and mysteriously removed several members of my family, I probably wouldn't feel comfortable either. I might not have an appetite. And yet, we need to eat. I have dabbled in vegetarianism, for many years, and find that my body cannot adequately do what it needs to do without meat. I have been buying chicken from the store, but I would rather grow it here, on our own land, and treat it right until the moment of its death, than buy the meat from a bird that never saw the open sky, even if it was allowed to "free range" shoulder to shoulder with thousands of other chickens in a barn. The obvious choice is to raise the chickens with integrity and love, and offer them an honorable passing.

I've roasted one of the three for our dinner this evening. For me, it always causes a more measured pace and style of eating, to eat what you have known when it was alive. We will surely honor tonight's rooster, in the many ways it has enriched our life, and the ways in which it will allow us to continue to enrich our own lives. I give thanks for the multiple ways in which the land continues to feed us.

Incidentally, as the photos show, when Ella and I returned home, Drew had finished plucking the chickens, but had not yet gutted and cleaned them. I set to work immediately removing pin feathers, while Drew did the butchering. Ella was not in the least bit disturbed by this part of the process, and we had a very real and hands on kind of anatomy study. She asked about why we were eating these, and were these our roosters? And we explained that too many roosters aren't good for the flock. She wanted to try touching the chickens. She wanted to hold the feet. I guess we'll cover the earlier part of the process when she's older.

A Herding Dog With a Job

Our poor little herding dog, Acer, has had to tolerate our boring, slow-moving, exasperated selves since she was a wee pup. Before she met our neighbor's herding dog, who has an obsession with chasing aerial critters (i.e. birds), she was somewhat satisfied with racing after tennis balls and frisbees, when we found some time to indulge her. But for at least the last calendar year, we have been saying to each other, "Poor Acer, she really needs some goats or SOMETHING to herd".

She chases the barn swallows, who are nesting in our shed eaves, and who fly recklessly about. She chases the frequent Turkey vultures as they wobble overhead. She chases the hawks and the kites, and the songbirds who hide in the bushes. She DOES manage to keep the deer out of the garden, but they still manage to snip the tips off of our escallonia while she sleeps peacefully on the porch of the shed in her doggie bed. If we ignore her for too long, she will take off on her own adventure, as if to say, "To heck with you, I'M going for a walk."

Well, you can imagine the delight of this little herding dog, when she discovered we had chickens. We've been a little worried from the get-go, since she killed two of Cedar's unsuspecting chickens who were free-ranging when Drew showed up an unleashed Acer. When ours were three-day old fluffballs, Acer froze, quivering over the box, with drool dripping out of her licking lips. Uh-oh. When we moved them to the shed, she would race over everytime we opened the door, and intensely stare, shivering with concentration and excitement. When she is in this state, she loses most of her ability to hear our commands.

Now that we have moved the chicks outdoors into a fenced run, Acer spends most of her day "pointing" and then running a lap around the birds, presumably to gather them up. Unless they're right next to the fence, they don't seem too bothered, and our little herding dog AT LAST has something to round up. I call it "dog television". Happy happy dog...I'm not sure it's sinking in, but I am attempting to continue working on training, asking her to lie down and stay until I release her with "OK!" to run her lap around the coop. It remains to be seen what would happen if she could actually touch one with her nose. Maybe we shouldn't explore that.

Outdoor Chickens

Yesterday, our feathered friends experienced unadulterated sunlight for the first time. Ahhhhh. I think they really like it. They were a little unsure of the journey from the shed to their newly-configured horse trailer-turned-coop in the plastic tub, seven to the wall. But not long after they arrived, they began to venture out the door, exploring the smorgasbord of fresh grass seed, insects crawling in the dirt, and anything else remotely edible. Ella had a great time, talking to them, and offering them freshly pulled grass.

The real test came at dusk, whether they would know to go inside the trailer or not. Only 4 were hiding under the chassis when I went out there to close them up.

I am so excited about our chickens! I'm excited for eggs and meat, and tillers, and compost makers. However, I don't think I'm nearly as excited about them as Acer, our dog is. At last, this little herding dog has a job. She is so committed to it that she is forgetting to eat. Lick the pan from a roasted chicken? NO WAY, man, I gotta herd the chicks!

The CHICKS Have Arrived!

I took my first solo town trip since Ella was born last Friday. I had a doctors appointment, and our chicks were scheduled to arrive at a local feed store.

While I was waiting to be seen at the clinic, I got a call from the feed store...they said, "The hatchery shorted us 20 chicks, so we're calling everyone to come as soon as you can, and it's first-come, first-served at this point." **ARG** Well, I'd already been waiting a half hour, so I asked at the window when I would be seen. The surly desk attendant phoned to the bowels of the clinic, and nodded, and hmmmed, and uh-huh'ed, and hung up. "It's going to be at least another half hour". Well geez. I decided to go pick out the chicks, lest they get snatched by someone else.

When I got to 3G's, they still had 17 of the 25 buff orpington hens we had ordered. I then randomly chose seven more birds from the mixed breed brooder box. Two of them are roosters for sure, but the other five are anyone's guess. Hope they turn out to be hens. I picked pretty looking ones, it will be interesting to see what they turn out like. While I was choosing them, the phone rang again, and the clinic receptionist told me "They're ready to see you now." It had only been 12 minutes.

They had quite a wild day, driving all over the county, culminating in a trip over the Wildcat on their way back to the ranch here. They took it all in stride, and though it probably wasn't a very good idea, I couldn't help but hold a few of them while I was hurtling down the highway at 65 mph.

All but one are doing really well. It's kind of like having newborn around, just a little. They need a constant temperature of 95, and continuous supply of food and water. We've been experimenting with lodging and lights, litter, trays and hot water bottles. We doubled their brooder by attaching a second box, with a door cut through it...now they have a bedroom with a warm light, and a living room with the food and water. They are really fun to watch! They already scratch in the food, and peck at specks that they think might be bugs, and they zip around unexpectedly when spooked. My favorite is when one of them falls asleep in the food dish, just lays down and droops it's head, and closes its eyes. There is sure to be more chicken writing in the months ahead. Stay tuned!