Stella mooves on

Stella has found a new home with a wonderful family in the nearby town of Granite Falls. Here she is being led to the trailer. It was not an easy decision, but one that should put us in a better place to work on all the other aspects of Seven Trees we have planned. Having a milk cow was a great experience, but with both of us working full time, we were running full speed to keep up. We may look for another cow in the future, but for now we'll enjoy working with Gemini and raising the two boy cows.
Now it's time to get ready for winter. We expect first frost any night now, and most of the garden has been harvested. We're both suffering from some horrific cold/flu bug, so the chore list is much too long for the time we have. With the economy going nuts, planning nexts year's garden is even more crucial. We'll be evaluating veggie varieties that we have tried to see what we want to repeat, and eagerly awaiting new seed catalogs for new things to try.

August = chores!

Yet another load of hay stashed in the garage. Some really nice fescue/orchardgrass that the critters approve of heartily. We have a pretty good menu of various cuttings and grass varieties to accommodate the needs of all our herbivores. I wouldn't mind having a round bale dumped in the barnyard to give them something to snack on between meals. With just one of us taking care of the place for the next 6 weeks, every shortcut helps.
Here's Princess Stella having a pedicure. Too bad we didn't get the lifting process on video. The metal stall part starts out upright. She walks into it and gets lifted and turned with heavy duty slings.
The giant "bolt cutters" take off the bulk of overgrown hoof, then she gets her nails filed with a hand-held grinder. She wasn't too thrilled with the process, but she looks great now. There aren't too many people willing to come work on just one cow, so finding such a skilled and friendly trimmer was a huge relief. Email us at the info link or post a comment if you want his contact info for cow trimming in Whatcom County.

Beets! These are Early Wonder Tall Top, a new variety for us this year. The greens are just ok for eating, but the beets themselves are really tasty, and even better pickled. I still blanched & froze the greens anyway, since come winter we'll be happy for any "free" veggies we can get. We've been harvesting chard, kohlrabi, the last of the lettuce, carrots, cukes (8 quarts of dill pickles so far), a few Stupice tomatoes, Anaheim & Islander peppers, and of course lots of potatoes. The Reddales are about ready to dig up completely, and the Island Sunshine & Ozette fingerlings are not far behind. The garlic is harvested and drying, green beans are getting a late start but starting to shape up, and the corn looks very happy so far.
Got the trim on the back corners of the run-in installed. Now Gemini & Ryder have a lpace to get out of rain & wind and still have lots of fresh air. We'll keep fancying it up later this year though.
Stella and Doug, posing for the camera. The vet didn't think she's pregnant, but we think she is. With Dexters, sometimes the fetus is too small to feel so early, so there is a margin for error on his diagnosis. We could do a blood test to be sure, but we'll just wait & see. She's weaning Doug right now, and will all we have going on this summer, I decided to stop milking. There just isn't time to do twice a day milking, and I also don't want to deal with the bellowing that will commence once they are separated. We got 5 good months of milking, and later I'll post a grand total of how many gallons we got over how many days. I'm still pondering how I want to milk next time. I'd like to milk longer, but the convenience of letting the calf do most of the work is very tempting. We are back to buying milk. It's raw, local Jersey milk from Jackie's Jerseys. Tasty, but nowhere near as rich as Stella's.

Here's Ryder, modelling the new stanchion. He got dehorned Friday, and his shots. He's settling in ok, and we've been walking him and working with him, and enjoying the learning process of training a bull calf.

If mama's not happy... nobody's happy!

But this little bull packs a wallop too. This is young bull Ryder... small and cute you say? Yes, but also between 320 and 370 pounds, well over 2 to 2 1/2 times my weight. Something I became all too familiar with when he escaped his digs the other night when mama cow Stella had a yelling fit middle of the night this week. The episode was so traumatic, had us both rethinking cattle all together...

The mistress of malfeasance herself with her not so much a baby anymore Douglas. Stella is locked away from Douglas at about 5:00 PM on milking days so we can get that evening's milk come 4:40 AM the next day. Well Ms. Stella has been starting to self-wean Doug, so she isn't letting him nurse much at all, which means her bag gets full and uncomfortable very fast. Sometime between 2:00 and 3:00AM Monday night Stella started yelling for Doug for just that reason, and him being locked away meant he couldn't respond. Of course we woke up at the squalling as no doubt half our neighborhood did. A bellowing cow has the volume of something between a full volume trombone and a ferry horn. She's was very LOUD and very upset. All the excitement and stress got new bull baby Ryder completely worked up. When I went out to check on why all the noise was happening in robe with flashlight in hand that was all too much for Ryder who bolted through a hot wire behind his pen. Unfortunately, I'd had to unplug it to go out and check on everyone. Ryder tore through several other paddocks, tearing down the fence all the way as he tried to get to Stella in the ajoining paddock. I think he was close enough to having been weaned that he sees her as mom, and was more than happy to come help her out by nursing if he could get to her. He was pretty scared no doubt of course as well, being in strange new place. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me he had a rope halter with a trailing rope still on and Stella is in a hard fence paddock, so he bounced off that fence, and I was able to get close enough to grab the trailing end. The fight was on as Ryder wanted nothing to do with a scary human in nothing more than her robe, carrying a blinding flashlight. He bolted and I hung on, and on, and on. I got drug around pretty good a few times, but would then get to my feet and brace against him. There were a few times we'd both stop and pant, each staring at one another, straining on our respective lead rope ends. Not sure if any one else remembered, but there was actually a meteor shower that evening, so as I sat straining on the rope, several of them shot across the sky. It's just too bad I wasn't really in a position to truly appreciate them. I knew that if I let go of the rope I'd never get Ryder back in, so I kept easing up, working him up to the barn, between bouts tug-of-war, getting drug, flashlight flying one way, me the other, scraped knees, rope burned hands, a few bruises no doubt on both of us in the process. FINALLY I got him close enough to the run-in I was able to get the rope around a 4 x 4 post and anchor him. The entire time we fought, Stella screamed incessantly, so it was about then that J came out and asked me, "Is everything all right?"
No, no it wasn't of course! It took both of us to drag resisting Ryder back into his area, and tie him off again. He darn near drug us both around the home paddock all over again just as above, but we somehow held on until he was secured. Still had Stella to deal with though, so J marched her right into the milking stall, got her milking gear, cleaned the cow up and got to milking. Then we both tried to get an hour's sleep before we got up to the alarm... not much luck there as we seriously questioned whether we may have gotten in over our heads!

Had a lot of this stuff on me the other night. If you think cattle might be the thing for you keep in mind that there's a lot of this involved! And late night rodeos too...

Fortunately we are pretty handy, so I spent most of Tuesday making Ryder a stall where he will remain, until he recognizes this place as home, and there is abslolutely no chance Stella can convince him to break out. I spent a little time working with Ryder as well, and he was a lot calmer. Pretty spent no doubt from the night before, just like me. Also repaired all the fence damage and when J got home we got to work on the stanchion shown above and below, modeled by our steer boy Douglas.

Doug fought a bit, but once I showed him the grain pan, then that was an OK place to be, stanchion or no. Trick is to get Stella and Ryder in it. Stay tuned for all your rodeo action here!

Also no, none of our battle royale was caught on video or still pictures. It was just me, Ryder and the eternal stars watching, or so I dearly hope...

Ryder is here!

Here's the little guy. We drove nearly 3 hours each way to pick him up, but he looks so nice and beefy, we think he'll be well-worth the effort. His dad was a wonderfull bull from great milking lines, so he should be a great match for Stella.

Living with a bull is a little tricky. We'll have to make sure he knows we're in charge, but I think we can handle that just fine.

He did great on the ride home. Here's Stella & Doug staring at him. They're in separate pens for now, but close enough to get acquainted.Here are a couple clips of Stewart, showing how well he follows instructions. Such talent!

Introducing......

Gemini!He's a 14 yr old Shetland gelding, about 11h (44" at the withers) tall. Gemini was formerly used at Lang's Horse & Pony Farm to teach people how to drive a cart. Since there hasn't been much demand for his skills recently, they decided to find him a home where he would have a job.
We both got a lesson on cart driving (and we bought his cart & harness too) and he was a real professional! I can't wait to drive him up to town to get a latte. He's got such good manners, we let him graze around the yard for a bit, and it's hard not to brush him and pet him while he eats.

After we brought Gemini home Saturday, we had a BBQ with some friends. It was also the weekend for the annual powwow down the road, so we got to enjoy eating, drinking & being merry with background music courtesy of the Nooksack tribe.

While we were out working on the pony/bull barn, there was a commotion in a patch of brush in the corner of paddock 5......
Wild cow!! Stella likes to stare at Gemini, but they aren't in the same pasture. She's a bit cranky because once she eats all her food, she wants to eat his too but can't. Hopefully her greediness is a sign that she's eating for two. When we have the vet out for Gem's shots, we'll see if the timing is right for Stella to have a pregnancy check.

The garden is starting to pick up steam, and we'll have some riveting photos coming up of harvesting & freezing beet greens & chard! The Reddale potatoes are coming in nicely. So far the straw mulch method is working fine. The hens are laying about 5 mini-eggs a day now, which means not long until 8-10 full-sized eggs a day. Stella is getting even better about letting down for milking, but Doug is bigger and hungrier, so we're still getting a steady 3 quarts each morning. I dread weaning him, just because of the yelling involved, but Ryder will be here next month and that seems like a good time to shake up the living arrangements.

Is she or isn't she?

They certainly look rather bored with each other, don't they? This weekend, if I got my days counted right, would be when Stella shows sign of coming into heat if she's not pregnant. She pretty much did boring cow things like eating, sleeping, grooming Doug and Nash. No sparks, no mooning about like a lovesick teenager. And her milk production has gone back up to a steady 3 quarts at morning milking, after her brief experiment with holding back milk from me. Doug still gets most of the cream, but we'll manage until weaning time.

Here's Doug, in his favorite napping spot, a bed of leftover hay, next to a stump. It's usually shady when it's hot, and dry when it rains. It's also conveniently out of the way of grown up hooves.

One of us at Seven Trees is going to have major surgery in August with about a 2 month recovery time. That means we'll be hammering on a few projects to make sure we're ready to cope with the drastic labor-force reduction. Now that the garden is mostly in (and we just laid soaker hoses in all beds to speed watering) and the perimeter fence is done, we're concentrating on running electric fencing to delineate all the grazing paddocks. We should be able to rotate them through all 5 with plenty of time to let the grass regrow and disrupt the parasite cycles. We sold our main laying flock in preparation for the younger batch to start laying anytime. They get to free range where ever the cattle go, and that helps keep the bugs down too.

The next project will be building an 8 x 16 lean-to type shelter on the south side of the barn. This will give us 2 stalls that can open into grazing paddocks, separate from each other and/or the barn & barnyard. This is where our new bull will live, and also be a holding pen for anyone who might need to be kept apart. We're designing it with our upcoming hurricane season in mind. Since it's on the side where the worst storms come from, it needs to withstand extreme wind and rain. We're also hoping to run a buried powerline along the driveway, with outlets at the chicken coop, outlet & light in the barn, and a light at the end of the drive for safety (and security).

If the stars all align properly, one last project this summer will be painting the house. It's been on the list forever, and really needs it, but painting weather and free time don't always end up in the same universe.

Hope springs eternal...

We've taken part in that annual leap of faith known as a garden, yet again. In the left foreground are tomatoes, 3 rows of potatoes near center, and onions, mangel beets & cukes to the left. In the left background are mixed rows of shallots, carrots, radishes, beets, kohlrabi, 3 kinds of lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage. There's corn near the fenceline and to the right are green beans (including 2 kinds right out of a Bosnian garden, thanks to a coworker) and onions.

Here's the squash pit. It was a giant heap of manure & straw that we cleaned out of Stella's stall last summer. After a good going over with a tiller, it was perfect for planting our butternut, buttercup & delicata squash. I had planned to grow Uncle David's Dakota Dessert squash this year, but somehow left it out of my seed order. We'll try it next year. We're already planning for next year's squash pit, and planning to dump this year's stall clean-out in paddock 2 to mature into another squash pit.

It's been so green and lush lately that even 3 cows can't keep up. So we need to scythe down the weeds and seedheads once in a while. Look at Doug peeking out from behind mom.

Fergus got a new swim jacket. He always gets tired while swimming at Birch Bay, and this helps him stay above water. He got the hang of it very quickly, but the water was still so cold he didn't swim long. Stew tore off a toenail in his rush to bolt out the back door the other night, and we though a saltwater swim might help. It didn't, but he looks to be healing up anyway.

Here's Maggie, demonstrating just how tense his life is. Or is he catatonic?

And Fergus, either doing his impression of Magnus, or maybe a roadkill possum.

Of vacation, good neighbors, and bull...

We both took a few days off of varying lengths in order to catch up a bit on spring chores. Didn't really go any where, but we had a few fun evenings watching DVD's and got some things done.

We went ahead with the purchase of two cord of wood from our regular wood guy Neal. With the price of oil going up, up, and up; it seemed the prudent course. We had at least a cord left and some other we scrounged. Add it up and it is more than enough for next winter. We intend to hook up with a neighbor for further wood scrounging though, as he knows where there are a few folk that'll let you have it for the getting rid of some down trees. Sweet. We just have to stack it the wood now... in our spare time!

As you can see above RdoubleD Nash Rambler arrived. It took Stella about 20 minutes of sniffing before she was out licking and bathing him. I guess you could say she's easy, but it's been a long time since she's had "company".

We managed to make some delicious meals as well when we were off. One is this Hemlock Highlands, sirloin tip roast beef baked with a fresh herb rub, ceasar salad, and roasted vegtables. It was simply put, divine.

And this is our long awaited steamed pumpkin pudding! Thanks to a friend we now have a pudding steamer, so we gave it a try and it turned out wonderful. J made a vanilla custard sauce as topping... magnifique!

Our neighbor Chad owns Brisky Built, Inc., and as you can see from above, they do remodels, but also specialize in restoration. Being as our house was born in 1920, we have some areas that can be challenging to fix up to us lay-carpenter types. We wanted a new front door, but there was too much dry rot around the old one for us to feel comfortable doing ourselves, so we called Chad. This is what he does best!


Here he is tweaking the door so it fits just right. This is after he rehabbed the door frame, which he made look quite easy. It was a challenge though as while surrounding areas had been fixed previously, around the door had been left to grow worse and worse. He essentially removed all the rotten wood, and rehabed a part of the house wall as well as door frame.

Here it is shut as the job got closer to completion. When we get the trim painted, we'll post a final shot of the exterior with hardware and new trim on.

And here it is on the inside now with new hardware, also easily handled by Chad. He had to chisel out an area and do a couple other adjustments so the hardware we'd chosen would fit correctly. One of those things that would have taken us several hours that he did in less than one. If you live in Whatcom county or vacinity and need any remodeling/restoration work done, Brisky Built is absolutely the one to call!

While Chad easily handled the door, I set fence posts for the last bit of perimeter fencing that remained to be finished. The job is about done now, but again you'll have to stay tuned for those shots. One blog post can only reveal so much. While I fenced, J mowed the grass, which seems to grow about 6 inches a day owing to the rain.

And while on any vacation a certain amount of time must be spent bonding with Magnus, our cat who thinks he's a person, to include sitting like one. Here he is mirroring me. Pardon my cheesy smile... the cat is the real star. We don't call him "Ham Cat" for nothing!

J has managed two successful milkings since bully-boy arrived, keeping us in plenty milk. one was 1.5 quarts, the other this AM gave us 2 quarts. Although Stella spends the duration trying to peek over the half stall wall at her beau, like some moon-eyed teenager the duration. Ain't love grand!

Raining like kittens & cats!

The weather is not cooperating much with our outdoor plans & projects. The cats, on the other hand, don't seem to mind a bit as long as there is a comfy place to hang out.

Here's Mercia multitasking, grooming between naps, or maybe it's the other way around...

And Magnus, casual as ever in the face of paparazzi.
And finally, Master Crichton himself, giving his new cat tree a test run. Only the finest Whatcom County orchardgrass hay for this feline connaisseur!

If the weather ever catches up with the calendar, we'll continue setting fence posts on the last unfenced corner, finishing the garden prep, and getting ready for Nash's arrival on Monday. Doug did fine with the vet Friday. He's no longer a bull, and everyone is up to date on vaccinations. Stella has learned the exciting trick of holding back her milk for Doug, so we've been working with her to unlearn it, or at least loosen up a bit. It is fairly common for a first calf heifer to be really focused on the calf, and not interested in sharing with people.

News flash!
In the middle of a rain storm, at bedtime, Magnus has figured out the cat door. These kittens have previously shown no interest in going outside, even though they're nearly a year old! Now they'll probably be up all night running in & out, practicing their new skill.

Thank you Stella!

I was rummaging around the fridge for pastitso-makings, and realized just how much Stella provides. Here's a literal snapshot of what's in our fridge/freezer right now, thanks to Stella...The row of jars on the far left, with the little one on top, is today's milking. There is a glass bowl of fresh feta, with the 3 quarts of whey behind it, that the chickens love. Rolls of frozen butter in the left foreground, what's left of the sour cream, and the start of this week's cream jar are front right. And jars & jars of milk We also have a little frozen colostrum, but I left that in the freezer.

A bull in the hand....

Looks like Ramblin Bob is booked right about the time we want Stella to be bred. Instead of having to deal with a calf that is too early or too late for our needs, we decided to see how

RdoubleD Nash Rambler will do. We pondered buying him last year, but didn't, and we're talking with his owner now about price etc. Nash is a year younger than Stella, and has the same dad as Bob. He's a real cutie, and having our own bull will save the worry of making sure we have a guy with a good bloodline booked each year.

Speaking of guys, Doug is just old enough to notice Stella is in heat, and too small to do anything about it. Time to get the vet out here to take care of that business! Stella is still giving a good amount of milk for the short time apart from Doug. Sometimes a bit over a gallon, sometimes a bit under. Once Doug is weaned, I'll be able to get more, with lots more butterfat. She's still very motivated to hold some back for Doug right now, which is fine, since we want him to grow up big & healthy.

Who is Jimmy Nardello?

Last summer, in the midst of our tomato-blight/potato-wireworm tragedy, we had a success story - our peppers. Even though the summer never got warm & sunny enough to fully ripen them all, the anchos and pimentos we planted grew and produced like gangbusters. There were so many peppers on most plants, we had to stake up branches to prevent them breaking off. Once the nights got frosty, we picked them all and pickled a peck or two. We've been enjoying them all winter. And that inspired us to improve on our efforts by searching out another pepper variety to try this year. I kept coming across mention of this guy, Jimmy Nardello, and his amazing sweet Italian frying peppers. They even got voted onto Slow Food's Ark of Taste! Who is this guy, and what the heck is a frying pepper? Here's what I learned..."In southern Italy, at what one might call the “instep of the boot,” is a mountainous region called Basilicata. In the subregion of Potenza, with its small coastline on the Thyrrhenian Sea, sits the tiny town of Ruoti.
For several years there, Giuseppe Nardiello and his wife, Angela, nurtured a favorite variety of sweet frying pepper. When they set sail from the port of Naples in 1887 for a new life beside the Golden Door, Angela carried her one-year-old daughter Anna and a handful of the pepper seeds with them. They settled in Naugatuck, Connecticut, where they raised the peppers, and eleven children. The fourth one was a son named Jimmy.
Jimmy’s son James, who is now 81 and still residing in Naugatuck, told me that the teachers in Jimmy’s grade school dropped the “i” from Nardiello, apparently believing that theirs was the proper spelling. It stuck to Jimmy, and to all the subsequent siblings and descendents.
James also said that his father was the only one of the Nardello children to inherit Angela’s love of the garden, and that Jimmy lovingly cared for his own throughout his life. He built them the way his mother taught him, in terraces, the way all gardens were built in the mountains of southern Italy. There he grew hundreds of peppers, but the sweet frying pepper was his favorite, and he would string up his bounty and hang them to dry in the shed, so his family could enjoy them all winter long.
Jimmy passed away in 1983. But before he did, he donated some of the heirloom pepper seeds to Seed Savers Exchange (SSE) in Decorah, Iowa. SSE specializes in protecting heirloom seeds, with more than 11,000 varieties protected in two separate climate-controlled vaults. They grow out roughly ten percent of the stock on a ten-year rotating basis, refreshing and expanding the supply each time. One of these seeds is the one that has become known as Jimmy Nardello’s Sweet Italian Frying Pepper.
One hundred and twenty years after the Nardellos set sail, bringing a small piece of their homeland with them, the pepper that bears the family name is becoming a favorite among chefs and home gardeners nationwide, but it is still registered as “endangered” on Slow Food USA’s Ark of Tastes. The Ark is an effort to find, catalog, and protect the world’s endangered flavors from the onslaught of the standardization of agriculture and cuisine."

"The Nardellos are turn from their youthful kelly green to a mature fire-engine red, indicating that they are ready to be picked, sliced, fried in olive oil with garlic, and slathered over steaks alongside a generous pour of Primitivo.
They are also delicious as a sweet edge in your favorite chili or salsa recipe, and they are the best sweet pepper for drying. To dry them, string them on thread with a needle, careful to pierce them through the stem and not the fruit. Hang them near a sunny window or on the porch, and they’ll add decoration as they dry.
The best ones resemble a pig’s ear. James says that’s how his dad picked them. They grow in full sun in neutral to acidic soil, and are quite prolific as long as they are not over-watered."
(The above information comes from The Iowa Source.)

It's not too late to join us in our old-world journey of pepper-discovery by planting some of Jimmy Nardello's peppers yourselves. Or look for starts at your local (and I mean local) nursery or farmer's market. We'll let you know how ours do, oh say, around September...

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On the milking front, Stella has a new stall tie set-up. It's a vertical bar mounted to a corner post, with a short length of chain attached via a ring that allows the chain to slide up & down. She's gotten into a habit of fidgeting back & forth which means I have to move the milk bucket around a lot and lose time milking. This way she can reach her hay, look around, nuzzle her baby, but can't mess around too much. She doesn't seem to mind it and is still giving 3 to 4 quarts of milk after 4 to 5 hours separation from Doug.

Nettle braggot - Seven Trees style

Start with as many nettles will fit in the picking basket. We only use the top few leaves of young plants. They'll regrow soon and we can harvest more for drying.

Then bring 1.5 gallons of water to a boil. While the water is heating steep 1 pound malted oats (this should add a nice sweet-nutty flavor and a creamy mouthfeel) 15 minutes or until the water reaches 170F. Take the oats out and add 3lbs dried malt extract. Normally we use liquid malt, but we had bought dried so we could make this recipe when we felt like it, without having to run to town for malt. When the malt is dissovled completely, add the pile of nettles. Boil while stirring occasionally for 50 minutes, then add 2 to 3lbs honey. We just spooned in what looked like a quart jar's worth, since a quart of honey weighs around 2.5lbs. Boil 10 more minutes, then set the kettle in a sink of ice water to chill rapidly. Strain into the carboy and top up with cold water. Add yeast (we used Northwest Ale yeast from Northern Brewer), mix and put the airlock on.

After 24 hours or so, the nettle braggot yeasties (oh yeah! a braggot is loosely defined as a beer-type beverage made with both honey and malted grain) decided to take advantage of the extra sweetness to mount an escape attempt. Things have settled down now, and in a week or so we'll transfer the braggot to another carboy to finish fermenting. A week or so after that, and it goes into bottles. Two weeks after that, and we can drink it!
We put the new trailer to good use this weekend by picking up a load of wood. We've gone through nearly double the wood we did last winter, so we want to make sure we restock as soon as possible. Sometimes when summer heats up, the woodcutters aren't allowed into the forest due to fire risks. Then everyone is backed up and on waiting lists, sometimes until the rains come back in the fall.
No wonder Magnus doesn't want to venture outside! Toshi and one of the Red Stars were having a conference on the back porch. The flock always seems to ignore the 'no chickens on the porch' rule, until they get caught and chased off.
Last but not least, a little down time with the house critters in front of a warm fire.

We enjoyed the spring weather preview Saturday, temps in the 70's and a lovely breezy sunny day. The greenhouse sprouts are in the ground now - lettuce, chard, spinach, broccoli and onions. We'll be planting more over the next few weeks, with the warm weather plants - beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, corn, melons - going in late May.

Stella is still going gangbusters as a milk cow. I've taken the luxury of skipping a couple days of milking here & there, so we can use up all the milk she provides. This week we made a soft cheese with chives, roasted garlic and cracked pepper mixed in. A gallon of milk netted 2lbs of it, with 2qts of whey left over for the dogs & hens. We made 4oz of butter from a pint of top cream. Over a quart of yogurt. And tonight I'll start a pint more of cream souring. Yum!!!

Time to start shopping for an ice cream maker.