The maples and poplars are starting to get some new leaves; they still look pretty pitiful with all the dead leaves, though.

I forget about this part of spring—-the cool, dark, wet part. The soggy, rainy, muddy part. I think tomorrow is supposed to be better.

The girls are milking right now; Rosemary is walking around the house yelling for Bronwen, her companion cow (who has gone up the hill to graze); ED has just informed me that several of the bantam hens seem to be off setting somewhere; and we also have four broody hens in the chicken house (curiously they are all Black Australorps). I think today ED may fix up a nest on the porch for one of the lucky hens, and we’ll raise a batch of chicks. Sometime in the next week I expect to see the goslings hatch. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on that one.

Well, that’s all the news. Life is quiet.

Yesterday Rosemary was bawling all over the mountain, so we brought her in the yard and I called the AI guy. It was awfully short notice, and he never returned my call, so I think we missed it. Rosemary is still in the yard however—the grass is almost as tall as she is—and I figured it might as well be animal feed instead of me having to mow it. Well, I would’ve had a hard time mowing it anyway: it was very tall and very lush. It’s really nice having Rosemary so close by; a cow is such a different kind of a critter than a goat. Mellow, peaceful, grass-eating (as opposed to whatever’s-growing-in-my-flowerbeds-eating).

The girls are building adobe/cob houses (miniature, of course) in the back yard. They’re really cute, and are making me want to try one (not miniature). ED is trying to figure out what kind of roof to put on them—I think she’s leaning toward thatch.

I have both woodstoves going—it’s cool and rainy. Last year’s cool and rainy spring and early summer made conditions ideal for stomach worms (haemonchus), which was bad news here—weather like this makes me a tiny bit nervous. I’m thinking about running the horses in the lower goat pasture, to help break the worm cycle. The horses are such a huge pain in the butt when they’re down with the goats, that I’m somewhat resistant to the idea, though. It would certainly be preferable to having to give the goats cydectin, however.

There is nothing unusual about sitting down to a nice salad for lunch during the summer. What makes the salads prepared by Jim Montgomery and Mateo Rutherford different is that almost every component has been grown, raised or made in their West Berkeley backyard — the purple endive, the lettuce, the tomatoes, the carrots, the green beans and even the feta cheese.

When they skip adding nuts or avocados, then every part of the salad was planted, fertilized, grown and processed at their home. If they added a hard boiled egg or smoked duck meat, those elements too would have been produced behind their house.

“What we take from the garden and animals goes into the kitchen, and garden waste goes to the animals,” Montgomery said. Without pause, Rutherford added, “And the animal waste goes into the garden.”

The approximately 6,000-square-foot yard, just off of San Pablo Avenue, provides generous space for a bustling urban farm. From the street it is impossible to tell that the property holds everything from apple trees to tomato vines, rabbits to goats, and chickens to domesticated pigeons.
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Yesterday we awoke to an inch or so of snow, and 27°. Seemed like a good time for a trip to Ashevegas! We had originally thought of dinner and a movie, but then I started thinking of how much that would cost, and how much we could do with that money instead, so after some family discussion, we decided to go to the library, and have a big grocery shopping trip, and buy an inexpensive dvd. We were home well before dark,watched The Apartment with Shirley Maclaine and Jack Lemmon, and had a fabulous (and reasonably affordable) supper: a huge salad, edamame, a cheese platter (a double cream brie, a naturally smoked Wisconsin gouda, and Le Campagnard, an organic cheese from Belgium, plus some huge and wonderful olives), followed by an assortment of dark chocolates (mine had hot peppers and was great). A lovely and satisfying evening; I think we all felt restored.

Today is sunny and much warmer. You know what’s sad, though? I think all the maples that hed leafed out are going to lose their leaves! I know they’ll get more, but still… I’m not sure how the apples and cherries fared—I guess we’ll see.

Yesterday we had a hailstorm. Last night a scary and loud electrical storm woke us out of a sound sleep. Today it’s windy, cold, and sleeting.

I mean, come on.

The sheep have settled into the garden. We only have Cocoa Puff left to shear; I’m sure he’s pointing and laughing at the other three who are a little chilly without their dense, wooly coats. We never could find them last year to shear them, and they had so much thick, felted wool that it was like they were carrying yurts around on their backs; they weigh about half as much now! The two young ewes had never been sheared before—that was an adventure!

The Muscovies are quite happy—they love the little pond I dug for them. This weather doesn’t seem to faze them—they really don’t seem to notice that it’s vile out there. It’s nice to have one cheerful, uncomplaining species on the farm.

Unlike me!

It has been a busy couple of days!

Day before yesterday the girls and J* took off up the mountain to try and find the cows, with the intention of bringing Rosemary in the yard to graze. Well, instead they found Mai, one of our ewes, who was being chased and then sort of mauled by Fionn. (What’s up with that? What kind of Great Pyrenees hates cows and sheep?) When the girls were finally able to chase Fionn off, they found that the sheep was temporarily paralysed, and had a nosebleed (she had taken a long, head-over-heels roll down the hill). They tried to pick her up and carry her, and realized that they were going to need more help, so Bernard came down to the house and got me, telling me to bring a blanket. Back up the mountain we went— Bernard skipping, me trudging— and met J* and ED a little way down from the top, carrying Mai with a great deal of difficulty. ED and I scooped her onto the blanket and carried her down the mountain, finding Woolliam, one of the wethers, on the way. We put a rope around his neck, and Bernard and J* sort of led him down. Actually, it was more like they just tried to hold on—these little Shetlands are truly wild animals! So when we finally made it to the house, we put the sheep in the (unused, except for the new ducks) garden, where Mai jumped to her feet and was as good as new. Sheesh!

So yesterday, the girls sheared first Woolliam, and then Mai, and during all the commotion, they noticed that the other two sheep—Beltain and Cocoa Puff—were standing in the driveway. We were able to get them into the garden with a minimum of trouble, and the girls are going to shear those two today. So now we need to eat the two wethers—starting with Cocoa Puff the Bad Tempered—and we’ll be looking for a ram for breeding this fall.

Let’s see—what else? Oh—we finally did get Rosemary into the yard, where she grazed for an hour of absolute bliss. No signs of heat, though I expect it to be this week. I finally got the number of the AI guy (the folks who gave me his number said he looks just like you would expect a cow inseminator to look like—I can’t wait to see what that means!), and I’m working on the complicated details of getting Blossom bred, too.

I’ve been trying to get enough dandelions picked for a batch of wine, but I’m afraid I missed the peak of the season! So it is a slow process; Im hoping now to get enough for a three gallon batch instead of our usual five gallons.

The Muscovies settled right in to their new life—they’re by far the most laid-back animals on this farm! I dug a trench down through the garden (which, I guess is more acurately the duck and sheep pen) yesterday, ending in a little (tiny) pond at the bottom. Our driveway/parking area has been unusually soupy this year; now, magically, it’s dry! We knew it drained down through the middle of the garden, but we hadn’t realized how much it wasn’t draining this spring!

We took a little family trip over the mountain yesterday to Waynesville to buy some Muscovies. We have wanted to get Muscovies for a while, and last fall I contacted these folks that I found online; what with one thing and another—-mainly car issues—we never got around to going over there. So yesterday, kind of out of the blue, DH got all excited and suggested that we call the people and go buy some ducks. (Very out of character for ol’ DH—usually he’s in major resistance mode when it comes to adding livestock to the farm—but lately he’s the one pushing to get more animals, or breed what we’ve got. He came home from work the other night saying it was time to get a pig!) So anyway, we bought three ducks and a drake yesterday. They’re really pretty, which was kind of a bonus, as a lot of the Muscovies that I’ve been around in the past were ugly as sin. These have minimal wartiness, and are really lovely colors.

Muscovies reproduce like mad, and are supposed to be very good to eat. The people we bought these from, last year had a duck set and hatch a clutch of twenty (very common), and then the next day they went to a stock sale and bid on a box of Muscovy ducklings. When they took them home, they discovered that there were thirty-five of them, and they took them to the duck that had just hatched all the babies, and just dumped the box out into her nest. She raised fifty five ducklings, without losing one.

So we have four ducks out in the garden, peacefully eating chickweed; so far the girls have found two duck eggs out there. We clipped their wings when we got them home last night, so they wouldn’t fly out of the garden just yet. Muscovies are very strong fliers.

And in other farm livestock news, Chloe had her annual litter of kittens night before last. We tried to get her spayed in time this year, but when it came time for her appointment with the vet, she was nowhere to be found. So this summer we’ll try that again. Her daughter Samba did get spayed, however, so at least we have half as many kittens as we could have! Chloe and her offspring are astonishingly good mousers, so if anybody needs a really cute cat, who will do wonders for reducing your rodent population, you know where to find one (or three).

The girls commented sadly that Chloe was our only livestock giving birth this year.

Yesterday I made lists of things that need to happen on the farm. I love making lists—it makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, even though nothing actually gets done. However, having it all written down yesterday in one place did give me a good overview, and I did get started.

The first thing on the list was to get Rosemary the cow bred. I think we’re going to try AI, which means we need to know when her heat will be. We think she was in heat April 1st, so we’re looking for sometime next week (every 18 to 22 days). I think we’re going to try to bring her into the yard and let her graze for a few hours every day (the grass in the yard is amazing and lush), and that way we can keep an eye on her, and hopefully know for sure when she’s in heat. I read that one way to tell is to rub her brisket if you think she’s in heat, and if she is, she’ll try to mount you. Yikes!

So meanwhile I’m trying to track down somebody who does AI, and has Jersey semen. It may be next month before we can actually get it done, but that’s fine. Next month we’ll have a very good idea of when she’ll be in heat, so hopefully we’ll be ready.

We have also decided that it would make more sense to breed Bronwen than to eat her; she is half Jersey, half Black Angus, and so I think we’ll breed her to an Angus bull, and consider her the start of our beef herd. ( I feel like I’m the governor and I just gave a reprieve!)

A couple of neighbors and I are going to try and lease a little Morgan stallion and keep him for a couple of months to breed our mares to. He’s a fine, old-type (looks like a Lippitt) 14hh or maybe 14.2hh horse. I had originally planned to buy him, but bought Blossom instead; he’s the sire of our other mare, Ginger.

Let’s see….sheep. ED saw the sheep recently, way up on the mountain in coyote-land, so they are still alive. Man, these Shetlands are tough little critters! We only have two wethers and two ewes; we need to breed the ewes and eat the boys. Which means we’ve gotta a) catch them, and b) find a ram. Oh yes, and c)butcher the wethers.

And for the goats, we will buy a nice buck later this summer for breeding to this fall.