Winter is coming

I am not ready for the summer to be over, but I'm sitting here in wool socks and fleece in front of the fire knowing that it is.

We have one main project this fall: expand the greenhouse!

When we first built it, 16 feet by 20 feet seemed huge, but that feeling only lasted a season or two. After using it for 5 years (5years!!) it's time to finally expand, to 16 by 45 feet. Does that seem enormous? Yes, it does. But I don't doubt we'll grow into it.

Keith has already dug all the holes and hopefully we'll be pouring concrete this weekend. We have also had the goat weeding crew in, clearing out all the weeds around the greenhouse.




Inside the greenhouse, it still feels a little like summer. Summer with frosted tips! We don't have a heater in the greenhouse, but this year we are using heat from incandescent lights that we've hung and frost cloths to extend our season a little longer. The lights seem to be working, but still there have been a few very cold nights that have done a little bit of damage, but nothing has died, yet.



Hopefully all of this works, cuz damn, there is still lots getting ripe in there!

One reason I want a bigger greenhouse is winter squash. We love it and could eat it all winter long, but I can never seem to grow enough of it. It takes up so much freaking space just to produce a few squash. I'm growing a couple varieties this season that have been producing pretty well, it looks like we might get a dozen or so small ones-Yay!



And tomatoes! So far I would say that the 'determinate tomato experiment' has been successful, with the loads of tomatoes that I've been bringing in and that are still ripening up. But ripening on the vine is something we just don't have time for anymore! As soon as any of those little green maters have a blush of color, I'm picking them! It's too damn cold to wait! I've been taking over the kitchen with bags full of ripening tomatoes. As of this morning I've got about 25 lbs almost ready to go!





I think part of my soul was born during the Great Depression. I look at everything that has been harvested and still needs to be harvested, everything that has been canned, or cured, or fermented or frozen to be put up for the winter and all I can think is: this isn't enough! We'll run out in February! We'll starve! Yes, this is kind of crazy and of course we won't starve and I'm sure we do have enough of most things to make it through most the winter without buying most vegetables.

But I also have to remind myself that every year we've been getting better and more efficient at growing our own food and next year will be so much different and hopefully amazing with such a bigger greenhouse! Maybe by the end of next season I'll feel like we actually have enough for winter, but I doubt it!

The Valentine I've sent to Keith the past few years sums life up kinda perfectly:



Happy Fall!

The life, death, and hopeful resurgence of a first year beekeeper's hive

Bees are by far the most difficult animal I have ever kept. They make everything else we have here seem like child's play. They are the only creature I have ever taken a class about and still feel clueless.

I realize the title to this post is kind of bleak, but I really hope things are on the upswing!

I'm sure we all remember my post in April when I got the bees. I was so excited! And even though everyone in our bee class said we wouldn't get honey this year, I was going to prove them wrong! LOL, no, Ellen!



We had a rocky start when a couple months ago my hive got robbed by another hive of bees. This was a Game of Thrones-esque battle between my bees, with their stores of honey and some crazy lady who goes out and feeds them sugar syrup at least once a week (me!), and the invading bees, who were probably from a weaker hive and wanted all the riches we had to offer. There were piles of dead bees everywhere, it was horrible, but my hive seemed to win the battle and survive-or so I thought.

Inspecting the hive shortly after the robbing showed that I didn't have a terribly huge number of bees, but everything else looked normal. We a good brood pattern, which is just the patten of how the queen lays her eggs. We had eggs, larvae and capped brood, which meant that even though I didn't see the queen, I had one and she was laying well. It looked like a hive on the upswing.

But, no.

In the the inspection of the hive just 3 weeks later, the number of bees had dropped drastically. Where there had been thousands, now there were hundreds. The brood patter was spotty, if there was any. There were dead larvae and no eggs. And it was just empty. Frames that had been full of eggs, brood, and bees were just completely empty.



My fear is/was the dreaded colony collapse disorder. Pretty much the worst thing to happen to bees in the past few years. And I still don't know that is what happened. Our beekeeping instructor will be out here in a week to help us get our hives ready for the winter, so hopefully I'll know more then.

But I said this was hopeful!

This brings us to last night. Our friend Renee had a bee hive in the roof of a house that needed some construction work done. Our plan was to lure the hive into a new hive and the plan was pretty much working, and I was crazy excited to get these bees! But of course, the construction got moved up a month and there was no time for the lure, they needed to be out yesterday. Great. And they are all the way up there:



Let's be honest, Craig, Renee's husband did the vast majority of the work. I freaked out a bit, then calmed down enough to be actually useful. I had to take these girls home and figure out what to do with them.



This morning I was out at 6 to start this project. According the University of YouTube, I was supposed to cut the comb with brood/eggs/bees from the hive we just moved so it fit into empty frames and so I did. It was so early that the bees were pretty chill. I just cut sections that looked salvageable, swept piles of huddled together bees that were on the lips of the box onto the frame, put them in the nuc box that my orginal bees came in. I searched for the queen bee in these big piles of sleepy bees, but never found her.



I took this full box of bees and all and put them all in my dwindling hive. I'm really not sure if I was supposed to do this, if this will start another Game of Thrones battle between the few bees in the hive and the ones I just put in there, I have no idea, I just hope some survive!



I'm just really glad Keith works til 7 today and that he's so busy for the next week that he probably won't need to use the pickup or go behind the greenhouse. I didn't get all the bees from all the boxes they were moved into my hive and there are so many bees in the back of the pickup, but I'll probably try to move them this evening. But it kind of feels like they're everywhere back there!.

Hopefully they stay, survive the winter, become a good hive for me next year. If not, no big deal I guess! I only got stung once in this whole process and that was only because it was dark and I didn't see a bee on the gloves I was putting on.

Until next time!

Cheesemaking season

So ya know when you're getting 2 1/2 gallons of milk a day and you're making all this cheese and all of the sudden your 2 wine fridges/cheese caves are so completely full that you start making all this stuff (cottage cheese, chevre, butter...) that you can pop in the freezer, but then thats full too! Yeah, me to!

Obviously the only thing to do is to massively upgrade the current cheese cave situation. So we did! Instead of 2 24 bottle wine fridges, we now have one 24 bottle wine fridge and one massive 80 bottle one! The smaller of the two will mainly be where I ripen and age blue cheeses, aka My Blue Heaven! The new big one is where pretty much everything else it!



There is a little over 50lbs of cheese in there and it's not even half full! It's mostly Romano, Gouda and Manchego styles, but with all the new space, I have room to play. I'm making my first batch of Brie of the season right now.

But it's not only cheese making season, it's also the season of struggling against the weather in the feeble attempt to grow fresh vegetables, aka gardening. It's been a weird summer, it gets too hot then it gets too cold (like it is today), and so many of the plants have just stalled out. But at least we have the greenhouse! Everything is thriving in there!



This is year is the great determinate tomato experiment. Instead of growing the normal, indeterminate tomato varieties that vine all over the place, I'm growing almost only short, stocky determinate plants. Since they take up less space, I was able to plant more than I usually do and it's been so nice to to not have to hack back the monster vines. But it is an experiment, I have no idea if the harvest will be similar to other years, but so far everything is looking good!

In animal news, we finally got the girls sheared! Of course it got cold and rainy for the week after they were sheared and they were pretty pissed at me! They've mellowed out and are fitting in really well with everyone else out in the pasture.



We're down to milking Margo just once a day now, but we'll still be milking Cupid twice a day for a while and there is a good chance that Melissa is prego, so she's getting trained on the milk stand and is learning like a champ!



I've got to go flip the brie, then harvest some onions. Hope you all are having a great Sunday!

The Joys of Twice a Day Milking

Life is weird. We just got back from spending a week and half in Chicago, seeing friends and family, pretending for a few days that we lived in the city again, having a great time, and I don't think I've ever been as happy to be home.

So much has changed in the past five to ten years, somehow it feels like you don't notice until your back with people who knew when you were living in a shitty apartment in Hyde Park, eons before you even thought about milking a goat.

But now I'm home and doing something I was thinking about and looking forward, even while having a great time in Chicago: Milking twice a day.

Mostly I was just looking forward to not separating mama's and babies every night. The mornings and nights filled with screaming and crying was really starting to wear on me. So Sunday night Keith and I moved Margo's and Cupid's babies to the pasture with all the hair sheep and the screaming has not stopped since.

Mama's screaming at the top of their lungs to get their babies back. Babies screaming and crying, calling their moms to come rescue them. It's Wednesday and it's finally starting to get a little better, but I have a feeling it's far from over.

Margo and Cupid have been taking out their hostility towards me as often as they can. Yesterday morning I thought Margo was terrible when she peed and pooped on the milk stand, then she proved she could be worse in the evening when she peed, pooped, then just laid down so I couldn't milk her.

Cupid took a different plan of attack this morning when she bolted away from me and out into the pasture. I didn't even run after her. I just got Margo on the stand, where she had the one on one time it seems she needed and Cupid eventually moseyed back, jumping up on the stand in her damn time.

I would have freaked out all of this a year or so ago, trying to get all the animals lined up like they're always supposed to, instead of just leaving the gate open and letting things just work out.




Margo's lambs and Cupid's kids are their own little pack now that they're out in the pasture with the rest of the sheep. In between crying for their mama, the kids are still hamming it up as usual. I'm not sure if the lambs miss their mama or the delicious goat chow they had become accustomed to snarfing down at night, either way, they're always eating!



Two and half gallons of milk is now what I'm getting daily, even if I kinda have to fight the girls to get it. And it really adds up fast! Today I'm making a 5 gallon batch of blue cheese, the biggest batch of cheese I've ever made.





I've already make one batch of blue cheese, a 3 gallon batch that time. Today I had to pierce it for the second time-you pierce the cheese to get all the good moldy blue veins. The guys at the Rouge Creamery said to pierce the hell out of the blues (and they should know, their blues are amazing!), so I did, first 2 weeks ago, then again today. They still won't be ready for a few months, but I think they'll be worth the wait!



Tomorrow I do it all over again, not knowing what to expect. After almost 2 months of good behavior, this craziness is annoying. Hopefully the girls will calm down soon, but who can blame them for being pissed!

Back in the saddle again!

Finally! Finally, finally! I am milking again.

Today is the second day of milking both girls and they are producing just how I expected. A gallon and half the past two mornings, but today went a lot smoother than yesterday did!

Yesterday was a wild whirlwind of lambs and kids screaming, two mamas screaming to get to their babies, but also REALLY wanting to be milked and the two new sheep trying to get past everyone else on to their new favorite place-the milk stand. Then Cupid is kicking off the milk machine...

It was a mess, just like always. Today was just as loud, but so much more smooth!

Cupid's giant milk bag is not a surprise, she's a milking beast. But Margo, damn girl! Her bag seems almost twice as big as last years. I don't really know how much each producing since they are milked into the same container, but I'm guessing it's Margo at 2 quarts and Cupid at 1 gallon.

Since their babies are still on them, I'm not coming close to milking them dry. I think I'm milking them about 2/3 empty, so these girls are really producing! But you've got to leave the babies some breakfast!





So far, I've made yogurt, cottage cheese and butter. It was the first butter I've made since last time Cupid was in milk, since I just didn't have the volume to make it last year and still make cheese, but this year I expect to be using Sputnik the cream separator all the time!



The babies are going getting bigger everyday! It took about a week but the lambs and kids are finally starting to play together. I think it took so long because the lambs are justifiably terrified of getting near Cupid. I feel the same way some times!



In other news, the new girls, Maisie and Daisy are still not sheared-ugh! It is so hard to find someone to shear just a few sheep.

But they are learning all about the milk stand. Maisie figured it out on her second try! Give this girl some alfalfa pellets and she'll follow you anywhere! But, Daisy, she just doesn't get it. She's the more skittish of the two and just wants to run away from me. Unfortunately for her, in such a small space she's pretty easy to catch and I have lots of experience lifting sheep on to the milk stand. Either she'll figure it out eventually or I'll just get really strong.



I hope tomorrow goes as well as today did!

Cupid's Kids!

And so lambing and kidding season comes to an end, finally! Cupid was the final animal we were waiting on and lord, did we wait!

According to the kidding calculator I use, Cupid was expected to have her kids on April 19th. Instead she had them a full 10 days later. Last time we breed her she had her kids just about as early as possible. Apparently Randy and Cupid took their time this time, but at last we have a couple cute kids to show for it.

And this time we didn't sleep through it!

Last night Keith woke me up at about 12:30am with news that Cupid was kidding. He got out to the barn before I did, there he saw one kid already born and another on the way out. Clearly Cupid doesn't really need us there. I got out there with all our kidding supplies and started cleaning off the first kid while Cupid was tending to the second one that had just been born.



If you had asked me to put money on what Cupid was going to have this year, I would have said one giant boy. We really wanted her to have a girl to add to the De Young Dairy, but Cupid is a mean, spiteful bitch (that I love) I just knew she wouldn't have a girl because I wanted one so badly. Thankfully, I was wrong (as I always seem to be!).

Cupid did have a giant boy, but she also had a little girl!



And I mean giant! Picking them up, he clearly weighs almost double what she weighs and is so much taller than her. But she is still the star of the show.



I'm thinking I will name her Gilda. Last night I was leaning towards Bonnie, since she's such a pretty little thing, but seeing her again in the morning, with the little bit of gold around her eyes and hamming it up for the camera at less than 12 hours old, Gilda seems right.



Who knows how her coloring will change in a few months. I would have never thought Ruby would go from brown and black to reddish or that all white Snowy would end up half black after just a few months. I'm just so excited and relieved that she actually had a girl!

And yes, the boy is very cute, with his little black and white waddles and his sweet little face, but no, I haven't named him and I'm not sure that I will. I'll be looking for a new home for him as soon as we can wean him, so in about 8 weeks. Better not to get to attached.



Finally milking will start in 2 weeks and I can't wait. Milking Margo and Cupid once a day, I expect to get about gallon to a gallon and half a day. When we switch to twice a day, I think it will be more like 2 gallons, but only time will tell!

Time to go back to the barn and snuggle some babies!

A Day of Many Margos

Yesterday our flock of sheep grew by 4 and they are essentially Margo's. What the hell do I mean by that!

We had been looking to double our dairy sheep flock, going from one Margo to two. That is easier said that done. No one that I know of around here has dairy sheep, so I settle in, combing through Craigslist ads to find what we're looking for.

Our options were very limited. We could either drive 5 hours one way north or 5 hours west to get exactly what we were looking for (just one dairy sheep) or we could drive 3 hours east for something that's not exactly perfect. Yesterday we went east and came home with 2 more Margos.



These ladies are both a year and half old, have never been breed, which means they've never been milked and that they are kind of a risky investment. But they're young and while they are a little skittish, don't seem to really mind me that much. They've also been through a lot, surviving a wild fire last summer together, which is why their owner did not want them separated.

Right now they are in a pen together, away from the rest of the animals. I've been going in their pen today trying to hand feed them chow (they are NOT into eating that!) and petting them. They like to be scratched on the face and top of the head, just like Margo does, so hopefully I'll win this pair over soon.



So how did we end up with even more sheep yesterday? Margo had her lambs without us!



Margo had been acting like she might go into labor on Friday night, but Saturday morning there were no babies and we had told the leader of the hippy commune we were buying the sheep from that we'd be there by 2. We had to go.

Pretty much none of our friends know enough about animals for me to feel like I could ask them to check on my sheep that might be in labor, so I just hoped for the best and prepared for the worst. When we got home Margo and her twins were healthy and happy in the pasture. Last year, before we got Margo, she had a still born lamb and I was very nervous about her delivery this year, but she didn't need us at all!


I'm guessing she had them between noon and 3. When we got home at 6 the lambs were cleaned off, dry, feeding, and walking around-just like they should be! She had a boy and girl, bringing our count to 6 boys and 2 girls.

These two are the cutest lambs we've ever had. They're a weird mix of Margo who is wooly and their dad, who is a hair sheep. The girl is a tall and skinny clone of Margo and the most snuggly lamb ever.

We only have Cupid left to have her kid(s), then the real work of daily milking starts.

Spring: bees and lambs!

This is our third year lambing and just like the past years, nothing went as expected.

Ginger, Coco, Lulu. That was the order I thought the girls would go and I only got the first one right. Ginger had her babies on the exact day we expected them-right on time! She needed a little help with her first lamb, but she took care of the second one on her own. And what cute twins!




Then we had to wait a solid seven days for the next lamb. It wasn't giant Coco, but little Lulu. Keith was home for this one and we helped little Lulu deliver her one big boy lamb. Lu dotes on her one cutie.




8 long days passed while we waited for Coco to finally lamb. A friend who raises sheep stopped by and was certain that Coco was carrying triplets, but with Coco being so huge, how could you tell?! Well she was right and we slept right through it. At least I have an excuse called a terrible cold combined with codeine cough syrup. I'm guessing she lambed around 3am and just popped out 3 little black and white lambs. You are amazing, Coco!



This brings our lamb total to 6, with 5 boys and 1 girl, which is weird. Of course this is the year we hoped to keep a girl from Lulu, but only Coco had a girl. We are also hoping to keep a girl from Cupid, but who knows what is going to happen. We still have Margo and Cupid left to have babies and that should be this weekend, so we should find out soon.



And while we're doing all of our normal lambing/kidding stuff, it is also time to add bees! Keith surprised me with a Flow Hive this Christmas. A friend and I are taking a class through Oregon State University Extension office, where we are getting hands on bee experience along with nucs to set up our own hives. We got our nucs on Sunday night and I set them up in our hive on Monday.



Like any other animal, you have to feed and water the bees. The green box on top of the brood box is full of sugar water to feed the bees until spring finally kicks into gear here. Just about everyone in our class told us not to expect honey this year, and really I have no idea why. My plan is to feed and water the bees, but the Flow super on in a few weeks and hope for the best. I guess only time will tell!

When Margo and Cupid finally lamb/kid, it will be back to milking for me and I can't wait! Until then, enjoy the sunshine!

Exploring the Baja, one margarita at a time!

I know Keith and I were excited to go to Mexico, but neither of us really knew what to expect. Yes, we'd read the books and chatted with friends, but you still never really know. I just wanted to get as much sun as possible in hopes that it would keep me warn until summer.

Back in August we bid on and won a 10 day stay in a casita in Los Barriles, a small town on the Sea of Cortez on the Baja peninsula. It was donated by Chris and Christina Geyer, former Wallowa county residents and their casita has become a home away from home for a number of Wallowa county residents. They were fantastic hosts, with loads of advice and cerveza and they put up with us disappearing for days at a time. And there were so many places to go!

We started off by catching the last day of Carnaval in La Paz, about an hour and half from where we were staying. The last parade night was Tuesday night and we were lucky to catch it. Fat Tuesday was a very literal description of the night, with booths serving piles of savory tacos, delicious gorditas and the most beautiful candy displays you've ever seen and so much more. Not surprisingly, we ate as much as possible!




The floats in the parade were amazing. Carnaval meets Roman gods seemed to be the theme. I won't bore you with all the floats, just the best ones!




We stayed in La Paz the next day for a kayak/snorkel trip that we caught last minute. While the kayaking was for an incredibly short amount of time, we did get to see dolphins and whales, swim with some sea lions.




From there we used Los Barriles as home base, seeing as much of the Baja peninsula as we could. We made it to Cabo Pulmo, a beautiful national park with great snorkeling, mostly empty beaches, and a restaurant that served amazing squid and shrimp tacos. We made it here 2 days and I know we could (and hopefully will) spend more time there in the future! Keith even saw a sea turtle while snorkeling!




We made it to two hot springs in one day. El Chorro was a bit of a surprise. It was crowded when we got there, so Keith went for a short hike and I hung out and read. By the time he got back, the place had cleared out and we got in the little rock pool that was warmer and then I freaking lost it! As soon as we got in there I felt this weird tickling on my back. I was being eaten by fishes! While Keith was totally fine this, I could not handle it for the life of me! I was laughing so hard at how ticklish this was I just about fell out of the pool.




There was also a side trip to Todos Santos, a cute place with a bunch of at galleries, delicious margaritas and where we got to see a few not even a day old baby turtles that were going to released into the sea later that day. And a day or so lounging on the quiet beaches of Punta Pescadero.



There was so much more than this and still so much more to do. I really hope we go back, actually I'm sure that we will! Next time, hopefully we'll have more time and our own sea kayaks!