My Oldest Son and the Grape Arbor

This is my 21 y/o. He asked me, "What is that thing for?" I told him it was the grape arbor. He said, "How come the boards are just laying on top of the posts?" I told him, "Because nobody has nailed them on yet." He said, "That's like a simple job, right? It would only take 15 minutes." I told him that simple jobs were more complicated than he thought. So he set out to prove me wrong, except that he found out that I was right. But my grape arbor is yet more put-together. It has been 3 years since we bought those treated posts. They laid on the ground for one year. Then Bruce and I put 3 of them in. The other 3 went in this spring, and I bought the 2x4's. The garden is right next to the arbor. You'd think with all that time weeding, some time would have been made for the arbor. The goats have eaten most of the leaves off the grape vines for the past 5 summers. It is amazing they are still alive.

My great-grandmother planted those Concord grape vines. I hope to train them to the top of this arbor where the goats will have much more difficulty eating the leaves. This was a memorable day.

The Garden on June 20th

I was taking a picture of the Job's tears, which were just weeded and are between the two row markers. But you can't see them very well. They look now like a cross between corn and grass. They are between the green pole beans (to the left) and the brussel sprouts which are just next to the beets. Out at the end, you can see the pumpkin plants have begun spreading, and you can see the corn peeping up behind the horseradish.

Oh, I have horseradish all over my garden. We let it grow where ever it sprouts. When the garden is tilled or plowed, each little bit that gets cut off tends to sprout and form new crowns. I dig it up with a garden fork and make grated horseradish often enough that I we try to confine it to certain parts of the garden, but it is growing out by the chicken house somehow.

There is a row of large Spanish onions next to the beans. I started the onions from seeds and transplanted them, and they are teenie tiny, so you can't see them in this picture at all. The blue pan off to the left is where I ended the green pepper row, and there are two rows of tomatoes further left of that. Then there is a row of herbs and tomatillos, then yellow summer squash, and then sunflowers which either never came up or got eaten by something. I am having a problem with ducks, chickens and groundhogs.

Brussel Sprouts and Pumpkins and Blue Corn

I took these pictures on May 31st also. The first picture is my brussel sprouts. The second is the pumpkins just peeping up, and the corn that I planted directly in the manure we put on the garden last fall, that Bruce dug the weeds out of and spread around a little.

The Garden on May 31

Finally, it loaded!! Now this is June 22, and it looks quite a bit different than this. But here is that picture of May 31st. You can clearly see the Bull's Blood beets, two rows. Next to them is a row of carrots; and then the kolarabi, and then the red-leaf lettuce the geese at off.

You can't see in this picture well, but in the back, in the manure, the corn and the pumpkins and squash are just coming up. To the left of the beets is a row of broccoli; then a half row of Job's tears.

And interspersed is horseradish that I let grow.

What Comes Down

I rarely tire of listening to rain falling. This makes me feel a little guilty when it has been raining for some time, and there is flooding. But I love to listen to the rain.

Simple pleasures have been more difficult to come by. I still take the time to make myself notice them. Several things have been sort of eating at me for a few years, and try as I might to let go of them, they bother me at times.

These things have changed the way I live my life and conduct myself. They have ruined simple pleasures that formerly I gave little thought to. They have also tainted my reputation in certain crowds, and although they are false or misleading, I have no way to redress them. There is no way things can go back to the way they were before these things happened. There is no way for me to fix the damage they've done in my extended family and extended community. I have retreated from being involved in many events I used to be involved in because of them. I used to have a little more fight, but pain after pain has me at home, excercising my feel-better muscles, and building a more solid base in other communities than those I was once so connected to.

But I see it as sort of a grounding time of my life. I am finding other simple pleasures to take the place of those ones and little by little, finding some peace. I have been re-evaluating who my friends are and what is important. Who I really am - who I know I am - hasn't been changed by the impressions of others. No honorable path is a simple one.

I have taken the time and am taking the time to let go so that I don't become vindictive or vengeful, and have attempted to send some sort of good will their way.

11 Days Later

I tried several times today (7 or more actually) to post a picture of my garden, but it wouldn't upload. The blue corn I saved from last year's harvest, the Bakers Creek hubbard squash and some pumpkin seeds I saved from a pumpkin we bought at a private farm market all came up where we planted them directly in the manure.

It is an experiment. I've been reading all about no-till planting. We did weed the manure, and Bruce spread it out using a garden fork. It was spongy stuff to plant in. I didn't bother trying to mark the rows. I'll be interested to see if the corn stalks stand tall. That area of ground was seeded with yard rye and bluegrass, and we just dumped the manure on it straight out of the barn last fall. Now little corn sprouts are poking out of it.

The kolarabi and brussel sprouts have been suffering from some bug. I dusted them with diatomacious earth the day after I posted last. It seems to be helping, but negligably. Any help they get, however is worth the effort if we get kolarabi and brussel sprouts in the end.

The geese ate my beautiful Lolla Rossa lettuce down to the ground. They were banned to the goat pasture the very next day. The geese are big enough now that they can't get through the woven wire fence. The lettuce is coming back slowly. Fortunately they left the mustard, so I have greens to put on my sandwitches for work, without having to buy them.

I planted Job's tears, turnips and basil that day. The turnips are up. I'm not sure if the basil is or not. I'm hoping the storms today provided enough water to moisten the Job's tears thoroughly and get them going, because I did not soak them before planting.

I think menopause is beginning to settle in. After being 17 days late, taking 3 negative pregnancy tests and surviving a flood that wiped me out that entire week, I've pulled out a book someone recommended to me a few years ago, "New Menopausal Years The Wise Woman Way," by Susan Weed. It is a wonderful book. There are some new herbs, flowers and vegetables I am thinking of growing now; not to mention, the dandelions all over my yard have taken on a new important function. Dandelion greens are better for you than about any green leafy vegetable and replace exactly what you need in such circumstances.

The big new project this summer, gardening-wise, is going to be the flower bed next to the house. I'm finished with my Japanese knotweed eradication program. It didn't work. And since it still has to be pulled out, better that it is not between briars. See, I let some bird-planted blackberries grow in the flower bed the past few summers, propogated them, and harvested bumper crops of blackberries. But half of the berries have a bad rust. So after the blackberries are done, they will be cut off; all the knotweed pulled up, and we are going to do a manure experiment on the flower beds. When I figure out how to post pictures again, I will.

The Garden

Please permit me to share my garden with you. In several months, I hope to post a picture that you will find unrecognizable from this one.

In the far background, you can see my brother's trailer. Then there are box elders lining the drainage ditch; their leaves clipped as high as goats eat when they get out, and a large black willow behind the chicken house.

Between the garden and the chicken house is an area that I seeded with grass several years ago for my folks, when they felt they had become too old and too busy to garden its entirity. We covered a portion of it with sheep and goat manure from the barn last fall. Our 8 goslings of unknown breed, and the two ducks enjoy that area immensely. The goslings are mostly white with some gray tones. The Rouen drake and the brown Indian Runner hen hang with the goslings often, as if to parent them a little. Off to the left in that grassy area is what I had intended to be a trellis for some cutleaf blackberries that are still growing after 3 years of being transplanted there, but have never thrived.

The garden has green onions, mustard greens and red leaf lettuce to the right in a small area I turned over by shovel in early April. The larger tilled area that is growing in nicely with small weeds also has a barely visible row of kolarabi, then carrots, then 2 rows of beets, then brussel sprouts. A lot of the green you see is actually volunteer tomatoes from last year. I have since weeded most of them out, and it looks much prettier today.

Bruce tilled off to the left, a size about this big. Today I planted a row that is half Job's tears, and half turnips. He also weeded and turned the manure, and in it now is 5 rows of blue corn, surrounded on the 3 grassy sides with hubbard squash, watermelon and pumpkins that will hopefully grow out over the hay and assist in keeping the deer and goats out of the corn.

In the foreground is a rusty old chime that hangs on the porch. Some carpenter bees make a nest in one of the bells each year. Down below the chimes from the porch are some blackberries I have been propagating for several years, and lots of Japanese knotweed. The blackeberries were part of my Japanese knotweed eradication program; but alas, it was not as successful as I'd hoped. I am doomed to pull knotweed from around my porch, as I and my mother before have done for the past 30 years. Whats more, about half of the blackberries have a very thick rust on them this year. So I am going to cut them all out after harvesting them, pile manure on, and make it all back into a flower garden.

Shearing

This is me shearing Rosie, our Corriedale/Lincoln cross ewe. She was pregnant before we shore her, and lambed a few days afterwards. You can see her full udder. We have electric shears, but prefer to use the hand shears. It takes a little longer, but the sheep jump and fight less.








Rosie has a beautiful black ram lamb. Here she is after lambing, eating some grain left on the ground.

Black Lamb's fleece

This is the first shearing of our one-year-old black lamb. He was jet black after shorn, making sheep I used to call black look dark gray. Left is the inside view. Below is the folded fleece with a staple measured next to a yardstick on a gray roof slate.







And this is the outside.

Shoveling Manure and Gardening

Saturday we shoveled manure. Because of a variety of reasons, not limited to ones such as having a baby, working full-time, graduating a teenager and getting him off to college 4 states away, the barn has not been cleaned out for close to 3 years. Since we use the old manure pack technique, it is supposed to be done once or twice per year. The eight foot ceiling in the barn is about 6 feet high right now. Being 5'11, walking where the goats walk makes me feel I need to duck. This isn't like grain-fed cow lagoon slop. This is hay and grass-fed, thick, healthy stiff garden fertilizer. You won't find lethal e-coli, or John's diseases in this stuff. It smells, but not that sick smell - I actually like the smell of healthy manure.

I paid a friend of my daughter's to come help, and we made a party of it. My daughter has been my manure-shoveling buddy several times in the past. She wouldn't admit it, but I think she actually enjoys working with me doing this.

My brother rebuilt a 4-sided small tractor-pulled wagon we've had since we were children (I'm 43), that we use among other things, to transport the manure from the barn to the garden. It took him about a year to get the trailer rebuilt, but it is a pretty, bright green trailer. Behind the red Farmall, it looks like Christmas. The only good part left on it before his work was the metal fork, axle and tires. It amazes me to look at a 30 y/o reconditioned trailer. It is like an old friend.

The far half of the garden has been fallow for 15 years. Back then, I tilled, raked and seeded half of the acre garden to become lawn, all by myself, so my aging parents could have a more manageable size place to work. The plan is to make it back into garden again. We will fertilize it by letting the manure sit through the winter, and then till it in, in the spring. We will make it back into the big garden it once was, and maybe I'll make it to the farmer's market next summer to sell the extra veggies I grow in it.

We have 15-20 goats and 7 or so sheep. 3 years of manure accumulation in the barn is, well, a big job. We have it about 1/10th done from one entire afternoon. But we did find the concrete floor of the barn. It is amazing how inspiring it feels to see a huge pile in one corner of soil that has been fallow for 15 years. The manure is chock full of earthworms. There are no artificial hormones; virtually no antibiotics; very little medication in this manure. My neck and shoulder are pleasantly stiff.

3 years ago, the last time we did this, my husband's neice was visiting from their farm in Colorado. She helped for just a few hours. She told us she had never done this by hand. Her father had a front end loader. Our two Farmalls are not equipped with front end loaders. Manure and garden forks (the hand kind) cost about $25-30; and shoveling is an EXCELLENT weight loss program. Plus, it makes me feel good to see all those earthworms. It means my barn, despite being full of manure, is healthy, and they are all going into my garden to grow healthy food next summer. Talk about a job that connects you with your food.

It gives me a wonderful sense of well-being. Everyone should have to shovel manure and grow a garden.

New York Times article on Farm Bill and Subsidies

See the article, "Today's Harvest of Shame," by Dean Kleckner, if it will let you persue the link. http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html
He is past president (1986-2000) of American Farm Bureau, which I belong to. He thinks we ought to do away with subsidies, like New Zealand.

I am working on the book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma," by Michael Pollan. The reasons Dean makes for doing away with subsidies sound a lot different than author, Michael Pollan's explanations. Dean leaves out Cargill. He says it has something to do with competetiveness in the world market. I haven't figured it out yet, but I will be following this story.

Cheese in the Springhouse

Two days ago, I pasteurized between 4 and 5 gallons of milk. I really wanted to make another round of goat cheddar like the one I made a little over a week ago, but Timothy is graduating from high school a week from today. We are throwing a big party here on the farm, provided it doesn't rain, and I couldn't use up another whole day off making goat cheese. Poo, poo, poo. I did make some more Chevre. And I ate a whole bunch of it.

Yesterday my face stayed red and hot all day. I wasn't feverish at all. It is the same reaction I get from eating almonds. I am wondering if it is the new coffee; or the combination of cleaning solutions throughout the house, or if the goats ate something I'm allergic to that my pasteurizing wouldn't kill. I was set on it being the pigging out on goat cheese (Chevre), but then I remember the same thing happening when working at the last hospital I worked at 7 or so years ago. It happened whenever someone was cleaning.

The cheese I made a couple of weeks ago turned out much better than I expected up to the point I left off. I hope it lasts until late July, when we can cut it. I followed the culturing recipe to the letter. A candy thermometer stayed in the milk the whole time. It was a full day of standing over the stove or sink and watching the temperature closely, and I sure hope there is a reward for that! The curds cut nicely, and shrunk nicely when cooked. I strained the curds into cheesecloth when they were ready, and tied them tight for pressing.

PRESSING
I used the goat cheddar recipe in Ricki Carroll's book, "Home Cheesemaking." It took a long time. My boughten cheese mold wasn't big enough, and I was worried it might not be strong enough to contain a cheese with 50 lbs of weight on it, so I cut out the bottom of a Maxwell House coffee can, and poked some holes in the side. My 17 year old son - the brain that he is - suggested using his barbell weights when my nursing books weren't balancing well. We found a lid strong enough and the right enough size to fit over the top of the cheese, to put the weights on inside the can. His 2 1/2 pound weights fit right into the coffee can. Then he found a bowl that breached the top of the can enough to add some 5 pound weights. Those were wider than the top. Then he found some of my 3 brothers' old 10 pound weights out in the barn, where their old bench press is. We came up with 50 pounds even! We felt ingenious. And they balanced enough to not fall over.

So I pressed the cheese for the allotted amount of time with 20 lbs, then 30 lbs, then 50 lbs. I am eyeing that old cider press out in the barn and thinking of bigger cheeses with a wind-down top...like the professional presses. I just wonder how they figure out exactly how much weight is being applied with those.

In looking for something to drain the cheese on, I recalled that my friend Babs had talked me into buying a sushi making kit I'd never used, and I thought the bamboo matt would be perfect. It was perpetually moist, but it did the job draining/drying the cheese on top of a cutting board. The salt was not good for my already warped and cracked cutting board, but oh well.

The cheese was beautiful. I had ordered cheese salt from Leeners, and salted it until it was mostly dried. You are supposed to salt it once per day, and turn it. I think the oils might have come out forever, and was reading in some Yahoo cheese groups that some peoples' cheese was too dry and cracked, or had stayed too moist and molded. I took an uneducated guess and decided when the whey had stopped and it looked like oil coming, and the oil flow was slowing, to wax it.

WAXING
I had never waxed a cheese. But mother made candles when I was little, and I've made them too. I melted the cheese wax in a clean double boiler pot that had lost its handle. (I am planning on getting new cookware soon anyway). The recommended boar bristle brush painted the wax on just fine. I had to hold where it was cooled long enough for the other side to cool enough to hold, and be careful my fingers didn't go through the wax to expose the cheese. I knew from a cheese my mother made when I was small that if any cheese showed through, mold would take over and ruin it probably.

AGEING
There was a mesh lemon bag from the store. I put the cheese in that and went down to the springhouse. We have an old walk-in springhouse made for a dairy farm, with a run-off trough just the right size to set milk cans in. There are old hooks all over the ceiling. I had always thought they were to hang cheeses on. But my dad's first cousin who just turned 90 and kind of grew up here, says they were for hanging shelves. They kept butter and cottage cheese on the shelves to keep the rodents and other large living things out of it. The shelves were hung on chains. Well, I'm using the hooks for cheese. We might get some shelves up, maybe, later. The springhouse is supposed to stay between 50-55 degrees year round, and it sort of does. But the door is rotted off right now. My brother and husband are planning to fix it along with the 1000 other projects on the farm. So for now it is staying 60-70 degrees on a very warm day. And varmints can get in the open door easily. All it would take is one coyote jump...so I'm praying my cheese will be okay.

The old saying that he "cut the cheese" is taking on new meaning for me. I dearly hope that when that event takes place 60-90 days from now, that the aroma is a good one!!! It is a long time to wait.

Death again

Ashley the spring lamb didn't make it. About a week ago, Bruce went out to the barn and found her dead. She had been doing wonderfully, and it was a suprise.

He had felt she was strong enough to leave with her mother, but was going out twice a day and making sure she got something to eat. The ewe seemed to be letting her nurse along with her twin brother, after a couple of weeks of being held still for the act. I was working a couple of stretches of day shift (10 with 2 off in the middle), or maybe I would have been more involved. I might have been able to relieve Bruce of the fuss a little more. I might even have made her a house lamb, and not tried to graft her back onto her mother.

As it was, day shift is pretty rough on me. I get up between 3:30 and 4 am, rush, rush, rush; feel kind of zombified and not all quite there by 4 or 5pm when I get home, and try to get to bed by 8 or 9 to feel refreshed enough for the next day, and the next.

I felt obligated to update, since I wrote about her.

First, there is that her mother rejected her to begin with, and it was only by chance that I even found her. Once in a while, such efforts pan out; but more often they don't. The "when they don'ts" have had me on the verge of giving up farming on numerous occaisions. To keep going, one almost has to rationalize death a little. It is very similar to nursing. Everyone rationalizes in their own way - and needs to.

I don't get as devastated as I used to. But I tend to disconnect - to not talk about it - for a while. I repress, which seems both to others and to myself like I Don't Feel. But then, it always catches up with me some time. How could a little lamb, that I saved, just up and die like that? It catches up when I am alone, and feel safe to think and feel. I don't like to really think and feel around others, because I have to take into account their reactions.

We ordered peeps. It is complicated - maybe my husband's and my way of dealing with death; maybe we just like chickens. And hate them too sometimes. We've wanted more, and I've wanted Buff Orpingtons. So that is what we got. By the time they grow up, some of them die too. They trample and pick at each other. We've already lost about 4 or 5, just 2 days into it. We still have 20 or so.

I am reading a book called, "That Dark and Bloody River," still. I mentioned it several posts ago. It is about the settling and warring over the Ohio River. In the larger picture, death isn't so unusual. Natural death is, in fact, almost a little more sweet. Not desired; not happy; but a whole lot better than intentional.

Legalizing Health

The medical profession is old enough to have established protocols for just about everything. When someone wants to think outside of the box - say use alternative medicine - it doesn't just threaten a doctor's sense of control over the practice. It goes against the grain for another reason. The established protocol has been developed over literally hundreds of years, and in some cases, maybe a couple thousand. Another protocol isn't used because it hasn't been shown to be the best one.

It is sort of like a tree identification book my brother had as a kid. Starting at the beginning, it asks simple questions, like does the tree have compound leaves? If yes, go to page _; if no, go to page _. And so on. It makes it easy to identify the tree. Likewise, medicine has diagnosing steps. If a patient asks me what is wrong with them on step one, I'm going to tell them, we're doing THIS to find out. They complain that nobody is TELLING them anything. You can't read page one of a book, and expect to know the whole story.

The point I want to make here though, is that the medical profession and diagnosing is not quite as clear cut in many areas as tree identification. There are some things that are taken for granted as just being the way it is. Sometimes a better way comes up, but a doctor is taught to make sure trials and studies have been done to support the efficacy of the treatment. That doesn't mean a new way is wrong. Medicine is a little more like math than tree identification - there might be several ways to solve the same problem. BUT, some studies have already produced poor results for much of the alternative medicine world, or simply have not been done. But a doctor might have to read every periodical and every study result every day of her life to know new treatments.

Where, though, do you decide that protocol needs to change with the times as opposed to repeating old mistakes? For instance, in the birthing industry (and it IS an industry), what ever happened to Dr. Bradley's method of birth? I personally believe that it got lost in the realm of hyperlitigation. Its being lost has nothing to do with safe birthing practices, and everything to do with why people sue, perceived convenience promoted by drug industries, and doctors protecting themselves. You can sue the medical profession for just about anything and get away with it.

In the raw milk industry, there is an established idea by the government about who can raise milk, and who can sell milk. Contraversy is taking place because many people want to have the right to buy and drink raw milk. The USDA doesn't want people to drink raw milk, and cites disease as the main reason, but the jury isn't out on the real reason according to many people. Because there is 10 times the chance you can get sick from deli meat than you can from raw milk, and you are still aloud to buy deli meat. This is detailed in David Gumpert's blog, "The Complete Patient:"

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While I agree that it would be nice if we could reduce disease, I disagree that we should be litigated into doing so. People should have the ability and the trained assistance to have babies naturally, and even at home, and to drink raw milk. It is a cliche, but both are safer than getting into your car each day. There is an imbalance of what is legal and what is not.

100 years ago, most rural families had their own milk cow and chickens. Prior to that, for 2000 years, most people drank raw milk and had babies at home. Now our government is making it so we are not allowed to, and I have to ask, can this be safe?

Chevre, Paneer and Butter

We have goat milk. My husband is milking 3 goats. This year, we opted to take the boy kids to the sale barn for the Easter sale. In the past, we have wethered them, or kept them until the fall goat sales. Always, a middle man for meat producers buys them all. So I know they get butchered, and most likely end up on a Jewish or Muslim table for some religious feast. I thought it would be harder to take kids, most likely used for Passover, but as it turned out, I think it was easier. On Easter, I thought of them being the center of someone's table. They were treated a little better at the sale. They didn't grow up to inbreed with the rest of the herd.

Anyways, back to the milk part. I figured my husband would want to dry the mothers up, and the milking would only last a short while. He is enjoying milking, and doing it for production, from cross-bred brush goats. The milk is mild-flavored, with high butterfat.

Over a year ago, I ordered a bunch of cheese supplies. I LOVE the expensive Chevre at the store, so Chevre culture was one I ordered. I have made it twice, and it was delectable. Yum, yum! I have one more packet of culture.

The retirement home my folks live at has a director currently from Kashmir, India, with an American wife. They love to make cheese from raw milk. He told me how paneer was made, and I am going to try it. My mother made a lot of cottage cheese when I was growing up, and I have made quite good cottage cheese from goat milk in the past. Paneer actually looks easier. I'm doing it tomorrow.

This morning, I discovered that some milk I overcooked coagulated too much. It is not spoiled, but it did something to the proteins. I had some that I had carefully pasteurized at a lower temperature that the cream had seperated out on. I took the cream off this morning so I could use the milk in my cereal, and put the cream in a clean salsa jar. While I used the breast pump, I shook the jar. I shook it some more after my shower. Finally, I got goat butter!! I rinsed it and salted it, and stuck it in the fridge. It is very mild and tasty.

I am so proud of myself!

There are a few things I have learned about cheesemaking. Pasteurization at the lowest possible temp to kill the bacteria properly creates the best results - overcooking ruins some of the proteins that make a nice cheese.

I am anxious to try the paneer now. I want to try mozzerella or cheddar, but I have to order some lipase for that.

Ashley the April lamb

Tuesday, I had the day off for pulling a double on Monday. In the afternoon, I put baby Eilidh in the backpack, and headed out into the pasture with the loppers for my favorite pastime - cutting brambles the goats have eaten the bottoms off of.

Not far out, under a very old and large Ash tree that is surrounded with slippery elms, box elders, wild cherry, and bittersweet and grapevines, a ewe was standing alone, away from the herd. I looked for and was not suprised to see a lamb wobbling around her. Then, I noticed a splotch of white on the ground next to her. If it was a twin, she was ignoring it. I waited a while, knowing that if I disturbed her, she'd be less likely to clean it and get it on its feet. So I continued with my loppers for a little while. The white splotch stayed there, and the sheep ignored it.

When the standing lamb began nursing, and the ewe licked it and began moving away from the white splotch, I moved closer. It was a lamb, after all. It let out a very weak bleat. It was laying in mud, and was still soaked with afterbirth. The ewe walked around, sniffed it numerous times, left it and licked her standing, dry ram lamb. I picked up the slimy, muddy lamb and carried it back to the house, balancing the baby in the backpack and the loppers under my arm. My 17 y/o son helped me get the baby in the pack off my back. I dried off the lamb, rubbing some circulation into it, and put it in a cardboard box on a heating pad. It was cold, but alive. I warmed up some goat milk (we're milking 3 right now), and it sucked hungrily. Good sign.

Today, the lamb is not only standing, but is trying to nurse off our pantlegs. It has climbed out of the box in the kitchen numerous times. I've named her Ashley.

What is really important

I have been going up and down 5 flights of stairs a couple times per week for 1 1/2 months now, and I've only lost 1 lb.

Yesterday I got recertified in ACLS. That's Advanced Cardiac Life Support. That is what you have to know to run a code in a hospital, and all of us lucky nurses who get to be on the code team have to be certified. It is required of those who work on the more critical cardiac floors. It used to be you went around to stations with a real live person and simulated running a code. Now that we have computers - wonderful things that they are - the people who came up with ACLS have developed a computer simulation instead. You have to click on the buttons of what to do in the correct sequence in order to pass each scenario. There are about 10 scenarios. Joe comes into the ER with dizziness for a week, and he's passed out twice. You put him on the monitor, see that he has bradycardia, take his vitals, put oxygen on, call for help, and then pull down the list of medications you might give him. If you give him the wrong one, the computer kills him. It took me 7 hours.

Today I hung out with the baby and read a book. I didn't feel like doing anything else after yesterday. I nursed the baby for hours and hours. I read Zane Grey's book, "The Last Trail." It is the third of the trilogy about the settlement of Fort Henry and Wheeling, WV. I am really into Ohio River history in this area right now. After I finished the book, I started another, called, "That Dark and Bloody River," by Eckert. Around 4 in the afternoon, I needed to take a walk.

My husband went with me. He helped me put the baby on my back. The farm is in such a state of disrepair with me working full time that I'm not sure what I'm doing here sometimes. But I keep plugging away. He showed me where he dragged my alpha doe a few weeks ago when we found her dead behind the barn. She wasn't there. The coyotes probably drug her off. Someone on a geneology site I belong to posted about cougars being back in the area, and I thought it would be a novel idea if it were really a cougar, but I feel more comfortable with the idea of a coyote.

Then I came in and cleaned the meat off a turkey that has been sitting cooked in the fridge for a week that the kids have been picking the meat off of here and there when they're hungry. I made some broth, and cooked some stewish meat for supper. Then I read some more. It was a lazy thing to do.

I have been working full time since October. I feel as though my body is beginning to shut down at times - pumping, washing pump parts, nursing the baby, running to work, taking care of people with very sick hearts. The snow is melting, and it is almost spring. I wanted to take the loppers with me, but there was a baby on my back. I picked up some old high tensile wire that is all over the pasture and started winding it up. Some past boyfriend of mine had it put up so I could keep some of his horses. Even though I told the guys where to put the fence, they disregarded what I said, and the places that the posts are render their position unuseable. Bruce didn't want to pick up fence tonight. I could have stayed out there and picked it all up, even with a baby on my back. Maybe I should have. The baby didn't mind. She was talking to the goats.

I start another 6 day stretch in the morning - or rather the afternoon. The nurse manager said I could cut down to part time again on the next schedule or the one after. Financially it will hurt. But there is a trade off here. There is a whole lot more to it, but I'm not going into it here. I'm just so glad it is almost spring.

We traded my alpha doe's twin orphans with my brother and his wife for 4 colorful Indian Runner ducks. Yesterday, they and the white pekins finally found a spring in the pasture. Heretofore, they have lived in my garden. I've wondered if was any use starting seeds this year. They really like the pasture, and I'm hoping they spend more and more time there. We have 7 ducks total, and can they ever make a racket!

Baby is asleep on my lap. Is there anything more I really need in life?

You Can't Buy a Cucumber Attack for $2,000

It's true.

I didn't say it. But I thought it. My children are always teasing me when things like this come out of my mouth. Where do they come from?

Well, as I was walking in the door tonight, after a long night's work on a cardiac unit, I was thinking about the trees. The moon shone through the tall hemlock in the back yard that my great grandfather planted there for my great grandmother. The walnut trees have such an allure in the winter moonlight, leaving shadows in the snow. Those same black walnut trees are worth about $2000 apiece, and I was thinking, you can't buy a new walnut tree like that for $2000. Once it is gone, it is gone. If we sell them for timber, we will have money, but no walnut trees, ever again. You can grow more, but I would be 80, or dead before they'd be like that again. Is it worth $2000? I kind of like the trees the way they are. I'd miss them. I'd miss them almost as much as I'd miss a person if they died, and life is supposed to be priceless. Are the walnut trees that priceless?

Anyways, the newspaper on the top of a stack of newspapers on the back porch had a headline on it that caught my eye as I walked in the door. It was about Iraq. It said another attack had happened. Who knows what day or year that newspaper was. It could have been any in the last 3 or 4.

And...on the kitchen table was a new package of seeds that had come in the mail. It was cucumber seeds I had ordered. And the words just went through my head - just like that:

"You can't buy a cucumber attack for $2000."

What does it mean when your mind jumbles a small chain of events like that. About 8 or 9 years ago, I would have joked that I was getting Alzheimers, but it is such an old joke that most seasoned nurses cringe when someone says it. (My ex-husband likes that sort of cringe). Or it would worry me, because once on the series, "Murder She Wrote," Angela Lansbury solves a mystery where a woman leaves out letters in her words that she writes, because the woman has a brain tumor. (My ex-husband used to tease me maliciously when I said something stupid, that it was my brain tumor talking). I leave out letters in words I write all the time - especially the first letter. Should I get a CT scan of the brain?

You know, we have the weirdest dreams. But after reading Freud's biography by Irving Stone, and writing down and thinking through some of my own dreams, I think our brains put things like this together for reasons. It is a puzzle, and if we figure it out, it gives us insight into our subconscious thinking.

Maybe it means that I can't really make money off of this farm. Or maybe it means that ...planting cucumbers is not going to help me save $2000 on my grocery bills. I'll have to think about it a little longer. Maybe I'll ponder it as I drink my Mother's Milk tea, and cuddle my 7 month old baby, and drift blissfully off to sleep, feeling the ache in my legs from walking up 6 flights of stairs at work instead of taking the elevators to the 7th floor, in effort to get back into shape and lose weight. The bed feels so nice when your muscles are sore. Your husband and baby feel so warm when it is snowy and cold outside, and the moon makes shadows under the giant black walnut trees.

Just an update...Pete finally killed too many chickens, and he got shot. I won't go into details. In Sept. when I said the billy goats were stinky, the females were already bred, because most of them had kids this week. That means they were bred in July. We sold 4 boy goats at the sale barn - 2 wethers and 2 bucks. The bucks brought $20 more per goat than the wethers. Since 2 weeks ago, we have 10 baby goats. There are two more pregnant goats. I hope the sheep are pregnant.

The baby is 6 months old now. She's still beautiful. I'm still exclusively breastfeeding her, and pumping at work. She gets constipated sometimes, and I worry wether or not she's getting enough, but she still has never had formula. I've thought about switching, but my husband doesn't want me to. She's never gotten sick yet, even though I've had a very bad cold and given it to the rest of the family and a lot of people at work. She is almost sitting up on her own, and has become very good at grabbing things. Today my 14 y/o taught her how to play with a slinky.

My 17 y/o son has been accepted into 2 of the 3 colleges he applied to. The 3rd one is a state college, so we're not worried. The most expensive college offered him a $12,000/year presidential scholarship up front, which is very, very nice. We only have $19,000 more to figure out on that one. It is in NC, and is the one he's chosen to go to.

Pumping has become so familiar that I am certain now that most of the staff in the hospital have heard through the grapevine what is in my black bag. I wonder if I am an enigma sometimes. But people really do seem to like me, and at my yearly eval, my old unit manager told me that the hospital has invested a lot into training me, and that I am thus a very valueable employee. I hadn't thought of it that way. Since I had a baby, a lot of young nurses have gotten pregnant. They are going to have a lot of nurses off at the same time this spring and summer.

I miss my 19 y/o. I wish he would move back to Ohio. But I suppose he's an adult. It will be a long time before I'm an empty - nester, but I don't like the feeling of it.

I've been asked to possibly be interviewed for someone's article in a local magazine. It is for mothers who were seperated from their babies at birth, but breastfed anyway. I feel honored in a way, but being asked caused me to relive that all again today. It got me thinking about what could be said that would be helpful to others going through the same thing; or who might go through it.

There was an article on one of the forums I belong to about truck gardening. One man makes as much as I do per year, just growing and selling lettuce on a few acres. I want to stay home and farm full time and make what I make now. I bet I can figure out how. My daughter tells me we are out of food, and I know we have food here. I have failed my children, so I am determined to teach our baby (and myself) how to survive. It will especially be important in the dark time to come.

Did you ever get most of the way home from work on a 45 minute commute, and realize you never turned on the radio?

Did you ever read a book that reminded you of another book? Like one that began with chapters where the titles begin, "In Which..." and you know that Milne wrote the Pooh books long before this one was written. I'm talking about "My Side of the Mountain," and "The Other Side of the Mountain."

Did you ever develop the superstition that when you offered to do something nice, that you always paid for offering?

The clouds formed over the half-moon tonight in a manner that gave me a premonition. I don't get such premonitions often, and nobody believes me when I do, so I'm writing this one down in my blog. Unrelated to the premonition, but worth mentioning is that the moon happens to have been sitting sideways tonight, like a bowl or a cup. Anyways, my prediction is that the sky is going to turn black for days on end, and it will make the earth cold and keep the greens from growing and the solar powered cells from being powered. I don't know what will cause it to happen - maybe volcano's like when Mount St. Helen erupted. I'd really like to have a wood stove.