What’s a WWOOFer, you ask? It stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms. Basically, you sign up as a member and search a directory of farms that are willing to trade labor (yours) for food and shelter (theirs). We heard about it from friends of ours who traveled South America one farm at a time. We tried signing up two years ago, but we simply didn’t have the time to manage all the back and forth involved in the requests, and we didn’t have any housing to offer. Sure, some participating farms have WWOOFers camp, but that seemed unfair. When Ben joined us, we rented his house with the thought of hosting WWOOFers in mind. So far we’ve had eight folks help us out this year and we couldn’t be happier.

But back to the terrace. In March, we had a couple of cubic yards of Panorama Pay Dirt delivered, which Ben and Alston, I mean Ben and our WWOOFers from BU distributed among the terraces.

Then they planted blueberry bushes towards the back, strawberries towards the front and rhubarb along the hill’s crest. Now you see why I’m calling it pie hill. I’m happy to report that everything is growing happily.

Okay, so this is also where we have the asparagus plot, but that could easily go into a quiche, therefore the name remains relevant.

From my perspective, it’s great to have all these perrenials located above the main garden plot, so as to avoid any risk of accidentally tilling over these long term plantings. From Ben’s wiser perspective, he likes that a perennial border can serve as a means of pest control for the more delicate annuals that make up the vegetable garden below.

Other than a handful of blueberries and maybe a half dozen strawberries, this hill won’t be making any pies this year. But next year? I am already salivating just thinking about it.

Our first chick order (and subsequent replacement order) in 2010 was a variety pack. While the image of white, speckled, black, red and brown birds running about the pasture certainly added an aesthetic appeal, we realized come 2012 when we prepared to order the next batch of layers, that we would have no way to tell the new flock from the old. So that year we ordered all (or mostly all) Delawares. What we didn’t think about was tracking egg production, as Delawares, like all five of our 2010 varieties, lay brown eggs. Hence the 2013 order being focused on egg color. Next year we’ll have to pick a white laying variety that also doesn’t look like any of our existing flock.

Now time to give the people what they want – pictures of baby animals!

Speaking of baby animals, the quacks have gotten huge! If not for the 31 degree temps the other evening, we’d have separated the Rouens out into a chicken tractor by now. Given today should reach 90 degrees, I expect we’ll make that move before the week is out.

Let me step back for a minute here. I’ve never had a good answer to the question “What’s your dream job?” Before and during college, it was something along the lines of “Is professional student an option?” And after college, I moved in with my now husband, Will. Will knew he wanted to work in food and wine, specifically, he wanted to open his own restaurant. So it became my job to find a job that would a) let me stay in Charlottesville, b) make enough money for both of us to live on while he started plugging away at said dream and c) would actually accept this Political Theory/Bioethics major as an employee. I got lucky. After a crappy few months selling advertisements for a local paper, I found a job at LexisNexis. Not a sexy job, not a job that I would ever do if I won the lottery, even like a small lump sum win, but a job that could sustain us. I hopped around the small corporate scene that is Charlottesville (CFA, SNL) and by the time I was pregnant with Marie, knowing I’d be leaving the working world for the foreseeable future, I still didn’t have a good answer to the question. I’d had good jobs, well paying jobs, jobs that satisfied me intellectually, but no job I would ever do if not in exchange for a pretty large chunk of money. Luckily Will’s dreams were playing out quite successfully, and I can say without a doubt that, even if someone handed us $10 million (which you can still totally do, by the way), he would continue to run Revolutionary Soup and The Whiskey Jar. The closest I had was this farm, which up until this year has been losing money (ah, the cost of infrastructure). If asked at a cocktail party, I’d probably have said “Food Writer?”

Back to Susan. After hanging out with Susan maybe three times, she asked me if I’d be interested in being the Cook Editor for By Hand. Wait, seriously? Did I just luck my way into my dream job? As in, a job I’d be willing to do regardless of a paycheck (which works out well, as there is no paycheck at this point)? Of course I said yes. And so Will and I concocted a harvest feast we could put on for the Fall issue but photograph in August. I tested recipes, and took hundreds of pictures of things that seemed so basic, like dicing onions or sautéing bacon, all in the name of creating the level of step by step instructions I would need if the topic were sewing and not cooking. Because that’s the idea of the magazine – that people who make in the general sense of the word often want to learn to make more. The cook would love to knit, the seamstress wants to build her own shelves, the carpenter wants to make dinner from scratch, if only we had the time and the know-how. And while I can’t do anything about time, I can share a little know-how. And that’s what I get to do now, one recipe at a time.

So I guess this is the long winded way of saying you should check out By Hand Magazine. The Spring issue just came out. So now I’m contemplating what I’ll be cooking this summer.

On Friday night, Ben made the hour+ journey to Cumberland to pick up a single gilt, who I will heretofore (for this post, anyway) refer to as Pig, maybe because she looks like the quintessential pig.

By the time Ben got back, the kids were in bed so I was able to help a little (aka mainly just point my headlamp in the right direction) as Ben pulled Pig out of the goat carrier and move her to the fenced part of the woods. I can think of few sounds more terrible than a screaming piglet, and this little lady was yelling right in Ben’s ear while bucking with all her 40 pound might. Thankfully Ben’s a strong guy, and he got her into the pen with no problems, despite it being pitch black and did I mention the harpy shrieking in his ear? Scout immediately placed herself in charge of this new recruit and spent the night next to Pig. By morning, they were fast friends, Pig snorting happily at the sight of his adopted dog mama.

This morning Ben was off to Palmyra to pick up five American Guinea Hog/Tamworth/Berkshire crosses. And because it was daylight, I have pictures this time. Here’s how you move a piglet.

Step 1: Crawl inside the goat carrier and grab whatever you can, be it leg or a full hug around the torso. Just get a hold of something.

Step 2: Hand that pig over to your assistant, who up until now was guarding the door for escapees. At this point, the pig is bucking and screaming, so there’s not a whole lot of verbal communication going on. The objective is simply not to drop the pig.

Bystanders should be warned about the whole screaming thing.

Step 3: Deposit the pig as gently as possible into the fenced area. Sometimes this means setting it down, sometimes dropping is your only option.

Now you have a pig safely confined to its new home. Go ahead and do that four more times, and try to avoid the piles of poop and vomit on the floor of the goat carrier. Fun!

Happily, Pig seems to be getting along with his new companions, who I’ve decided to call the G Hogs, because it sounds like a cool band name. Will is already making fun of me for that, so no need for you to chime in as well. The dork is strong with this one.

We had one weekend of it. Seventy degrees, cool breeze, inability to decide if you do or do not need a jacket. It was lovely.

This week it’s been in the eighties – even hitting ninety-one degrees on Wednesday. I’m normally impervious to heat, but it was disorienting to be garbed in shorts and a tank top when nary a leaf was visible, as the farm was still dressed in its winter grays and browns. But all that changed last night, when we got our first thunderstorm of the season. All that water after so many days of warm sun and it looks like this place exploded in vibrant green.

Spring feels so much more like a new beginning than January 1st. And speaking of new beginnings, our first new residents of the farm arrived via US Postal Service on Wednesday. Meet the quacks!

Five Khaki Campbells and six Rouens, the former for laying and the later for eating. They hung out in our kitchen under a heat lamp while Ben set up the duck house.

In order to avoid reliving Chase a Duck, the game where every night, you guessed it, you chase the ducks until they go into their house where you can lock them up safely each evening, we are experimenting with turning the duck house into a temporary brooder for these ducklings. All eleven will hang out under heat lamps for the first four weeks, after which we’ll remove the Rouens who will live out their remaining two months in one of the chicken tractors in the pasture. The Khakis will stay locked up in the duck house for a second month until they are water ready (hatchery ducklings lack the oil on their feathers that would normally transfer from the mother while she sat on them those first few weeks), at which point we’ll open up the hatch and hope upon hope that they desperately want to return home each evening. Without all the chasing. In the dark.

And since we still have one Khaki and one Rouen left from the original order almost three years ago , happily swimming in the pond, maybe this batch won’t take five months to figure out that ducks are supposed to swim, also unlike the first batch. See, we’re learning. Assuming ducks understand the concept of mentoring. Hmmm.

Alston was quite smitten with the quacks. Can you blame him?

In other farm news, the garden also got the memo about it being April. The peas are up! They should be ready for picking just in time to debut as Marie’s first solid food come May.

In addition to the eight (eight! gosh I love peas) rows of peas, Ben has carrots, radishes, chard and arugula started in the pond garden. The guinea hens decided that some of the beds made for perfect dust baths, so Ben covered the apparently too appealing rows with old chicken wire and so far it is a success.

The first thing I expect will be ready for harvest is the arugula, at least that’s based on how everything looked this morning. Ah to no longer be eating store bought vegetables. To be so sick of greens I stare at the tomato plants so intently as to will them to ripen. That’s when I know we are in full spring fury here.

There is so much more to tell, but picture will have to wait for a morning with a bit more light. The green house is full of future food – tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and so much more. The rented acre is partly planted in collards who will eventually accompany fried chicken at The Whiskey Jar. Not to mention all the amazing work Ben’s put into the orchard, but now I’m just teasing you. Exciting times here at Red Row Farm. Spring has sprung.

But back to the animals, so I can get you all caught up in time for some current news on this here blog.

Pigs

The short answer is that we’ve found it too cost prohibitive to breed our own pigs, so we will be buying in weaners (8 week old pigs who’ve been weaned from their mother) and raising them to slaughtering weight this year. But at this very moment, there are no pigs here at Red Row Farm.  Here’s what you’ve missed.

After we sent Betty off to the abattoir, we still had Barney, Wilma and her three piglets, and a mangalitsa we were fostering for some foodie friends. Barney was eating a 50 pound bag of feed a day, meaning it cost $35 a day to maintain a boar we only needed to sire piglets twice a year. Not worth it. So we bred him to Wilma one last time and had the vet come out to castrate him so that, in two months, Barney could become 800 pounds of sausage instead of the farm’s most expensive inhabitant. Unfortunately, there must have been some sort of complication, as the next day, Barney was dead in the forest. He’d awaken for breakfast and was walking around fine that morning, but by 11 AM he was no more. As he didn’t appear to bleed out, and it seemed too quick for an infection, we can only assume he threw a clout.

Because he was so big, we couldn’t move his body. And because he died in the forest, tangled with roots, we couldn’t dig a hole to bury him. So in the heat of a particularly brutal summer, we had a giant rotting carcass in the backyard, which Will would occasionally cover with lime, civil war style. Between the stink of death and the damage we sustained during June’s freak storm, aka the Derecho, let’s just say we didn’t have a whole lot of guests this summer.

In October, Wilma gave birth to two piglets, both of which did not survive the day. This we took as a sign to give up the disaster that was pig breeding, at least until we could both be on the farm full time, able to attend to the birth instead of hope nature would prevail. In December, Wilma and her three piglets were off to the abbatoir to become bacon, pork chops and bbq for The Whiskey Jar. So while I would consider us utter failures at pig breeding, what we did manage to raise was some incredibly delicious meat, albeit at an absurd financial loss.

Sheep

After the absolute shit storm that was our first lambing season, everything went perfectly the second time around. All five ewes lambed on their own without any human intervention. With one set of twins and one stillborn, we had 5 bouncing lambs on the farm, brining us to 10 sheep. I was one happy shepherd.

And then the heat hit. And it hit hard. One morning we found a dead sheep under the boxwood, with no obvious cause of death. Then the derecho hit, and we were without power for 11 days. And no power means no water. This is when having a pond becomes invaluable, because while we were holed up at my father-in-law’s townhouse for the week as my very pregnant self was not about to put up with 104 degree temps, no AC and no running water, at least our summer farm hand could water the animals bucket brigade style. Unfortunately, said farm hand was only around in the mornings, and with us living in town temporarily, no one was home when two lambs got tangled up in the chicken netting and died of exposure. The chicken netting was promptly abandoned, but we were down to 7 sheep for no very good reason.

The remaining sheep thrived, but continued to do damage to the young apple trees. Will deemed their service as lawn mowers and meat providers insufficient for reducing our future orchard of 18 trees down to 6, so all seven went to the abattoir this January and it is very unlikely that we’ll raise sheep again here. Personally, I loved having sheep. I loved watching them graze. I just enjoyed their presence, like it made this place feel like more of a farm. But, unless we can find a way to convince our neighbor to sell us the pasture adjoining our property (the one that belonged to our property two owners ago, grumble grumble), we really don’t have a suitable place to raise ruminants. We got away with it for two years because the land was virgin to them, but another year or two without proper space to rotate pastures and we’d have a parasite problem on our hands.

So we enjoyed some amazing lamb chops, have 7 more skins to send to the tannery for rugs, and are officially out of the sheep business.

Rabbits

You’ll notice a running theme here about the derecho. That’s because it pretty much took the little remaining wind out of our exhausted sails this year. Will was working insane hours at The Whiskey Jar, so much so that, on the way to school one morning, Alston asked me if this was the town where Daddy lived now. It was a rough first few months. On top of that, I was working part time, trying to entertain the boy and run all the household what-not, oh and did I mention the brain altering morning sickness I had this go around? 2012 will go down as the year we survived, and sometimes that’s enough. Well, all that sets the stage for June 29^th, when a massive storm blew across the greater US, carrying gusts of wind up to 80 miles per hour. Gusts that conspired to dismantle our 150+ year old willow oak and leave it strewn atop our house and my then brand new car. Defeat, thy name is insurance claims.

What does all this have to do with rabbits, you ask? Well, the morning after the storm, we walked outside expecting to find every single animal dead. Amazingly, everyone looked no worse for the wear with the exception of two rabbits, dead in their cages. Will, a little broken (a little?), decided on the spot to let all the remaining rabbits go. He didn’t have time to process them, didn’t have time to properly care for them, and so he opened their cages in an act of contrition and most likely defeat.

Two of the rabbits are still living free range on the farm over 7 months later, hanging out with the chickens. We may try to catch them again, or we may leave them be. What we will do for sure is get some new rabbits for breeding, now that life has calmed down, Ben is managing the farm, the baby was born, The Jar is now a year old and we’ve finally submitted the last of the claims to USAA (yes, it really has taken this long to get the roof fixed, car rebuilt, tree branches removed, etc. etc. etc.).

Overall

I know this post seems like kind of a downer, but the good news is that we survived. We didn’t thrive last year but we made it to farm another year and do it smarter and with help. We’ve reassessed what we think we can reasonably accomplish and now we can focus on running the farm as a business instead of a homesteading whim. It’s a healthy evolution, even if it kind of sucked getting to this point. So now we can focus on all the things we are doing in 2013 instead of where we fucked up in 2012. That’s got to be a good thing, right?

Chickens

Last time I spoke of the chickens, I think the new chicken coop had just been completed. Unfortunately, that coop suffers from some major design flaws, the biggest of which is that it is simply too small for 30 chickens to roost in comfortably. The ladies solved this by some of them refusing to ever take to the new coop, instead roosting in the feed shed or with the pigs. This also meant that the exiled laid their eggs willy nilly all over the place, a boon for the pigs and dogs but a bust for us humans shelling out for organic feed.

Tom Waits, our rooster, was finally done in. Unlike the hens, he never ventured beyond the chicken netting until one day in June (or maybe July). His new found freedom meant we had a mini terrorist stalking the backyard, potentially hidden behind every bush or tree waiting to strike. That lasted about a week before he up and disappeared. I can only assume he tried to take on either a dog or a pig and quickly met his maker. I guess you gotta give the guy points for spirit, but I can’t say I miss him in the least.

In May, 30 Delaware chicks arrived as well as a few additional birds for some friends… I am now a chicken pusher – even a casual mention by someone that they were maybe thinking about the idea of owning chickens and I’m offering to tack on birds to my McMurray order. We have this chick thing down now – four weeks in the shed under heat lamps, six or more weeks in the chicken tractor in the pasture. Everyone did smashingly, and but for my inability to tell the Leghorns from the Delawares at such a young age, my friends received mostly what they’d ordered. My mixup even turned out to be for the best, as one of the Araucanas I failed to identify turned out to be a rooster who is better suited to our farm than a six chicken coop in a backyard with young children.

Now remember when I said we had the chick thing down? We do, but it’s the pullet stage where we still need a better strategy. In an ideal world, we’d have two chicken coops, so the fresh batch could have a coop to themselves and not have to duke it out with the older, more established birds. Well, we don’t. So the Delawares never really took to the coop at all, and instead are roosting in a tree above the pigs, safe from harm but not ideal now that winter is upon us. Ben cleaned out the coop, moved it to more level ground, and fenced around it (more on the death of our poultry netting later), with the hopes that we’ll successfully relocate these gals as they’ve just started laying. He also moved the old nest boxes from the days when we used the greenhouse as a chicken coop into the feed shed, as we kept finding eggs in random nooks and crannies there. So far this all seems to be working, as he collected 8 eggs the other day, up from the usual 3 we would scrounge up on a good day when everyone’s living arrangements were still up in the air.

So yes, we are still “doing” chickens. We haven’t figured out what to do about the older birds who’ve all but stopped laying at the ripe old age of 2.5 years, which is about 1 year older than it would be worth plucking for a stewing hen, but that’s for another day.

Ducks

Two remain – one Khaki and one Rouen. And they are still my favorite critters on the farm, especially as they are always swimming happily in the pond, well, when they aren’t eating the cat’s food (weird, I know). They’ve all but abandoned the duck house and instead prefer to bed down under the boxwoods near the front porch. We are definitely getting more ducks in the spring. Definitely.

Geese

I am not too sad to report that the geese are gone, as so are the days of getting chased down the driveway, of Alston being afraid to play in the front yard, of being honked at every time you open the front door to get a log for the fire. They were good guard geese while they lasted, but that’s one animal we will not try again unless it’s to butcher in the fall. Geese are simply too unpleasant for such a small farm.

Guineas

Despite what I’d read about guineas being terrible mothers, two separate clutches of keats hatched on their own this spring, bringing our guinea population back up to around 20. Given the complete lack of a winter last year, the bugs were out of control in Virginia (I pulled the first tick off Alston after a hike in March… MARCH), but the guineas kept our yard largely tick-free, offsetting the complete racket they cause at the slightest disturbance.  As long as they keep breeding, the guineas are more than welcome to stay here, but I don’t expect I’ll need to order more this year.

But the farm shall be neglected no more! The week of Thanksgiving marked two major arrivals here on Red Row Farm. Our good friend Ben moved into the house on the property at the end of our driveway and will be running the farm full time. We’ve been awaiting Ben’s arrival since he decided to move back to Virginia after spending time on his parent’s farm in Idaho for the past year. You’d think he was the second coming the way Will and I would gaze forlornly at the unkept chicken coop or the gardens laying fallow, starting every sentence with “when Ben comes…”  Beyond the amazing things I know he’ll do with the farm (I’ll post a better Ben intro soon), it’s just nice to have a neighbor we are so fond of.

Also, our daughter Marie Ruth was born the day before Thanksgiving (I told you we’ve been busy), and I am now officially a full time stay at home mom. I have delusions of helping Ben weed  the not yet planted strawberry patch, babe strapped to me in the Ergo carrier. For now, I’m content to sit in front of the wood burning stove and dream about everything 2013 has in store.

I’ll post updates on everything that was 2012 over the next few weeks, as well as talk about some of our plans for the coming year. The highlights include getting our first ham back from Kite’s, a successful lambing season, and my involvement in By Hand Magazine. The low points range from the destruction wrought by the derecho, the death of Barney the boar, and the disappearance of both New Dog and Delilah. It was by no means the year of the farm, but that we managed to get to the other side of new restaurant and new baby and we haven’t moved back to town yet feels like enough of a victory for me.

In the meanwhile, Ben set up a Facebook page for the farm, so feel free to Like us and you can follow even more of the goings on, especially from Ben’s perspective. Hurray for Ben!

This morning, while still cold and rainy, both lambs were still alive.  Bertha gave birth the a large and healthy boy who was nursing well.  Flower gave birth to a little girl, maybe even smaller than Lucky (her boy last year), who was chilled but alive.  I rubbed her as dry as I could with a towel and gave her a mouthful of drench, and she got up and started nursing.  Interestingly, Newbie, the only first year ewe we kept, was hanging right with Flower, co-parenting if you will.  The baby would stand between them and nurse, sheltered from the rain and hidden from danger, which likely translates to New Dog.

In fact, New Dog tried to take a sniff and Flower charged that beagle with no hesitation, giving him the ass whooping he’s deserved for months of occasional sheep chasing.  Nice work, Flower.  Meanwhile Scout was lunching on a placenta.  Ick.

This evening when I came home, both lambs were doing well.  Unfortunately, I found a third lamb carcass that had been stripped to the bone.  I can only assume that either 1) it was a stillborn, 2) it died from cold, or 3) one of the dogs killed it.  I have my doubts about 3, but despite the lacking cause of death, it’s obvious that it was then consumed.  I checked the other sheep for signs of afterbirth and Newbie appeared to have some remnants on her hind quarters.  I wonder if that’s why she’s adopted Flower’s ewe lamb, who as of this afternoon was nursing from both Mamas.

The lambs are already getting into mischief.  The boy managed to crawl through the hog paneling and ended up in with the eight month old pigs – a potentially dangerous situation that I’m glad I was around to remedy.  The eight week old piglets are fascinated by the lambs and keep trying to check them out.  Always amusing when farm animals interact.

But let’s be honest, the story is less exciting than the prospect of lamb pics.  So without further ado…

The boy:

The girl (she’s a bit harder to photograph as her moms are rather protective):

Amusingly, the sheep that looks the most pregnant still hasn’t popped.  Gloria was the only “natural” birth mama (to Grace) we had last year, and I swear she’s having twins.  Although she has figured out how to jump the chicken netting to gobble up the scratch we throw for the laying hens, so it could be that she’s just packed on a lot more weight than her sisters.  The Other One, the only ewe of the original batch that doesn’t have a name, is also looking ready.  She had major problems last year as her lamb was too large, so fingers crossed that we didn’t do too much damage removing her stillborn last year that could lead to major complications.

So two healthy lambs out of three, with the likelihood of two or three more in our future.  I love love love having lambs on the farm, but lambing is so stressful.

By the next morning, the lone piglet was dead and Betty seemed listless.  This was her second failed labor.  Will and I decided it no longer made sense to keep her for breeding purposes, it’s just too expensive to feed a four hundred pound sow and get no piglets in return.  So off to the abattoir she went.  And yes, I am fully aware of the irony of sending my sow to slaughter because of her failure to produce viable piglets while I’m taking 500 mg a day of prometrium, but sometimes it’s not helpful to look to the farm as a metaphor for your own life.  It’s much too dark.

Meanwhile, Wilma’s  piglets continued to thrive.  There were two boys and two girls, and they were growing at record speed.  We had the vet come out to castrate the boys, and one of them didn’t go so well.  There was more bleeding than there should have been.  The next day he seemed fine, but a week later we found him dead, and my guess is infection.

And so there were three.  And there still are.  They are seven weeks old today, which is one week shy of being weened. They are big enough that they wander outside of the confines of the pig enclosure and into the pasture, but not so big that they are causing any damage.  She says, fingers crossed.

We plan to sell one to some friends who are interested in raising a pig for meat for the first time, and we’ll keep the remaining two.  We still have Wilma’s four piglets from August and we could take them in for processing at any time.  Having four on the farm is probably our max, not so much for space purposes, but the sheer cost of feed.  Last month, my feed bill was $1300, and at least $900 of that was for the pigs.

Speaking of the economics, we realize it doesn’t make a lot of sense financially to keep one boar for only one sow.  Of course, it makes even less sense to keep one boar, one productive sow and one unproductive sow, but none the less, recouping the cost of Barney’s feed is highly unlikely in our current model.  We could try and find another sow, but I think I’d rather keep it simple for this year and reassess next year, when Will is maybe a little less owned by his new restaurant.  That, and we are rather fond of Barney.