Just Because I Danced in my Living Room

Gotta Start Somewhere

INDIE DAYS! (It's a New Thing I'm Doing)

I have a few special things for sale, which I am offering to you guys because I made myself the promise that I would get the mortgage up to date by the end of this month. To make that happen it means not only earning money, but keeping it. It means spending less, staying home, eating in, and in some cases giving up a few things here or there in service to the cause. It also means I need to be thinking on my feet and constantly choosing being resourceful over, well, having resources!

So while I was trying to think of how to achieve this little goal, I was thinking of workshop ideas or new income streams for the farm and something struck me. I teach classes in things I know, right? Things like turning wool into yarn, raising chickens, and playing the fiddle. But I offer these classes only at specific times, once a year or so. Sometimes folks can’t make the date, and sometimes they live too far away and can only swing by when they are on vacation. Sometimes folks are scared of large groups, don’t feel comfortable with the time frame, or just plain prefer a more intimate setting than a big group. For those folks I thought I would offer Indie Days. Yup, Indie Days.

Indie Days are a new thing here. The reason for them is exactly states in the title. Indie means Independent. If I want to live a life as a self-employed woman, independent and resilient, then I need to keep a roof over my head, stay on top of my bills, and slowly try to improve my own situations. I think this could be a step in that direction. Indie Days!

It’s the chance to come to the farm and hang out for a whole day to talk, learn, ask questions, or just see what life on a farm with this many animals is like? It’s just you and me. Or you, me, and your best friend or spouse or teenage daughter or son. Point is it’s a tiny group and just for you. You can schedule it in advance or make it an Indie Weekend. They work like this: you show up in the morning and we do a farm tour and get to know each other and then we get started on what it is you want to experience: fiddle lessons one on one? Backyard pigs? Homesteading for beginners? Building and planting raised beds? Learning to shoot a bow? Starting a blog or getting into writing? What it takes to take on the dream of a working equine? Always wanted a border collie and want to see one or two (we can ask Jon and red, he offered to share his pooch with CAF readers at times) we can do that! If it is something I can teach you, I will. If it’s something I can’t I’ll let you know.

Here’s an example of an Indie Day, and something I am also offering to anyone interested in this. Woolcentric: come to the farm and join me out in the pasture with the sheep. We’ll talk livestock, I’ll show you my system and animals, and then we’ll take some wool (either off the sheep’s back or from a stash of brown Joe wool) and learn to wash, dry, card, and spin it with a drop spindle or spinning wheel. I’ll send you home with some raw wool and GET THIS, a spinning wheel! You can also buy the Ashford Traditional Wheel I bought from Jack’s Outback Antiques downtown. It’s the wheel I learned on, and love, but I am happy to sell it to someone to help keep this farm in the black. I can always buy another spinning wheel when my money situation improves. Right now I just want to get this place back on track. And that’s the exact point of an Indie Day. You come to hang with a blogger and writer you enjoy, learn a new skill, and go home with what you need for said skill (like a spinning wheel!). Things like fiddles, bows, and dulcimers have to be purchased as well but you can task me with finding the right instrument or tool for the job and you just have to come and learn it, love it, and give it a good home. I also have a stag adorned mountain dulcimer you can buy fro Craggy Mountain Music, Taxidermy, Horse Equipment, and others.

The point of this is to give readers a chance to experience and support the farm in a special way. It’s one on one, catered to what you want to know, and at a date of your choosing. It will cost more than a workshop, but not a huge amount more and isn’t included in the Season Passes (though season pass holders can certainly do this, too). Indie Days are special.

If you are interested please email me at jenna@itsafarwalk.com. I'll send you all the details, pricing, and such. If you want to send an email about how you think this is ridiculous, how you are happy to see the place struggling, how I don't deserve my farm, or how I am a general horrible person you can direct all of your complaints here!

Brick and Her Boys

Good Morning!

The Goodness of Shearing Day

When I started raising sheep I had only three outside my rented cabin in Vermont. They arrived in the late summer with short coats and throughout the winter gained thick inches. As spring turned warm fast, I watched the wooly creatures hide from the sun in the shade of the pine trees or the small wooden 8x4 sheep shed I had provided for them. It was clear they needed a haircut and as a complete ovine novice I realized I had not lined up a shearer. So I did what I always do in times of farm need: check Craigslist.

I asked the Farm/Garden community who around the area was a quality sheep shearer who traveled. Not just one, but several strangers sent me Jim’s name and number along with high praise. I called the Vermonter, who lived near Rutland (about an hour north of my rental cabin in Sandgate) and left a message. I wasn’t sure anyone would travel an hour to give three sheep a buzz cut or what it would cost. I explained my need and prayed he’d call me back.

He did. And he explained that with small flocks like mine he would call me back when he had enough interest within the area. Coming all the way to my farm just to shear three sheep (at $6.50 a piece with a $25 flat farm visit fee) would cost as much in gas. So soon as enough locals flocks filled his dance card he would come to the farm and happily shear the two wethers and my surly ewe, Maude.

That first year having my own sheep shorn was beyond special. Understand I had spent years reading about sheep and sheepdogs and to finally be involved in that ageless agrarian act —even as a bystander—was so emotionally overwhelming I nearly teared up in front of Jim. I was certain wrestling with fat Sal in his lap was not as endearing to him. He’s a man who sees thousands of sheep a year. I couldn’t help it. I wiped my eyes when he wasn’t looking and made up something about having a possible lanolin allergy.

I was a girl who collected sheep books, contacted sheepdog trainers and breeders, attended workshops and classes and owned issues of SHEEP! Magazine before I ever had reason to call a sheep shearer. I imagine it’s how people who dreamed of their first horse when they finally had reason to call a farrier, something utilitarian but wonderfully specific.

I watched Jim do the work of shearing and helped where I could. IN this small a space with so few animals there wasn’t much to do beyond picking up the fleeces and carrying supplies. He was the one doing the holy work and I once again was busy as an altar server. Only this time I felt like the people in the pews, too. All of it was sacred to me now and I still got to participate with the adept.

And Jim certainly is adept with his shears. It takes him less than ten minutes to grab a sheep, flip it on its rump, shear the belly, sides, back and head with boot camp-ready buzz cuts and trim their hooves. This year I was more needed than usual, having to grab animals in the holding pen and take them over to Jim’s shearing platform outside the scrappy fences. Once he has them it isn’t long before the animals are shaved and set free of our clutches to commiserate with their flock mates on the hillside. Seeing them under the apple trees, their newly pedicured feet in the mud and moss, I have to remind myself they are the same animals. They look so foreign after so many months covered in wool I forget those black-and-white-speckled deer on the hillside are the same frumps I knew that morning.

It’s been five years now that Jim has come to Cold Antler to sheer sheep. This year, for our fifth anniversary, he had 11 sheep to shear and I had the most wool ever ready for the mill. This place has steadily grown since those first three sheep in a pen outside a rented cabin. It’s been quite the adventure getting here. I went from being a gung ho future sheepdog trial with an anglophile crush on British trials and breeders to someone trying to just make the mortgage on her own farm. I’ve been on this path of going from a beginner at a thing (raising and breeding sheep) to someone actually doing it, making it a part of my regular life. There have been mistakes, animals that died. But there have also been over fifteen sheep added to the world because of my work here, all of them used to better the farm and my life through barter and swapping. Now there are Cold Antler Farm blackfaces reaching as far north as Lake Placid and as far south as my friends at Common Sense Farm. That’s something to be proud of, that the breed lives on in a world bigger than my backyard. Sometimes I forget that.

Season Passes? YES!

I am offering a HUGE discount on season passes for folks who already have them for this past year and want to renew, or for folks who would like to If you are interested in taking up the offer, you can email me at jenna@itsafarwalk.com and sign up for a full year (or a year tacked on to your current season pass) for just $250. That's the price of just two day,workshops and it goes to help keep this place running. I have three spots to sell at this price. So consider it as a great gift, a treat for yourself, a resource for your own homestead, or just as a way to help keep this show on the road. If you have the means and want to buy it for a local who can't afford it, we could do that as a giveaway as well. Thanks for your time, and now back to your regularly scheduled programming!

While I'm Writing, Watch These Ladies

There are few people on the internet I adore more than Hannah Hart and Grace Helbig. Mark my words folks, these two will be cohosting the Emmy's someday. They are a hilarious pair of young comedians/vloggers who are stars of their own projects: My Drunk Kitchen (Harto) and Daily Grace (Helbig). You can check out their Youtube pages and watch, subscribe, like, and laugh. I highly suggest checking out Grace's reviews (my favorite!) and Hello Harto. this post has nothing to do with farming, goats, gardens or writing but it sure has a lot to do with the internet. Watch and Enjoy!

Beautiful & Bittersweet

I'm deep into writing the manuscript but I wanted to check in an share that twin ram lambs were born today! It's a beautiful and encouraging thing, to see more Scottish Blackface sheep in this world. They are my breed and one I hope to continue to raise. The announcement is bittersweet though, as the twins are both males and I already have two rams on this farm... Monday and Atlas. These animals will be raised for food, for me and some good friends.

I am a little disappointed, to be perfectly honest. I need younger breeding stock, ewe lambs. Out of six possibly pregnant ewes I think only three were bred and two of those have already given birth. There are these beautiful boys I discovered this morning, and then there was also the corpse of a stillborn ewe lamb. I found her and her tiny body, deformed and contorted in the sheep shed. The limbs and body were proportionate to a normal lamb but her head was so small, as if it never had the chance to form right. I am grateful the mother had no complications but sad to lose the one little girl of 2013.

There is one older gal who may still lamb this week. She has a tiny bag but I am not sure how successful she will be. Both the cotswolds are fat as hens but have no udder at all. Either they haven't dropped their bags yet because they are an entire cycle (45 days) behind the Blackfaces or they were never bred. Same goes for Maude. Maude has never lambed and probably never will. She stays no matter what. She is Maude, after all.

I'm going back into the manuscript in a bit, this is just a break. Weird how writing here feels like a break and that feels like a job. I guess it's because one has a deadline. I don;t think I do well under command performance, but it is getting done. I write about four hours a day and after that I am tapped. Right now a thunderstorm is drenching the farm and from my office window I can see the twins and their hefty mother in the lambing jug/pen on the hill. Gibson is curled up at my unshod feet here in the hot little office room. I think he's afraid of thunder. He can't herd it. He's resigned to sleep instead.

Jim McRae on Shearing Day!

Where's Jenna?

I'm in the last ten days of a manuscript deadline. All of my energy, creative or otherwise, is going into this book. Blog posts will be coming, but expect long dramatic ones between midnight writing blocks or sleepless photo-posting sessions. I might post some excerpts from the manuscript, pictures from shearing day or this weekend's archery event. Right now I am somewhere around the 62,000 word mark and a few sections behind in my goal with a ticking clock over my head the same time as lambing season and last-minute edits on the October book, One Woman Farm. Hoo! Game Nights and visits with friends are canceled. I'm basically a shut in until this is mailed off to Boston. So this is your Till-June Warning that I'm going to be super sporadic for a bit. But I'm here!

Leave the light on for me!

It's Shearing Day!

Freedom Hangs like Heaven Over Everyone: Iron and Wine

Finally Learning This on the Banjo

So lay low, Baby. I won’t be back anytime soon
If it gets too lonely, I will follow you around in this tune.

Chicken Adolescence

The chickens I had carefully raised from innocent, Easter-greeting-card fluff balls have left their adorable phase. There is nothing attractive about them at this stage. They have feathers, and height, but look like tiny dinosaurs in feather boas. They now boast long, scaly legs, too-large beady eyes, and stalk bugs and get into boxing matches with each other along the hedgerows. There is A few weeks out on grass in the moveable hutches (if they are meat birds) or ranging free around the barnyard (laying hens) has turned them into awkward, miscreant youths. They lack all the happy, matronly, roundness of mature hens as well as their calmness and industry. Instead of sauntering through the fields, cooing between pecks at bugs, these little hooligans are teenagers on the move. They do not walk, but instead they run everywhere. If there’s a chance to make a noise, they make it, and loudly. First-time crowers lift their heads to the sky like wolves and let out moans only a mother could love. They sunbath, but only in short bursts in piles of dry earth where they stretch their fast-growing wings only long enough to catch the shortest acceptable amount of solar love before erupting into a epileptic dust baths. They boldly jump into the pigs’ pen to steal from porcine dinner plates. They jump on the backs of sheep and goats. It is madness and with their new plumage in bright colors combined with their antics it looks like a punk band from the eighties or some anarchists collective took over my otherwise bucolic setting with a mission towards their own idealism. In this case, that idealism is nothing but spent energy and attempts (poor, poor attempts) at sexual congress. The immature males climb on top of the females after displays of bad dancing and horrible crows and make a few stabbing attempts towards the end game but are usually sideways, or too slow, or just embarrassingly inexperienced and the young pullets lose interest and walk away towards the stream or to scratch some design into the gravel driveway.

You know, the more I write about chickens the more it sounds like college...

Sanctuary

Everyone's got one. A place that removes even the lightest varnish of self doubt or fear. It isn't necessarily a place that makes you happy, though sometimes it surely does. The point of sanctuary is to feel safe, as if everything that troubles you is on the other side of glass and no matter hard they gnash their teeth they can't get through.

I'm doing okay here. I don't think I've ever felt more overwhelmed. It'll be a relief beyond words to get to June. By June all the edits for One Woman Farm will be done. The manuscript I am struggling with now will have been turned in. Lambing should be over with. I'll have time to think and breathe a bit deeper. I think the root of all my stress is not related to relationships, or money, or deadlines. I think my stress is related to being far too hard on myself and sorely lacking in the care a hard working body needs. Things like rest, meditation, long stretches, lots of water, good healthy food and plenty of sunshine. This is what I need. It'll bring a clarity and freshness to tasks that have become monstrous.

I've been spending a lot of time with Merlin and Jasper. I have needed it. I'm going through something, that's for certain. I have never felt more anxious or dissapointed or unsure of myself. Stuff is just broke, but nothing tragic. Nothing time in the saddle can't place behind glass.

Horses have a way of caring very little about what concerns humankind. And without realizing it, they have a way of making humankind care very little about their concerns.

Announcing The Midsummer Invitational!

Join us at Cold Antler Farm on June 29th for a special event. It's the Midsummer Invitational! A small evening archery tournament and potluck here at the farm. Folks who enter will get to shoot twenty arrows at twenty yards for a total possible score of 100 points. The highest score of the day goes home with a black arrow trophy with "As The Crow Flies" written in paint on it with the event name and date. It is however, an Invitational, so folks need to contact me if they want to come and shoot. It is invite only. This year I plan on having friends from my local SCA team, neighbors, and folks I know come out to the farm since inviting the internet to show up with weapons seems like a bad idea….

It's going to be a fun, entry-level and beginner friendly tournament followed by a potluck and campfire. It's not a workshop, this tournament is a fun private party at the farm. But anyone who wants to come along for the event needs to bring a dish! Being a medieval-inspired event, finger food only and try to stay period! There will not be paper plates and solo cups either. There won't be anything to eat off or out of, so come with feastware in wood or clay with a cloth napkin or hankie if you need a wiper. Lacking feastware, bring a water holder to refill (I have a mug tied to my belt) and eat with your hands. I'll have a bbq, breads, and honey cinnamon butter for the potluck.

Tournament begins at 3PM, ends around 6PM and during and afterwards is food and a campfire into the night hopefully with music, songs, and stories!

BEGINNER'S WORKSHOP 10AM-3PM But, I would like to make the whole day about archery and help get some new brand archers get started. So if you would like to make this weekend a holiday for a new hobby, you can come to the farm in the morning and learn the basics of the bow, arrow, shooting stance, safety, aiming, vocabulary and safety equipment. This is for people who have never attended an SCA practice or class, and who only seen people shoot on television and movies, total beginners! You will need to bring your own longbow and at least six arrows (no compound bows, only traditional longbows and recurves). And if you have no idea where or what to you can ask me when you sign up and I can point you to several great bows at a reasonable price online. Show up at 10AM for a workshop dedicated to the basics of archery, and the care and feeding of bows and arrows, and practice on close targets, working our way up to 20 yards. The workshop ends at 3PM, right when the tournament gets started so you can either head home or stay an compete! Email me if you want to come for the morning workshop at jenna@itsafarwalk.com - I am limited it to five people, and the payment for the time spent teaching will be a donation to the farm.

Chicks In The Well At Sunrise

Updated Workshop Calendar

Here is the list of workshops coming up in the next few weeks. Come to the farm and learn how to raise rabbits, string a bow, play the fiddle, prepare for the worst and make soap with the best! It's a busy spring here and folks have been asking for an up-to-date list of the goings on. So here it is, along with the links to each event! And you can still get a Season Pass for a full year for about the price of 3 workshops, so if you want to support the farm or just want an excuse to roll in the grass with a border collie, email me to sign up!

Prepping for the Rest of Us with Kathy Harrison!
June 1st 2013
Cold Antler Farm, Jackson NY
4 SPOTS LEFT

Goats & Soap!

Come to Cold Antler for a day dedicated to dairy goats and homemade soap. It'll be a multi-farm adventure - visiting both Common Sense Farm (just three miles down the road) and CAF. Come to learn the basics from the experts at CSF on getting into home dairy. Learn about the breeds, the people who raise them, and what goes into keeping an animal that makes you milkshakes, cheese, and amazing soap.

In the early afternoon we will make a batch of soap, a dairy based recipe of near-freezing goats milk and natural essential oils. Learn how the chemistry and process works as well as how to mix it up with additions like oatmeal, home-brewing extracts, or herbs from the garden. This will be a day of happy barns and happy hands. Come meet the scene and go home with a bar of the day's spoils!

Price $100 June 2nd 2013
Cold Antler Farm, Jackson NY
5 SPOTS LEFT!

Midsummer Invitational! Archery For Beginners and Tournament Potluck
June 29th 2013
Cold Antler Farm, Jackson NY
5 SPOTS

Rabbit 101
July 20th 2013
Cold Antler Farm, Jackson NY
4 SPOTS LEFT

Summer Fiddle Camp
August 31s and Sept 1st 2013
Cold Antler Farm, Jackson NY
2 SPOTS LEFT

Dulcimer Daycamp!
Oct 5th 2013
Cold Antler Farm, Jackson NY
3 SPOTS LEFT



Antlerstock is up in the air right now, not sure I can make it happen this year. Columbus Day Weekend, if it goes down.

I Love Seeing This On My Road

Double Entendre

Last night, just before dark, I heard the sound of calling sheep. I've lived alongside sheep for years now and over that time I have acquired an ear for what all the different bleats, baas, and cooing mean. This was an all out holler, translated roughly into English:

"Heeeeeeeeey, heeeeey! Hey guys outside the fence! We want to be outside the fence with you tooooo. Heeeeeyyyyyy!"

The sigh I let go of must have weighed six pounds. I was inside, having just finished the last of the milking dishes and had just swept the living room floor. Sweeping the floor is the last chore of the night, something done more out of habit than necessity. The beautiful handmade broom was a gift from my good friend, Raven Pray, of Maryland. Sweeping the last of the dirt, dog hair, and grass clippings stuck in upturned pant legs is the chore that says, "Okay kid, you can sit down now." And that is what I was doing. I must have been teasing fate because the sheep had escaped, were certainly in the public road by this point, and I had to get dressed and head back outside. Goodbye fire. Shut up, mocking broom.

It was colder out, around forty degrees with wind and the weather report was calling for frost. This had me in a frustrated mood. Chores took longer than usual this afternoon while I went about the extra work of watering and then covering all the garden beds I wanted full clemency for. I could see the sheep behind the fences, up in the woods and along the thick bushes and brush by the roadside. I stood outside my house by the lamppost and called to the sheep. "Come here you wooly bags of dim suet!" I yelled, copying the insult from a favorite book. And then the parade headed towards me.

Maude was in front. In her full wool coat she bounced down the hill, the crescent moon above her. Behind her in a perfect goose V were six other escapees. They all trotted with heads high, horns gleaming lamp light, and fluffy coats. I would have been angry with them if they weren't so damn beautiful. Maude stopped a few paces ahead of me, having seen no evidence of grain. I put my hands on my hips and stared at her. She looked away.

"Can we please stay inside until daybreak? Please." And I grabed a bag of chick feed to lead them back into the main gates by the horse's paddock. Merlin and Jasper watched the parade behind me, giving me their own heckles for rewarding acts of anarchy. One by one the sheep came back inside the fence to join Sal and the Cotswolds who didn't escape. Then in the near black of real nightfall I walked up the hillside repairing holes and hatches in the poor quality fencing. What I needed was a clean, fresh, string of electric wire right at nose level. I had a new grounding rod on order at the hardware store and plans to do it this week. But for now it's all about reaction and repairs. I did what I could and prayed it would make it till morning. The last thing I needed was a school bus driver beating on my door to tell me to move my livestock out of the road.

This morning, they of course escaped again. Three times. And right now this blog post is the first writing I have done all day. That's a crime and a pity with two weeks to a manuscript deadline. But a woman needs to vent, so there you go.

There may be frost in the air but as far as the sheep are concerned, it's time to spring.

Monday Night Poultry Slam

Gibson And The Nail

I took Gibson to the vet today. Last night while I was milking Bonita, I heard a yelp of canine panic and left the chore, midstream, to run outside the barn. I know the sound of fear in Gibson, and this was intense. What I saw was a dog running towards me best he could on three legs, the fourth up in the air wildly kicking back like a cowpony. I thought he ran over some broken shard of glass, or stepped on a thorn. When he ran to me I asked him to lie down and he rolled on his belly, showing me the problem. He had a rusty nail sticking out of his paw.

It wasn't in deep at all, barely really. But the bend of the nail made it impossible to dislodge. I took it out and brought him inside. I washed his feet, checked for a wound and bleeding. What blood there was was less than a scrape. This was more an act of drama than injury, but I was instantly worried about tetanus. I called the vet first thing this morning and they said it was rare for a dog to contract tetanus, but they could check him out and give him a preliminary strike of antibiotics. I set an appointment time.

Gibson was a good patient. The vet staff was kind and patient. We were there just a half hour, mostly talking, and Gibson got his shot. I felt somewhat foolish, all this fuss over a nail scratch. But I knew if any sort of blood poisoning, bacteria, or infection happened to that dog I would never forgive myself. Gibson is the closest I've ever been to another animal, human or otherwise. I raised him from a pup and we have never spent more than 4 hours apart from each other. That sounds co-dependant and crazy-dog-lady scary, but it's more a case of luck and lifestyle than anything else. I once worked at a place that allowed dogs so Gibson came to my office. Now I work from home on a farm, which doesn't allow overnight travel or any fancy vacations, so we are here, together.

I love all my dogs, all I ever owned, but Gibson has become the saving grace I needed during the toughest time in my life. The last year since leaving Orvis, the events that lead up to it and all the personal things swirling around it caused a firestorm of emotion and choices that have had a considerable level of fallout. I don't know how I could have gotten through it without that dog. As I write this he is asleep outside the office door. He is worth $77.50 to save from the threat of tetanus. He's worth everything I own or could hope to own.

If a man in a suit said I could keep my farm or my dog, I would hand him the keys and walk away. There are a thousand farms in this region. There's only one Gibson Mackenzie that has ever existed and I'm the luckiest son of a bitch to have him.

He's my fast, fast dog.

Dulcimer Day Camp: October 2013!

The dulcimer workshop that was supposed to happen in April was canceled due to a lack of interest, and then it was revived due to an influx of interest! I wanted to give you the new date of it: October 5th 2013! And why such a fancy exclamation point after that date? Because it's the same weekend as the Southern Adirondack Fiber Festival! That's right, you can come to Washington County, spend your Saturday morning and early afternoon learning to play the dulcimer and hanging out with me at the farm, and then spend your Sunday at the festival, hanging out with the CAF crew to take classes, demonstration, and buy yarn! It'll be a weekend of music, farm animals, fiber, and fun and as if that wasn't enough it's in October!

Introducing Dulcimer Day Camp!
October 5th 2013
5 Spots left
10AM-4PM



Come up to the farm this April when the snows are gone and lambs are on my mind for a Saturday dedicated to learning the Mountain Duclimer. Everyone who signs up for the day gets an Apple Creek Dulcimer of their very own. We'll spend the morning learning about the history, tuning, and strumming patterns and the afternoon learning your first songs! You will also leave knowing how to read tabs (so you don't need to know how to read music to attend) and the basics of jamming by chord and ear. Come knowing nothing and leave with an instrument and a few tunes, and the ability to teach yourself more!

Just like fiddle camp you arrive knowing nothing and leave not only with your own instrument, but the knowledge to tune, play, and enjoy it. The dulcimer is a wonderful way for even the most skeptical of wannabe musicians to start with. It is tuned to itself and there isn't really a way to play a wrong note on it. As long as she's in tune, she'll make sweet music for you.

So if you ever wanted to add some music to your campfires, living rooms or farm front porches and and learn to bring home that beautiful music. Meet other beginner's, and enjoy Holy October on the farm. If you already have an older dulcimer then all you need to do is get it checked by a music shop and possibly get it restrung. If you own a newer dulcimer but never really learned, then sign on up and get inspired. You'll be strumming out Shady Grove in no time!

Please email me if you are interested, cost will be $225.00 for the whole day and the instrument, and include a farm tour. Please pack a lunch or plan to eat out in town. CAF Season Pass members just let me know if you want to come along, you only need to buy the book and dulc!

Season Passes On Sale!

To help raise the money for the mortgage, I am offering a HUGE discount on season passes. If you are interested in taking up the offer, you can email me at jenna@itsafarwalk.com and sign up for a full year (or a year tacked on to your current season pass) for just $250. That's the price of just two day-long workshops and it goes to help keep this place running. I have three spots to sell at this price. So consider it as a great gift, a treat for yourself, a resource for your own homestead, or just as a way to help keep this show on the road. Thanks for your time, and now back to your regularly scheduled programming!

A Love Worth Fighting For

Lambing Soon, Escape is Nigh!

The flock is getting ready to lamb any day now. The mother's all have tight, round bags under their tails and are pawing at the ground before laying down away from each other. I have a feeling lambing will be a chaotic three days here, but not last much longer. It seems everyone is on the same schedule, biologically speaking. Of course, just saying that is taunting circumstance, so perhaps it'll be a long 45-days of lambing, one or two little quicktails showing up at a time.

I like watching the flock this late breeding season. They are all stuck in one paddock, the ground all eaten down to moss with petals of apple blossoms all over like falling snow. They eat and bitch, circle and butt heads. As a woman (albeit, not a mother) I can tell when others who share the gender want more personal space. Atlas the ram seems only interested in food, his job done for a while. He has escaped (and lead three other escape attempts) into the woods so far in search of the lushness all around the fence lines. I guess it's hard to deal with that level of matriarchy inside a fence? But sheep escapes are easy to thwart. A bucket of grain and a lifted bit of woven wire they can shimmy under and they are back inside the safe zone. I have been repairing the weak areas these past three days, trying to stop all the exploration committees, but Atlas is clever. He knows exactly the spots I have missed. Jerk.

I am in the last two weeks of writing a book, behind on the mortgage, lambing is any day now and out of coffee. As you can imagine, stress is at an all time high. Gobson ran over a rusty nail in the woods yesterday and is on his way to the vet this afternoon to get it seen to. When it rains....

I do know enough about myself and this farm to know this is a phase. And all this fear and frustration and deadlines and bill calls will ebb and flow away. Right now I need to focus on the work, and working a little harder to make ends meet, but it'll all be fine. Whenever I feel panic wash over me I just sit outside on my porch and take a deep breath or seven with my eyes closed. I tell myself when I open them I will be surrounded by a farm I built by hand, through nothing but scrappy willm hard work, and the kindness and devotion of a readership all over the world. And when I open my eyes the proof is all around me. It's in the waddling ducklings parading to the well. It's in the sounds of Joeseph the sheep on the hillside. It's in the flickering ears of Merlin, the toss of his mane. It's in a dog with a sore paw, and a house with apple blossoms crowning a rack of antlers, and in the heart of the girl breathing slow on a porch.

Good things are on the way, and the only way out is through.

All Music

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.
-Louis Armstrong

Staying Grounded

Staying focused on your goals, and staying grounded in your achievements is important. It's good to work hard, and good to feel that swell of accomplishment. But it's just as important to remain focused on your mistakes, faults, and goals not yet achieved. Being grounded doesn't just mean calm and humble, but keeping two feet poised on firm ground, ready to explode into action. These days I find myself trying to balance between what I have gained and what I have lost and it's a see saw I don't know how to balance. Some things in my life are wonderful, others are horrific, and all the joys and problems seem to stem from the same place: me. So I am trying to stay focused and grounded. There's much work to be done around here. I can't spend all my time worrying about it. Time is too short, and there's too many beautiful things lost in the stress.

Focused. Grounded.

Backyard Livestock 101 is Tomorrow!

Come to Cold Antler this spring for a day dedicated to backyard livestock for beginners! This is a day at the farm for those of you interested in adding animals to your home and garden, but perhaps a little cautious? After all, farm animals add a whole new element to your everyday life, and if you come here you can see, touch, ask, and have questions patiently explained and fears removed. And if you are ready to add that flock of chickens and rabbit hutch: you will get the inspiration and community push you have been craving. Heck, you can get the chickens too..

The long day focus on animals raised for food production, and how their by-products (manure, offspring, etc) can add to your farm. They do this through added income, barter, food savings and by creating nutrients to your soils for vegetable production. (I want folks who come to this workshop to not just understand the value of a rabbitry, but how to use the magic pellets in the garden and use compost tea.) By adding livestock you are creating a full circle for your. Chickens and compost piles create a place to feed food scraps, and their soiled bedding creates new, rich, soils for your plants. Stop depending on outside sources to enrich your life. You have the space, time, and resources to do it yourself, promise.

We're going to focus on chickens in the morning, and everyone who attends is welcome to pick three from a brooder of heritage chicks, all will be dual-purpose heavy breeds for eggs and meat production. You'll get a copy of my book, Chick Days, as well. It's a complete beginner's guide to raising layers for the backyard, but will also help you get your dual purpose flock off the ground. We will discuss brooders, coops, predators, feed and care. Since I firmly believe that poultry are the gateway drug to backyard animal food production - we will focus on them half the day. And if you haven't sat in a backyard holding a chick in your palm while a goat yells at you to scratch her neck, then you haven't lived!

The afternoon is about additional animals that can feed yourself, family, and friends. Get an introduction to rabbits (bunnies may be available to purchase), dairy goats, sheep, and pigs too. We'll tour the farm talking about hay, fences, water options and sharing stories and tips. Since all of Cold Antler's livestock have entry gates within 50 feet of the farm house you can see, touch, and smell what turning a backyard into a farm does to a place: the good and the bad. I will also talk about slaughter, and the options you have as a new farmer. Come knowing little and leave with a lighter heart, a starter flock, a book, and a day spent with fellow new farmers on a beautiful spring day!

P.S. We may even see a lamb born! It's that time!

Date: May 11th 2013
Time: 9AM - 4PM
Location: CAF
Fee: $125 (includes birds and book)
Limit: 15 people, 2 spots left!

Chick Feet!

The Chicks Have Arrived!

This morning I drove with Gibson to the post office in Cambridge to pick up a small package. In a very loud box, no larger than a VCR, were 45 chickens. Babies, of course. Little day-old hatchlings who were shipped express up from Mount Healthy Hatchery in Pennsylvania. It was over five years ago that I picked up my first postal order of chickens on a winter day in Idaho and so many springs and states later it never stops delivering a happy thrill. Chicks, all chicks, are adorable. And to set them into their brooder for the first time ever never gets old. Right now all these tykes are under a heat lamp with food and water and in a few days folks coming to the Backyard Livestock workshop will take them home with them to start their lives as beloved laying hens. I don't know if these little guys know how lucky they are! Shipped to a chicken author's home to be fawned over and then sent to live in free range backyards and coops! They hit the jackpot with us. But alas, nothing in farming animals these days seems to come without controversy or pushback. Some people feel shipping chicks in the mail is animal abuse. Joel Salatin addressed this in a recent book and again in this article from Flavor Virginia Magazine,where he wrote an open letter to vegan and vegetarian animal rights activists about chickens in the mail from hatcheries.

Some people sign petitions to criminalize shipping chicks in the mail. The reasoning goes like this: “I need food and water daily. These chicks spend up to three days in the mail. Therefore the chicks are being abused.”

Can you abide me some farm wisdom? A hen can’t lay more than one egg a day. A clutch is normally seven to ten eggs—that’s about all a hen can keep warm under her body at one time. It takes several days for her to lay that many eggs. She lays one the first day and goes to eat and put on extra weight. She lays egg two the second day, and goes and eats and puts on more fat. When she leaves the nest to eat, the eggs cool off and that retards the embryos’ development.

This early forced developmental slowdown, caused by the hen gorging herself to gain weight for the multiday setting period, brings the first and last eggs laid to similar levels of embryonic development. With her clutch complete, the hen begins setting, losing weight, and almost never leaving the nest. Finally the first egg hatches.

If that first hatchling ventured out to get feed and water, the hen would be forced to choose between protecting the adventurous chick or continuing to set on the almost hatched, critical-temperature dependent embryos still in their eggs. God designed the chicks, therefore, to go without feed and water for three days to let the siblings hatch. Once all of them have hatched, the hen takes them to feed and water. Once the chicks have tasted their first feed and water, they need it several times a day. But this is nature’s protective plan for species propagation. Is that cool, or what?

Lesson du jour: chicks are not humans. And in case you missed it, I didn’t mentioned how hens nurse their chicks. You see, a hen has six nipples tucked under wings…

Today’s level of farming ignorance is unprecedented in history—including all time and all cultures. Never have so many people in a civilization been able to be this far removed from their food umbilical. I think it actually brings into question the sustainability of a civilization that has twice as many people incarcerated in prisons as it has people farming. But that’s another question for another day.

When the only connections people have to the living world is a pet dog or cat, it skews their view toward animals in general. The fact that Americans spend more on pet veterinary care than the entire continent of Africa spends on human medical care should give us all pause.

Sometimes, on the farm, animals die.In that respect, animals are like humans. They don’t live forever. And sometimes farmers make mistakes, or have accidents occur that create a temporary, difficult situation. But I beg my non-farm readers: if you see something that doesn’t look right, be neighborly. Go over and talk to the farmer. You may find out you are ignorant. You may have seen something he missed and he’ll thank you for bringing it to his attention. And you may have seen a mistake or accident. But at least give the farmer the same courtesy and benefit of the doubt you’d want for yourself.

Beyond that, go visit a farm. And by the way, if a farmer won’t let you come and visit, you probably shouldn’t buy food from that farm. Integrity can only be hung on a framework of transparency.

Now go feed some strawberries to your cat.

Joel's comments are wonderful, but one thing he didn't mention to the concerned folks was that these hatcheries that deliver rare breed and heritage chicks in boxes are the main alternative to corporate hatcheries and battery-hen hatcheries owned by folks like Tyson. A sustainable farmer can not order chicks from Tyson breeders unless he is a contracted grower, so he either has to breed his own stock, buy hen-sat chicks from a local farmer, order chicks from a hatchery. Now, for a backyard flock I can provide for you 3-7 home brewed chicks of various breed mixes and unknown gender. But if you wanted a predictable breed of quality laying hen, or fifty of them, you need to call the folks at a place like Mt. Healthy. Same goes for birds raised for meat. So think twice about tsk-tsking mail-order livestock. The people who are doing it are doing it so they don't have to buy animals who lived in cages out of sunlight their whole lives, and are offering a quality of life to those box birds few chickens (less than a .001%) ever could dream of. If I were a laying hen I'd take an overnight plane ride to Cold Antler over a life in a battery cage any day. ANY DAY!