having a dead mouse in a pail of antifreeze.

This entry really has nothing to do with the title.  It is just what needed to be said.

It had become important that we have to move our goats from their current location in our back yard.  The back yard is great for them.  Completely enclosed by sturdy fencing, the back yard is ideal.  However, they have consumed all the underbrush, and they are going to need a fresh forage area.  We sometimes move them around the property to eat, but when we return them to the back yard they still need some food.

We need another enclosed area for them at night that has good forage.  The new area must have enough room to graze, and a small shelter.  The goats do not like the rain so much.  Besides the fact that the goats are out of food, the worst part about their presence in the back yard is they use an enclosed porch as shelter.  This porch is where they hang out in the night and rain.  Totally covered in poop and awful smelling goat urine, the porch is now disgusting.  It is part of the human house, not an animal house.  So getting them moved out of the back yard and off the porch is imperative.  Also the dog food has always been on the porch where goats hang out.  It sucks always have to walk through animal shit to get the dog food.

On the day of Wednesday November, 12 Gabrielle and I decided to begin to remedy this problem.

In a more wooded area to the east of our shed there lays a small fenced off area.  A gate and shelter had to be built, and the fence needed repairs.   I quickly repaired the fence.  Sadie squawked on the baby monitor, and we headed to the house to snatch her up.  Gabrielle wore Sadie in the sling on her back, and we headed back to work.  We were trying to conceive, then build a quick shelter for the goats.  I looked for logs for post, and started sawing out some nice size posts.

I felt an stingy sounding insect land on my head and crawling in my hair.  Calling to Gabrielle to get the wasp out of my hair, I felt several more land on my head.  There were more wasps covering my shirt.  Getting stung, I ran towards the house, and Gabrielle carrying Sadie was right behind me.  The wasps had chased us up the driveway as we headed toward the house.

I could feel them in my clothes.  Nearing the the house I tore off my shirts.  Gabrielle still had some following her, and she said she was sure that the wasps had gotten into the sling Sadie was in.  Just about then Sadie wailed loudly.  I ran to them, and assisted Gabrielle in removing Sadie from the sling quickly and carefully.  Sadie did not reallly need to be stung again.

Gabrielle informed me that she was also stung.

Sadie was out of the sling and in my arms.  All of us made it to the house and stripped off the all our wasp laden clothing.   By this time we were far enough away there were not too many wasps left in the airspace around our domes.  I thought the bath would soothe our stings, and Sadie needed one anyway.  I got the water running in the tub, and Gabrielle took all the clothing and threw it in the wash.  Sadie was calmed already from the sting.  She and I got into the tub, and relaxed for a while.

This moment allowed us to assess the damage.  Gabrielle got stung once in the hand, Sadie once on her thigh, and I got stung once on the inner arm and at least four times on the head.  My head began to throb.  While we were in the the tub, Gabrielle got information on how to treat our wounds.  We had to monitor Sadie for allergies most importantly.  Then we went about getting the swelling and burning sensations to subside.  Antihistamine.

Gabrielle found out that our attackers had been yellow jackets.  Their behavioral patterns pretty much matched the wiki article.  She had also discovered our clothes that we stripped off yielded 6 more yellow jackets.

The goats are no closer to being moved than when we started.  I had a headache from the intense stinging sensation on my skull. Sadie never had any signs of allergies, and quickly recovered from her wound.  All in a days work.

Taking Time out.

Lately, we are resting our bones.  We are still piled up to our necks with ideas, current projects, and prospects for next year.  Yet we need to simmer down a bit even before we start rethinking our strategies for the coming years.

Two weeks ago we wrapped up our 1st growing season here in Southern Oregon.  Hectic barely describes what we endured, but no pain no gain.  Between the annual growing of vegetables for sale to our CSA members, caring for new and old animals, working outside the house, moving into a new (used) home, and RAISING A NEWBORN CHILD time quickly evaded us.  Starting with limited experience in all these fields, we rolled with it.  Ben’s arrival proved invaluable, it could not have been accomplished without his hard work. Ben is currently on a vacation back to Chicago, and we are planning to return there after Thanksgiving.

Just because we are resting, we are not wasting a terrible amount of time.  Things that need to get accomplished are getting done, we just hindered the rate that they are getting done.  To start out with, we have been getting the property winterized.  As much as we do not have a winter around here compared to Chicago, it does freeze occasionally.  Therefore, we need to pull hoses and irrigation systems inside, as well as attempt to bring the greenhouse up to speed.  We have brought some of our potted plants into the greenhouse for protection.  We have layed down mulch around the trees and shrubs, and the chickens that were in the chicken tractor were moved into the nicest chicken shack this side of the  Cascades (thanks Tracy!).

For all our loyal customers, we can not express enough, our joy that you joined us in this experiment in farming.  We are excited to work with you in years to come and supplying the best (meaning better than this year), freshest produce to you.  We are also anticipating enlarging the community participation in our CSA next year.  We are struggling to get next year’s brochure out because there are some inconsistencies that need to be addressed. We are almost ready to release it, but there is an internal debate amongst ourselves here at Mud Puddle.  We are concerned over the method of pick up and delivery of vegetables for next year.

Last year, we gave everyone the option of where they could pick up.  Although having one of several options for pick up might have been more convenient for the customer, it complicated our situation here at the farm.  First, having multiple days for pick up complicated the efficiency of picking and delivering, as well as compromised the freshness of the vegetables.  Since we do not yet have large amounts of refrigerated storage space at our farm, the food is always freshest when it is just picked.  And since we only had enough time and labor to make one large pick once a week (before our first pick up on Fridays), the people that forgot, picked up the following days, or were delivered on a later day always seemed to have vegetables of a lesser quality.

Secondly, because we had options and not a set guideline on pick up and delivery, a break down of communication occasionally occured.  We therefore missed and were not always clear on where the food was going.  This food just sat around and diminished in quality till a new time was sorted out.  We just want to make sure that everyone gets the same great product.  We could only hope that freshness lasted for ever.

Lastly, we want to interact more with you, the customer.  Yes, many you have came to our parties, and we see your faces upon pick up and delivery.  But rarely enough to capture input since our minds are always on delivering food both cooked and fresh to you.  We know most of you, but closer association and even some dialogue with you would make our job more pleasant and resourceful.

This then leads us to our current problem of the best way to get produce to you.  We do not necessarily want to write it in stone on the brochure yet.  Not until we have a better grasp of the proper solution.  One solution we came up with for next year would be to go to Grants Pass Growers’ Market, and to possibly have a one day on farm pick up between selected hours.  These would hopefully solve the quality issue by having a more certain time frame to deliver the freshest vegetables from our hands to yours and then into your fridge.  Previously they just sat in the office, or at our house till they were taken away.  Giving you a window to retrieve you vegetables gives us a better opportunity to keep them the freshest.

The hours that market is open, and the unselected hours that our farm will be open for pick up will allow no room for confusion.  We will happily hand you your CSA box, with no sad looking veggies in it.  And seeing you at market for CSA pick up will provide the perfect backdrop to engage in conversation with you. At market we are also hoping to have extra and experimental vegetables for sale.  We want to meet more of the community that support locally grown foods.

So this is what we are dwelling on.  Input from everyone would be helpful to find a practical solution for all parties involved.  Then, without haste we will get the brochure out to everyone.

Other happenings on the farm are general maintenance, cleaning up our tool shed, doing our research, and we also completed our chicken shack.   Our new chicken shack is friggin sweet.  It can house many more chickens than we have in it, double as dry storage for feed and tools, and allow the chickens to free range among our vegetables and trees.

We are still recieving limited eggs from our chickens.  There are still some for sale at 4 dollars a dozen if anybody is still interested.