Internet and other upgrades

A nearly unanimous survey of friends/family recommended we get reliable internet at the farm. I use it to keep track of my birth doula clients, stay in contact with friends and family, research wellness information for Casa Maria, and plan the garden. We recently got internet through and iPad at the recommendation of Neal's dad. It was more money upfront than we wanted to spend, but we figured that I could use the iPad for work too. Also, if we ever move into the city again, we are more likely to want an iPad than a bulky satelite dish. We were conflicted about the whole decision to get internet because we would like to live as simply as possible.  We've been comparing different options and seeing if we could do without internet for 4 months now. We were able to get a month to month contract with AT&T and we can always discontinue it. So far though, so good!

Another long discernment process has been whether or not to get a second vehicle. Currently, when I need to be on call for work, we drive into Milwaukee and Neal takes the bus to/from work. It means we have to leave the chickens unattended, or ask someone else to help us with them. In addition, only having one vehicle limits how often I can take shifts at work at finish my training. When we need to haul things like sawdust or straw to the farm, we have to wait until friends are coming this way and ask for their help. We were lucky enough to find a great deal on a little pickup truck through a friend of a friend. We're disappointed that it won't get great gas mileage, but after crunching the numbers, this seems to be the option that solves the most problems. We'll see how it works.... we can always sell it and go back to our car sharing or get a different vehicle!

We traveled last weekend to Dubuque, Iowa for the national Catholic Worker farm gathering with Dan, Rachel, and Catherine. It was so fun to see our friends in the Catholic Worker movement, eat delicious food, and sing folk songs. I was able to attend round table discussions on the gift economy, practical growers issues, and new farms.  Other members of the group attended discussions on economics, urban farms, and perennial agriculture, and soil remediation. I wanted to go to almost all of them, and was glad we were able to exchange notes. We definitely gained some new ideas to try on the farm and some valuable friends we can contact for support. When it's warmer out, we are hoping to visit some of the Wisconsin catholic worker farmers (we didn't realize that there are at least 2 stable farms and then a few other ones just getting started like us). Here is a link with more information about this movement: CW Farms

Neal will be out of town this weekend for his annual Birkebeiner adventure. This is a 50 kilometer ski race near Cable, WI. Afterwards, he'll stop by the family cabin and place taps in the maple trees. We'll take some friends up north in a weekend or two to make maple syrup. We're hoping this season is better than last season. Even very experienced syrup makers were struggling last year. We wait for days when it's warm during the day (40's or 50's) and then cold at night (below freezing). This year we may even get to tap some trees on the farm. We have less maples available on the farm, but more time to tend them... we'll see how it goes.

While Neal and Catherine are away this weekend, I'll be doing some winter reading. I've got a stash of books from the library that were recommended in the Lehman's catalog. A few of them include Barnyard in Your Backyard, Living without Electricity, and Lasagna Gardening. There are also a couple Sci-Fi books in the mix that I can read without feeling guilty that I'm ignoring anyone. Woo hoo!

Spring Planning

Mittens on the right are new! They are made from old sweaters by a local woman :)
Now I can go for more walks in the cold weather!

So, spring is in our hearts despite the 6 or so inches of snow on the ground out here. Last week, I finally got motivated and looked through the seed catalogs for this year's order. We then went online to our favorite seed company, Sand Hill Preservation, and came up with our order. We were under budget this year for our seed order... woot woot! Our hope is to give the extra seeds to the Milwaukee Catholic Worker houses if anyone their wants to put them in their own little garden beds. Then, what is still extra will be sold at a discounted rate to some of our friends in the Victory Garden Initiative. 

Seed packet from last year

My mom got us a sweet farming calender for Christmas. Most dates have little reminders for things we should be working on at the farm. Some of this month's reminders include:

-Brush away snow from beehive entrances

-Prune raspberry canes on any day that is over 45 degrees

-Use up last year's preserves and canned vegetables

-Set up heat tape for starting seeds in their germination trays in the greenhouse

This is made by farmers in Central Illinois

Love this calendar!

We've been fortunate enough to try out a winter CSA with Catherine this year. Through it we've tried tons out tons of greens that we'd never heard of. We also ate a larger variety of local veggies than we would have picked out at the farmer's market. This last week we received baby spinach, cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes, and honey. We hope we can make better use of our cold frame this year or possibly set up a hoop house to extend our season. Now we're hooked on those greens and other fresh veggies.

Community members chose which beds they will tend

Casa Beds to be tended by community members

Our planning with Adrian continues. We're currently discussing the slope of the land and how that will impact our endeavors. We're also talking about creating some sort of sound and visual barrier along the road... possibly black locust and mulberries (chickens loooove mulberries and so do we... double bonus).

Winter Musings

 

1/2 gallon milk+ 1/2 cup plain yogurt ->1/2 gallon homemade yogurt

I made yogurt at Casa Maria last week. We had a lot of extra 2% milk so I used that plus some store bought yogurt. If I was making it at home, I'd use whole milk. If I knew exactly who all would want to eat the yogurt, I may have added powdered milk to make it thicker for the folks that like that sort of thing. I've been making crockpot yogurt for over a year now and I'm loving it. I am able to save 1/2 cup yogurt from most batches to make the next batch... so I just pay for the price of 1/2 gallon of milk instead of 1/2 gallon of yogurt. Neal and I like to eat this yogurt with fruits and nuts in the morning. We've also substituted it for sour cream.

This is the first recipe I found:Crockpot 365

This one was recommended to me by Debbie Styka and has some good ideas for trouble shooting: 
Girls Guide to Butter

Making a scarf for Neal while listening to an audiobook

I'm in the process of working through all my winter craft projects that are waiting for me. I promised myself "no new projects until I finish the old ones". Neal and I bought this yarn for less than $2 at the thrift shop in Eureka last spring. Now I'm about 1/3 of the way through the scarf.

My mom and sister have gotten me hooked on audiobooks for my craft time/drive time/ and walking time entertainment. Current favorites include Papillon, Sherlock Holmes. Neal is recommending the Odyssey, but I haven't tried it yet.

 I've been trying to get back into an exercise routine this winter even though it can be quite cold. I'm shooting for a whole month of cardio, strength training, and yoga every day... reward: dance lesson! It's been 1 week so far and I find I'm sleeping better and waking up more well rested... Woo hoo! I'm trying to bundle up and bring either the phone+headseat or ipod+earbuds to keep me entertained on the walks. Skiing has been great now that we have snow again...

Neal and I cross country skied at the farm last Friday

It took about 15 minutes for our hands to warm up but then we felt great

Electric fence is off until the snow melts...
the chickens are too chicken to play in the snow anyway

Mercedes and her friend met us at Dorothy Carnes park to ski on Saturday

The 90 minutes of skiing flew by!

Crowd Sourcing

I sent my family this email recently to get some outside opinions on making the winter go by more smoothly. They encouraged me to share the process on the blog in case anyone else is going through a similar situation.

"Ok Folks- I could use your help here. Things are moving along slowly here at the farm with the cold weather and I'm running into a few personal kinks that I will list below. My initial plan was to just suck it up or buy a second car and possibly get a part time job to solve them. I believe that was the plan because it was the first idea to come to me and also it's familiar to me). After talking with Vance, I realized I could probably brainstorm and come up with more solutions to choose from rather than a black and white option of "just deal with the farm as is" or "buy a car and get a second job".
So, I'll give you the list of my interests in this endeavor, some pertinent details, and a couple of ideas to get the ball rolling. Then if you are interested, please send any ideas that pop into your head as possible solutions my way. It's a brainstorming session so it won't be the time to weigh the merits of any ideas.... we'll just get them on the table to we have lots to choose from.

 INTERESTS
1. I'd like to talk with or see other people besides Neal at least every other day (currently if Catherine is gone, Neal is the only person I see for a week at a time if we're at the farm).   
2. Develop more of a routine (I thrive when I'm kept busy enough that I need to use my spare time wisely)
3. Find a way to develop some autonomy in getting off the farm sometimes.
4. Free Catherine from chicken duties."

They sent back a wide variety of ideas. Here are a few of them
-Get more reliable internet
-Get an iphone (or smartphone)
-Pay a middle schooler to chicken sit
-Hire an intern
-Rideshare/relay rides/ zipcar
-Take online classes
-Audiobooks and library books
-Barter/trade for chiken sitting
-Get a second car
-Get a part time job
-Learn a new skill
-Travel to visit family

Getting more reliable internet was encouraged by almost every single person that responded... so we're looking into that option first.


We're also looking into the 2nd car situation. We want to see if it's most financially feasible to get a 2nd car (and possibly rent it out on Relay Rides on weekends) or to pay to reserve a zipcar whenever I'm on call. If we did get a 2nd car, we might make it a truck so we don't have to rely on friends so often to help us with simple farm errands (like picking up straw). Check back for updates on the problem solving!

 For the ideas, I got creative for how to sort them...

A list of all the suggestions and which problems they would help solve

Mind map of all the problems and which ideas could help with each one

Winter Planning

Neal, Catherine, and I are using the cold weather down-time to plan for the farm future...

Catherine invited us to her small faith group gathering last Sunday to talk about catholic worker farms. We had a blast looking at pictures from Casa Maria and the farm when everything was warm and green :) It gave us hope that spring will come eventually, and then we'll be back to growing our own food. The group was so supportive of our plans and offered some helpful tips. Many thanks to you all if you stumble upon this site!

We've been continuing plans with our friend, Adrian, on starting our food forest. The casa folks gave their votes for apples, peaches, sweet cherries, and almonds. We may change the apples to a hardier variety or to Asian pears depending on what we bet will handle the Wisconsin climate the best.

Onions can be started soon, so we'll be buying seeds and getting them going in the potting shed or along the south facing window in the lodge.

A lovely couple visited us last weekend and may be able to help out at the farm this spring/summer. They have a lot of years of farming experience and their community oriented goals align with ours nicely. More details to come if they are able to come to the area :)

Here are some pictures from our recent presentation.

 

Oh Nuts!

Here are some brief notes on our adventures with harvesting nuts at the farm and at the Styka family cabin.

Walnuts:
-Harvested a 5 gallon bucketful in the fall at the farm
-Husked them by rolling them between our hands or under our feet
-Dried them in the attic for a week
-Cracked them using Neal's "Super Duper Nut Cracker" (supposedly the best all around nut cracker from Lehman's). Pieces were flying all over the living room so we started cracking them inside a box.
-Extracted pieces of nut meat using an awl and wire cutters. (Neal voted this as the most time consuming part of all)
-Sorted all the pieces (to make sure the shells were out of there since they are quite rough on the teeth)
-Ate little walnut pieces on a variety of foods (our favorite way was toasted and sprinkled on butternut soup)

Acorns:
-Harvested during hikes at the cabin up north in early November and stuffed them in our pockets*
-Poured water over nuts in a bucket. Ones that floated weren't worth keeping
-Tried numerous options for cracking the nuts, but favored drying them in the oven and cracking them with plyers
-Poured water over nut meat in a bucket again. Rotten pieces and shells floated to the top and could be tossed
[HERE IS WHERE THERE IS HUGE ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT]
-Soaked the acorns in water to remove the bitter tannins every day for over a month with a result of the insides of the acorn meat still tasting very bitter.
[HERE IS WHAT WE SHOULD HAVE DONE]
-Used a food processor to chop the acorn pieces as finely as possible (then soak on a regular basis until the tannins were gone)
-Baked the acorn flour/meal into a cornmeal bread
*(Note: We used acorns from red oaks because that is what we had available. We think white oaks would have been far less bitter, but still would have required some soaking)

Our first blizzard

We got about 15 inches of snow on December 20th at the farm. I was stoked! It was an opportunity for me to  bunker down in the house and work on craft projects. Neal braved the weather and drove to work. Catherine got a bunch of projects done both indoors and outdoors.

View from the cupola

The lodge

Another view from the cupola

The coop looks tiny here

Corn crib and garage

Love the way this tree looks

We toured the property

Neal loves our new snow shoes

The snow was so deep in the drifts

Pretty

Back by the walnut trees

View of the fields by Catherine

We created a few paths the places we use often

The ol' corn crib

Also pretty

Neal's pigpen snow angel

I made a scrap rug with all our old jean scraps. It should help warm up the place a touch. I found a similar pattern on the internet a while ago... check it out if you need more detailed directions.

Start by removing all the seams and holes and dirty spots

Cut strips about 1/2 inch thick

You could roll this into a ball,
but I just did one section at a time to save a step

Use a large crochet hook and follow the pattern of your choice

Final product... needs to have a heavy object
placed on it to flatten it out

Let's Get Jacked Up

As some of you may know, the floor in the lodge had some major dips in it. Catherine's friend, Jim, gave us some advice on how to jack up the house and sister new joists on to the old ones. David lent Neal a hand in December while he visited us during Christmas break. They report that it wasn't as gross under the lodge as you would think, but they kept running into snags (like new 2X8's being too long for the building, etc). Neal finished the next weekend. We're grateful for the help we received, the knowledge we gained, and that the project is finally over since it's getting a bit cold out!

We will probably add some insulation under the floors at a later date. Just have to work up the motivation again.

Here are some pictures that chronicle the progress.

The original sag in the floor at its worst

Not level... but that might be a bit more permanent

"X" marks the spot

Getting supplies from the barn

The entrance to the cave

The plans

More plans

Good thing Neal enjoys caving

David worked on a side project

I was "helping" by offering encouragment

We found some extra jacks

David getting involved too