It has been a while...

...and I'm not about to make any of the usual excuses.  Obviously I've been busy, but if I'm being honest, it's much more likely I've been avoiding posting any updates because I don't know what to say.  I feel like I spent much of last year in a weird sort of limbo, not really moving forward, but not because I don't know where I want to go.  It's more like I know where I'd like to be, but I have no idea how to get there, and I'm uneasy with the idea of asking for help.  Which makes me feel like I'm being that idiot guy who refuses to pull over and ask for directions, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm unwilling or unable to take the steps necessary to get where I want to be.

Well wasn't that probably too much imformation.

It has been a hard winter.  I got arrested three days after New Years, for a traffic violation that didn't involve the consumption of alcohol.  It was, and is, a stupid pain in my ass; not to mention humbling, and depressing and overwhelmingly embarrassing.  After getting out I learned that Grandma had a stroke, and it was pretty clear from the get-go that she wasn't going to make it.  A middlin' stressful weekend trip back to Georgia later, and it seemed like things might finally be about to settle back down, alas it wasn't meant to be.

We've been selling down the Twin Vista herd over the last six months; they are simply too inbred to be worth the time and energy that would be required to bring them back into good health, even assuming it would actually ever be possible.  So we were down to three pregnant cows, and a couple of little bull calves who we eventually got around to castrating.  I wrote this next bit in the immediate aftermath of what happened, and I think it captures what went down reasonably well.  A word of warning, what follows is graphic, and not fun to read, but is a realistic depiction of a bad day on the farm.

Yesterday was completely exciting, although not in an at all pleasant way.  It was grueling, emotionally exhausting, and I should probably really write it out, make a proper blog entry of it, so that people will know.

I slept late, didn’t get out of bed until after seven.  I was hoping to get into town earlier rather than letter, but given my inability to go anywhere without catching a ride from someone else, that whole plan was contingent on someone else going in the same direction as me.  I was aware that my only real potential ride was with a fried who was, last I knew suffering from a cold of sorts, and it was entirely possible that she wasn’t going to be up for a trip into town, so I was hoping that it would happen, but not expecting it.  I made my coffee, I wrote some words.  I might or might not have eaten some buttered toast(I think I did).  Then I decided it would be best to go ahead and get some chores taken care of.  I made a second cup of coffee, so that it would have cooled down enough in my time outside that it would be nice and drinkable when I was done.  It didn’t turn out that way, as is often the case on the farm.

I grabbed the bucket outside the side door, and went into the garage where I keep my tote of grain.  I scooped up food for the ducks, closed the door to the garage behind me, and headed off into the orchard.  I hadn’t made it ten paces when I noticed a cow lying on its side by the old hay barn.  I cocked my head, and stared.  It was beyond my useful vision, so I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on, but my first thought, obviously was baby cow, but as I watched, waiting for it to move, for something, anything to happen, I began to grow worried.  I left the bucket on the ground, and headed into the pasture.  I walked past the gathered cows, and about halfway to her, she flicked her tail, and I breathed  a sigh of relief.  It was then I first noticed the hooves protruding from her back half, confirming my initial thought.  I approached, she rose, and began to walk away from me.  I called Martin, and talked with him, then followed along after her.  It became apparent that it was going to be difficult, I couldn’t see much beyond the hooves, and a little bit of the legs, but I couldn’t tell what else was going on.  I decided to go ahead and take care of feeding before Martin got there.  I fed the ducks, and then went back through the orchard, around my cabin, and over to the shed where I keep the hay for my sheep.  I grabbed a couple of flakes gave the ladies and Frostie their share, and then shoved a flake worth through the fence for Charlemagne.

I walked back around, popping into the cabin to send off a text to see about that ride, and to grab my coffee.  Then I went back into the pasture to check on the status of things.  It was going on half an hour since I noticed what was going on, and things were no further along than when I had first checked.  Not a good sign, and when in contraction she strained and pushed, not much was happening, those two feet, and something…something else.  Something I couldn’t identify, but what looked like it might be an ear, which would have meant that instead of coming out snout first, the calf had its head turned around backwards.  Not good, but I couldn’t tell for sure.  I figured I would wait for Martin, especially since there wasn’t really anything I could do anyway.  Anytime I tried to approach I would get about ten or twenty feet away and then she would just keep meandering away from me.  AT this point I stopped being excited and started being worried.

Martin arrived with the whole family, and we discussed the state of things, and he decided that he and the fam would go down to the barn he’s leasing, get a couple of days worth of hay, and return, and if nothing had happened in that time then we’d eitehr corner her or get her into the sorting chute, or something to that effect, and see what we could do to help.  Martin said he’d gather what birthing assistance supplies he could find, and I agreed that would be a good thing.  I think it was apparent to both of us that we were going to need to assist, it was just a matter of how serious that assistance was going to be.  The sorting equipment at the farm isn’t great, the fencing is old and half-rotten and even a short placid cow like the Twin Vista Herefords could walk right through it if they were of a mind to.  I finished my coffee, got a message from The Bazaar Girls to see if I could come in to cover a shift, but I knew even if I wanted to, which I did(at least on the one hand)I knew I couldn’t have gotten into town in the time frame necessary.  I went back into the cabin, after prepping the paddock with the sorting chute in it.  Closing gates, and reinforcing the particularly bad ones.

I turned on the oven, and pulled a loaf of retarding semolina sourdough out of the fridge to proof.  I tried to find something to do that would keep me occupied until Martin got back.  I tried to knit, but all of the projects I had on my needles were at a place I couldn’t really work on them, given my distracted mental state.  So instead, I went outside and went to check on our problem girl.  It was then I realized what was going on, what I thought was the calves ear, was actually it’s distended tongue.  It was dead, long dead probably, and then I realized that we were going to have to pull it, it was probably just too big for it’s mother to get her head out without help.  I tried sidling up behind her to help, but she was having none of it. There wasn’t time for much, because Martin and his family got back.  I opened some gates so that he could get his truck and trailer into the paddock with the chute.  He and the kids through out some hay in the hopes that our laborious cow come over, but she was pretty entrenched in the mud by the water trough.  I went to herd her over where we needed her, but not before telling Martin where we stood.  He nodded, and said that we’d still need to pull the calf, confirming what I had figured.  While they fed I went, and waded into the mud after her.  I rather optimistically, grabbed the hooves while I had the chance, but through two contractions there wasn’t anything I could do; we were in the mud and I couldn’t really get any traction.

Now, in retrospect, seeing how hard it actually was to pull the calf I hadn’t stood a chance by myself, and without mechanical intervention, and I’ve heard many stories about pulling calves with chains and tractors, but didn’t realize what a physically difficult procedure we were talking about.  I tried comforting her, and talked soothingly to her as I encouraged her in the direction we needed her to go.  She was clearly exhausted, and having a had time standing, let alone walking across the farm.  Her back legs kept trying to come out from underneath her, and by the time I managed to get her into the paddock where the others were eating, she actually did fall down, which was pretty heart-breaking.  I opened up the sorting chute, and we got her into it with very little coaxing.  I’d like to think she realized she was in trouble, and that Martin and I could help, but that might be anthropomorphizing.  We got her into the chute, and we only tried to get her into the headgate for about two seconds before deciding to just take out chances and get the baby out.    Martin hooked the legs up a chain, and we hooked the chain up to a calf puller, and then we pulled.  We pulled with all of our might, trying to time our effort with hers, and slowly, more slowly, than I would have believed given how hard we were pulling, the dead calf emerged.  It was huge.  It had just been too big for her to get him out.

We did get him pulled, and she passed the afterbirth without issue.  Martin assessed, and said that he was pretty sure she had been in labor for hours before I spotted her.  Poor thing was exhausted, so we left her to rest, and Martin’s wife Robin and his kids Ruby and Bailey finished feeding the others out in the paddock with the big barn, hoping to lead the other cows away.  It didn’t quite work, but it needed to happen anyway.  While they did that Martin and I unloaded the rest of the hay.  Matin took his family home, saying that he’d be back to take care of the burial, and I went and checked on our momma-who-wasn’t, and realized then that something was wrong.  She had prolapsed, her entire uterus we hanging out her back end.  I knew then that troubles hadn’t ended.

I went inside, up-ended the loaf of bread from its banneton onto a sheet of parchment, I slashed it’s surface, and lowered it into the preheated pot I use for baking single loaves of bread.  Martin returned  and then we fired up the excavator, dug a hole, and buried the calf that didn’t make it.  Unfortunately not the first time I’ve had to help with such a burial, but at least we happened to have the excavator on the farm.  Digging a hole large enough to bury a calf, that the coyotes won’t just dig right up is harder than you might imagine.

Baby buried, Martin took another look at the cow, confirming the uterine prolapse, and saying that he’d be back to take care of it, once he figured out what the hell to do.  He needed to try and call the vet, and talk to Roger Short, look in some books.  While he did that I went inside, ate something, and read about uterine prolapse on several ag college websites.  It didn’t sound like there was a whole lot we were going to be able to do.  I knew that Martin would be up for trying, which was good.  Neither of us wanted to have to put her down, after all she’d been through, but it seemed pretty unlikely that we were going to be able to do what needed to be done, unless the vet was going to come out, but Dr. Jan doesn’t work on Sundays, and the other vet lives in Sequim, which is pretty far away for a farm call.  Martin got back, and his friend Joe came to offer moral support.  We did what we could, we tried re-inserting the uterus, but without any anesthetic she just kept trying to push.  It was an effort that wasn’t accomplishing anything, but stressing us all further.

We talked, and it was decided, pretty quickly, that we didn’t have any other choice.  We were going to have to have to put her down.  Martin went back to his place to pick up a rifle, and I waited, and remembered to take the bread out of the oven, and got my pocket knife sharpened.  I made myself a mid-afternoon cup of coffee, and when they returned, I went out to help.  We let the cow out of the chute, Martin waited until he had a shot, and the he fired.  She dropped, and he went and grabbed the excavator.  I got a bucket of hot salted water, and found a hose, and we went to work.  We got her raised up in the air using the bucket of the excavator itself as an improvised gambrel, and we worked through the process.

We began by partially skinning her from the sternum up to the udder, in order to have a clean are to work with while we gutted her.  Martin opened her up, and I went around back to cut out her anus, which I’ve actually somehow gotten good at, but a cow is a lot larger animal than I’ve ever worked with before; I’ll freely admit.  So we worked at it, moving from position to position, and getting the liver and heart and hanger steak set aside, while pulling out the bits that aren’t good for much, unless you’ve got pigs.  Martin chopped the head off with a combination of finesse and a cleaver. We decided to hold off on the rest until we had her hanging up in Martin’s barn.  So we loaded the carcass onto the back of the trailer, and dug some holes with the excavator, buried the offal, and then headed over to the knucklehead ranch.

Joe and Martin got her lifted up using a proper gambrel, and a chainfall, and then we got right back to work.  We cut around her hind ankles, and cut a slit up the cut we’d finished on her underside, and from there we simply peeled her one knife stroke at a time.  Smaller ruminants you can often peel like a banana, but grass-fed cattle don’t have the quite the same fat layer between flesh and skin, or perhaps it just hold on with more tenacity, I don’t know for sure, but I do know that we took our time, trying as best as we would not to peel off too much of the fat layer, which would protect her while she hung, and obviously doing what we could not to nick the meat, and to keep the carcass clean.  She was pretty muddy from lying down, after all.  We accomplished our goal, in the end, and Robin invited us in for dinner.  I hung out with Sawyer, Martin and Robin’s youngest, and drank a beer, and ate a delicious meal, and then it was time for me to go home, and build a fire, and do a little knitting, and then it was time for bed.  I had to be up early the next morning to feed, after all.

It was an emotionally exhausting experience, but one that reinforces some of my lo0ng standing ideas about how I'd like to spend my life, speculation about which we might get to by the end of this post.

I found myself in the position, again, hoping that things would return to normal, but it didn't, which is, in fact, actually the norm.  Something always comes up.  I've been working a part-time day job, doing warehouse work in town.  it's not the most fun or glamorous work, but it's a regular paycheck, which relieves a lot of the stress of small-scale farming.  For example, before the day job, if I needed to reinforce a fence, or build a new livestock shelter, I would just have cobble together a makeshift solution from materials on hand.  Now I can just go buy a roll of fencing, or some lumber, and not have to think twice about it.

One morning, the next week I got up, early, as is my wont on a workday.  I rise at six, and make coffee, write for an hour, and then do my chores and go to work.  I did exactly that, only after feeding the cows and the ducks, I went and brought some hay to the sheep, and my younger ewe, Daisy, was down on the ground, breathing hard, frothing from the corner of her mouth, and hiccuping almost constantly.  I knew that it might be frothy bloat, but was unsure of what else could cause similar symptoms.  I went back into my cabin, did some quick research, and decided I had to assume it was bloat, and see if I could treat her.  This was not going to be easy.  I can't really afford to call the vet, and I know how to do the right thing, in theory at least, but I'd never had to actually put a stomach tube in before, and I didn't have the proper equipment lying around, so I had to improvise.

I cut a length of small diameter garden hose, got it into her rumen, and administered some vegetable oil and warm water.  They make commercial bloat relief, some sort of chemical surfectant, but it's essentially the same thing.  It was the only thing I could do, but it either didn't work, or it was too late, and she passed away later that day.  I did with her what I did with cow the week before.    I know it probably seems odd, but it's the only way I knew to honor her memory, make sure that I saw to it that I preserved her hide, and put the rest of her up in my freezer.  I understand why a shepherd might choose to bury an old and honored flock member, and while I cared about Daisy a lot; it seems to me that butchering her ensures that even after her death she can continue to enrich my life.  Anyone who has ever heard me half-jokingly endorse cannibalism knows how I feel on the subject.

The weekend after she passed I finally found the perfect new ride, and old early eighties Toyota pickup, a beige sort of yellow with a cab on the bed.  I decided to call it Daisy in her honor.

Things continued on as they do.  New people have started arriving, and old friends are moving on to new things.  One thing farming will never let you forget is that everything always changes.  It can seem, for that brief period of the winter that things stay the same, but it's not true.  Things slow down, but they keep moving forward, and no amount of curling up next to the woodstove with your friends and your knitting will change that.

I found myself, one Sunday, at Spring Rain, helping Molly and John build and install some trusses for the roof of her new cabin.  During the course of this I learned that one of our friends was coming by with some goats, and there was going to be a slaughter and some butchering, and I of course took a break from the construction to help.  We killed and processed four goats that day; I did most of the work on the first one, and then went back to helping Molly and John.  It wasn't until we had finished work on the cabin for the day and went back to see how the others were coming along that I realized that I've actually grown rather good at breaking down a little ruminant, and it really struck me, how much I enjoy it.  I know that probably sounds insane to most of you, but there is something profoundly satisfying and humbling about breaking down an animal.  We are, after all, not really different from them aside from the direction our limbs articulate, and our modest skills of advanced reasoning and iPhone construction.

I've been pondering the idea of opening a slaughterhouse for quite some time now.  Probably since I had to butcher This Goat after his untimely demise.  Whenever I think about my long-term plans, and try an determine what I could do that would let me pay the mortgage on a farm, especially one of the sort I'm interested in having, that is the idea I find myself returning to.  Open a brick and mortar abattoir, put a retail butcher shop in downtown Port Townsend.  It's still agriculture, but it's the sort that actually pays.  It's a service that it is necessary, but one that has a high barrier to entry, and while I feel confident that I could do the actual work of running a slaughterhouse and a butcher shop(at least with some study and on the job training), I absolutely don't have the skills required to do a business plan that is good enough that I could get investors to give me the money to actually make it happen.    Not the mention the sheer amount of bureaucracy I'd have to be willing to deal with.

If I can somehow work through those two very real limitations, however, I'd find myself in a place where I'd be able to live the kind of life that I want.  I'd be able to earn a good living at it, and I know that I find the work itself satisfying to do.  I'm not really sure what I'm getting at here, just putting my thoughts out there, sort of thinking things through out loud, as it were.

I'm going to keep on doing the day to day things that I'm doing now.  Hopefully I'll have baby ducks coming soon, and I'll probably be buying a pair of baby pigs in the coming months.  I'm still trying to work out what to do about the sheep situation, but I think if I don't rush things I'll be able to find a plan that works for me.  Thoughts?  Suggestions?  Just want to say hello?   Call me.  Unless I'm arms deep in a carcass or a pile of chicken shit(there are no chicken at the farm, anymore) I'll pick up the phone.  I'd love to hear from you.  I hope everyone is doing well, and I hope the spring and summer to come bring you all new growth.  I expect they will...