Red Rover Red Rover Send Wattles on Over

October 19, 2009

Our lives are moving at breakneck speed since we made the decision to expand our pork business. I actually caught myself watching me sleeping and wondered why I was being so lazy when we had so much to do !

Last week while in Indiana for the Covered Bridge Festival, we also ventured over to Morgantown Indiana to visit with Dot and Brian Jordan of Kiss My Grass Farms. They very graciously showed us their farm and herd of registered Red Wattle Hogs. Now ordinarily a pig is just a pig but these pigs were the cream of the pork chop. These big porkers were not just pretty they were friendly too. Walked right up to us, shook our hands and introduced us to their offspring. Mama sow with her litter was not one bit disturbed by our visit and daddy pig was first in line for some ear scratching. We had read about the friendliness of these pigs but to see it with our eyes was amazing ! We hope to be buying our first "family" (2 females and one male) of Red Wattles from Brian and Dot soon.

Keith and I were very happy the hogs were so friendly as they were quite big. My husband is 5 foot 11 and you can see by this picture, the Red Wattle sow is longer than he is tall. This means we have some serious hog houses to be building in the very near future.

Cross this Bridge at a Walk

October 15, 2009

Keith and I spent the last 2 days at the Covered Bridge Festival in Parke County Indiana. It was cold and rainy, gray and sad, but we had no chores to do so we were happy happy farmers on a break. (Again let me say, if you really want to get to know someone, go on a road trip with them. A person's driving technique will tell you everything you did and did not want to know about them ) And Keith, if you are reading this I really do love you.

Back to the festival...in years past when I have gone I spent too much time shopping and not enough time touring. This year Keith and I followed the Black Route and saw several covered bridges, The tourist traffic was almost nill due to bad weather so it was easy to park the car and walk across and under bridges to check out the awesome construction that has kept these bridges operational for over 100 years. Even more amazing is how solid they feel as you drive your car over them. ! We went to the 3 main towns, Rockville, Mansfield and Bridgeton but Rockville was our favorite. Most of the booths there are folks with handmade goods and freshly made food. The key site to see in Bridgeton is the mill where flour and cornmeal are made the same way it was in the late 1890's.

We finished our trip with a side pass through Billie Creek Village. an entire little town set up as it was in civil war times. Old churches, general stores, print shop , horse drawn carts, and ice cream shop with homemade blueberry cobbler. We bought a huge bag of kettle corn from a towns woman in a long skirt. We ate all of it on the way home and made ourselves sick. Always a sign of a good road trip.

The mind is a terrible thing to...lose.

October 10, 2009

In the last 3 weeks I have lost my car keys, my debit card, my WHOLE ENTIRE PURSE and one other thing I can't seem to remember but I know it was really important. Empathetic friends and family have pointed out the increased stress in my life related to additional farm work, increased needs of my elderly aunt and wedding plans of our youngest son. Having always felt that "stress" is just a poor excuse for one not being organized, I have pridefully argued against the possibility that I could possibly be stressed or that the life I have chosen might be a little much for me and that God forbid (!) I might actually ask for a little help. Instead, like so many other goofball midlifefarmwives (as well as non midlife, non farm wives and just plain ol' women) I load myself up with self-important duties and responsibilities and then after weeks of piling on the crud I then EXPLODE in anger, frustration, fatigue and oh yeah, memory loss.

So, I swallowed (some of) my pride and "allowed" my sister to look for the debit card. She found it immediately in my car where I had of course already looked several times. Then I asked my husband to help me look for my purse even though I didn't know what the point of that was as I already looked "everywhere". He found it outside next to our fire ring. What was I thinking ? I haven't kept kindling in my purse since 1974. Back then you never knew when you might have to start a camp fire, on the side of the road, to get some truckers attention. Aaaaanyway...the car keys have not at this point been found and neither was that other thing I lost.

Research ( http://www.overthehill.info/Articles/memory.html) states this kind of memory loss is expected after age 50 and clarifies it is one thing to lose your car keys and another thing all together to forget you've ever driven a car. So children of mine YOU STOP LAUGHING AT ME ! Your day will come and I fully intend to be around to mock each of you, because that is the kind of caring, loving, mother I am.

To console myself I went to my favorite therapist Professor Ebay, and purchased the Easy 2 Find Kit. Consisting of one transmitter and 4 receivers , I attached the said receivers to things of importance: purse, camera, checkbook and some other thing I can't recall. When you press the blue dot on the transmitter, the item with the blue receiver beeps. So cool. (Yes, as a matter of fact I did have to write down what color went to which item and your point is ?) My husband suggested I might want to attach a receiver to my own head. That's so funny I forgot to...forgot to...oh %$!#!* how does that go again ?

Where are the Red Wattles ?!?!

October 9, 2009


The above piglets are Duroc crosses we just purchased from an organic farmer friends of ours. This group represents the first group of piglets to be grown in the fall on our farm. In years past we've just grown a few over summer for ourselves and family. First there were 5, then 10, then 15 and this last year we raised and sold 20. Still not nearly enough to meet the needs of the restaurants who've heard of our farm. So this next years goal is to raise 50 pastured hogs for market and we want RED WATTLES. A heritage hog breed which was near extinction 20 years ago, we've researched them and decided they are the future for Green Acres Farm.

Next week we are planning a trip to visit a Red Wattle breeder in another state. We've heard these gentle giants, which can easily reach 1000 lbs, are great meat producers and good mama's. That means we have a lot of work ahead of us in building of hog huts and fences. Thats a good thing since with winter just around the corner I was afraid we might run out of work to do. !

Epiphany

October 6, 2009

My sister Mary forwards me some article from some paper about some folks growing some food for some restaurant. (What can I say, I don't retain information like I used to.) Yet, I read the article, which peaked my interest, contacted "some folks", who turned out to be interested in what we were doing on our farm, and next thing I know four very famous people are in our dining room drinking coffee and eating my pumpkin cake. Ok, not household names yet, but they will be, mark my words. Right now, with a highlighter, right here on your monitor screen.

The group (from left to right above) was Stu Hummel, Ken Myszka, Nanam Yoon Myszka, and Mike Mustard of Epiphany Farms Enterprise and their story was told in the Pantagraph (Bloomington, Illinois) last week. I'll just water down their vision and energy if I try to retell the story here so best to go directly to their web site at http://www.epiphanyfarms.com/



Our meeting today was one of those "What do you do ? What do we do ? How can we help each other ? meetings that are the scones and butter of sustainable farmers. We all have this common desire to make the best of the land, the animals, the produce we've taken responsibility for , leaving something even better and more viable in its place. And oh yeah...none of us would mind making a decent living at it either. Keith and I learned much more about the restaurant business and hopefully our new friends learned a little bit about organic dairy farms. It was a great way to spend a cool rainy day, asking questions, exploring options, trading resources and soaking up the excitement of four obviously hard working, forward thinking, coffee slugging entrepreneurs. AND I also learned a pigs bladder is an excellent receptacle for steaming a Guinea hen. Just one more thing to add to my own personal Bucket List.

Yes, Deer.

October 5, 2009

On the way home from my Aunt Bernie's 91st birthday party, I spotted this deer out of the corner of my right eye. It was running parallel to our car on the other side of a windbreak of evergreen trees. I actually heard it breaking off the dried soybeans in that field before I saw it. Deer rarely are out and about alone so I slowed the car looking for its mate. There was none. Concerned this lone deer might double back in front of me and hoping to maybe get a picture, I stopped my car. The deer immediately stopped too , turned and looked directly at me. It did not move for several seconds while we just stared at it. It did not move when I rolled the window down. It did not move when I reached over Keith to get a good picture. However as soon as the photo shoot was over, he took off. Cooperative subject that one. (That's our barn in the upper left hand corner)

"He's not heavy, he's my porker"

October 2, 2009

Another successful trip to Chicago and Old Town Social Restaurant, where chef Jared Van Camp is making good use of our pastured all natural pork. The drive is 106 miles one way from our farm but that sure beats the average 1500 miles most food must travel that is served in restaurants. In addition only 5% of the restaurants in our country make an effort to prepare and serve locally grown food. Hats off to Jared as well as the many other chefs in the Chicago, Champaign and Bloomington area who have made it a priority to work with small sustainable farms like ours.




The kitchen at Old Town Social was a chefs dream (or at least a farmwife cooks dream.) All that stainless steel, counter space, organized work areas (oh how I love clipboards) and cool gadgets galore.









Jared makes sausage and other great morsels from our pigs. This is the special cooler where those items are stored. Who knew our humble little farm swine could rise to such heights ? We are so thankful for all these recent opportunities.