Pretending to Farm

And Then We Had Tea With the Queen

Another New Year is upon us, snuck up on us actually. Wasn’t I just complaining about the heat and here I sit bundled in flannel and wool wishing I had knitted myself some wrist warmers (in all my spare time) to protect me from this frigid granite desk top? Yesterday morning, poor Tumalo, the alpaca, had ice on his back and even Cookie, as wooly and monstrous as she is, looked a little chilly. Frost covered the feed shed roof, giving the false appearance that we had an overnight snow fall, which, unfortunately, we did not. If it’s going to be cold, in my book, it might as well snow, and if it is cloudy, I’d just as soon see some rain. I like a change in the weather, keeps things interesting, as if they were tremendously boring around here and I needed some extra excitement/ stress/ work/ fun. Thankfully or unfortunately, depending on how one views it, we have that in droves.

We enter 2007 with at least two pregnant ewes, probably three, plus the highly remote chance that we have a geep, a goat/sheep cross, or three on the way. Leroy no longer pesters and penetrates Daisy the Boer goat which means she is either pregnant or finished with her estrus cycle. We’ll see next month. Chances are if she is “with geep,” she’ll miscarry before carrying too far into her term, poor thing. Either that or we’ll have our very own chromosomal freak here at the farm. Look around; he or she will fit in just fine.

Charlotte and Cookie should begin lambing in April as the temperatures warm and after the March shearing. If they deliver rams, we’ll need to either sell or castrate them as once they’re grown, they won’t know that the cute fleecy creature across the yard with the come hither look in her wanton eyes was once Mama. Ewww. 2007- The year I learned how to apply castration bands around lamb testicles. Joy.

All in all, it’s been a good, though at times trying, year. We’ve weathered the circle of farm life, lost one cat to coyotes and one to illness and old age, but then gained two awesome felines in return. We (I) cried as chickens died in our arms from the oppressive summer heat but laughed as the ducks found great joy in a plastic baby pool. The turkeys kept us entertained as well, escorting us everywhere with a raucous chorus of gobbles and love. We acquired two new sheep, Bad, Bad Leroy brown, Baddest Ram in the Whole Damned Town, and Carmela, who is still too skittish to earn a nickname. Lucky and Tumalo, our two male alpaca, also made Rancho Laurena home, and in the process raised our feed bill closer to the national debt but, as I said before, kept things interesting, particularly during dentist visits. We lost a few loved ones as well, but as that is neither farmy nor fun to discuss, I’ll just say a prayer and one last rest in peace in their direction.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some black-eyed peas to cook.

2007. Can you believe it? Wasn’t it just 19-something?

A Snowy Day in Flagstaff

Missing: one jawline.

Description: Formerly taut, slightly square with visible chin at base of face. Owner thought the loss of twenty plus pounds would hasten its discovery it but she was sorely mistaken. If found, please return to Lauren’s face ASAP. Reward.

And now a few snowy moments:

Layered well, the pint-sized farmer morphs into the diminutive snowballer.

And applauds his accomplishments.

We choo-chooed with the trains.

And huddled against the cold.

The next morning, we awoke to this view from our front door:

When David saw this, he wryly declared that we did not have to drive 300 miles the day before, now did we?

The End.

Weeding is for the Pint-Sized

David and I have decided to be more well-rounded farmers. Sure, we raise the ruminants for their fiber and feed our feathered friends for their tasty ovals, but we have been sorely lacking in the grow-your-own-food department, aisle 10. We used to have an impressive garden, both here and in San Diego, but we were weak. We (I) let the heat get the best of us (me) and the garden fell into disrepair and was taken over by fowl creatures. Enter our modern world of numerous e.coli outbreaks, engineered food, and industrial farming. The green thumbed creature hiding deep inside, long dormant, has reawakened only to find a bunch of birds where the garden used to be.

Have no fear. Stubborn man with bad back is here!

David dug deep into the hill o’ compost and filled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of the golden brown to black broken down remains of hay, straw, poo, coffee grounds, and fruit and vegetable scraps and hauled them to the no man’s land south of the kitchen patio where we will attempt to get the winter garden growing in as short a time as possible. We will grow broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage, as well as the less cruciferous but still tasty beets, carrots, and a million and one lettuce varieties. It’s a good thing, Martha.

To top it all off, we purchased a kitchen counter-top hydroponic garden to grow fresh herbs and greens in the summer when one can only cultivate melons, eggplants, and wrinkled skin outdoors. I am getting a wee bit giddy, like it was Christmas all over again, just without the stress, shopping, and pocketbook sucker punches.

At his diminutive height, I am counting on the pint-sized farmer to be a formidable weeder. I think some seedling identification flashcards are in order, don’t you?

The Greatest Gift

Awake before five and unable to breathe through my nose due to the cold I reluctantly picked up during the night, I fidgeted and did my best cat with a lodged hairball impression. As this did not ingratiate me to the irritated husband playing possum beside me, I gave in and got up. Coffee made, I happily, though congestedly, sat down with my new Christmas iPod (thank you David!) and began to knit. Not much for music in the early morning hours, I scrolled through the podcasts I had downloaded and selected the NPR quiz show, “Wait, wait, don’t tell me” and began to giggle and chortle, forgetting all semblance of illness new or old.

Alarmed, David stumbled in, “Are you crying or laughing?”

Apologizing, I sent him back to bed and continued my fun on a quieter level. Late to this particular technology, I am thrilled to finally catch up to my teenaged daughter even if I am listening to audiobooks and NPR instead of “The Scissor Sisters” and “The Killers.”

How was Christmas you ask? Well, I was thrilled with my haul and I think and hope everyone else was as well but, surprise upon surprise, I was ill, and not caught-a-little-cold ill but swollen tongue, raw mouth meat, feel-like-the-banshee-is-coming-for-me ill. Not to gripe too much, but I haven’t felt that bad in years, I’d say at least five. No figgy pudding for me though I did develop a not-so-attractive technique of scraping small bites of mashed potatoes from a fork with my teeth and throwing my head back to swallow them as if I was swallowing a large pill, which in a way I was. I found I could do this with sautéed mushrooms as well as long as I blotted any sauce from them ahead of time. Oh, and I couldn’t talk, at least not well, because it hurt like Jennifer Aniston in Brad and Angelina’s delivery room. Of course, this meant everyone wanted to ask me questions. I tried to reply though my speech was garbled. I sounded like that guy in “The Mummy” after said walking dead cut out his tongue.

“Lauren, can I get you anything?”

” Aaa las aa waaa eease.”

“What?”

” Aaa guuhlas aa waaa eease.”

“Coming right up.”

It was a bit like raising a toddler. No one can understand the pint-sized farmer but the immediate family but, other than a few stumbling blocks along the way, we communicate just fine. Well, I am feeling remarkably better in no small part due to my love/hate relationship with prednisone and we might even take a drive today to see the new white stuff that fell in the mountains overnight. If the pint-sized has seen snow, we haven’t seen him in it. Watching a small child (or a puppy for that matter) play in the snow for the first time is one of those great joys of life one doesn’t forget and will in all likelihood, be the greatest gift we all receive. Merry Christmas (belatedly) and Happy, Happy New Year!

A Diminutive Ditty

The packages are wrapped,
The out-of-towners mailed.
Yet in my knitting endeavors
I have pretty much failed.

With three days til Christmas
I must just let it go
Mom will understand if
I don a ball of yarn with a bow.

I should lengthen this ditty
Add some more clever verses
But my mind is too weary
To think of something not worthless.

I hope your Christmas is happy
Your holidays bright
After it’s over
I’ll have more time to write.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah,
Have a Fabulous Festivus and a Cool Kwanza

Now This is Something We Had Not Foreseen

The kids came home from school today and conspiratorially and gleefully announced to me that Very Bad, Bad Leroy Brown has been getting it on with Daisy, the South African Boer goat. My initial thought? Stupid, silly ram, just like a man (at least if the rumors about lonely shepherds and cowboys are true.) But then I paused,

"Surely not. That couldn’t happen, could it?"

Head to the computer; type in sheep/goat cross. Oh, no:

A sheep–goat hybrid is the hybrid offspring of a sheep and a goat. Although sheep and goats seem similar and can be mated together, they belong to different genera. Goats belong to the genus Capra and have 60 chromosomes, while sheep belong to the genus Ovis and have 54 chromosomes. This mismatch of chromosomes means any offspring of a sheep-goat pairing is generally stillborn. At Botswana Ministry of Agriculture, a ram that was kept with a nanny goat impregnated the goat resulting in a live offspring that had 57 chromosomes. This was called "The Toast of Botswana". The hybrid is intermediate between the two parent species in type. It has a coarse outer coat, a woolly inner coat, long goat-like legs and a heavy sheep-like body. Although infertile, the Toast of Botswana had to be castrated to prevent unwanted sexual behaviour because it continually mounted the sheep and goats sharing its enclosure.

In 1969, Australian farmer Dick Lanyon, who farmed near Melbourne, Australia, kept a billy goat among his sheep to scare off foxes during the lambing season. In September of the same year, he claimed to have dozens of ‘lambs’ which were sheep-goat hybrids.

"It has been long known to shepherds, though questioned by naturalists, that the progeny of the cross between the sheep and goat is fertile. Breeds of this mixed race are numerous in the north of Europe."

"I need not tell you that there being such hybrids is now generally accepted as a fact. Buffon (Supplements, tom. iii. p. 7, 1756) obtained one such hybrid in 1751 and eight in 1752. Sanson (La Culture, vol. vi. p. 372, 1865) mentions a case observed in the Vosges, France. Geoff. St. Hilaire (Hist. Nat. Gén. des reg. org., vol. iii. p. 163) was the first to mention, I believe, that in different parts of South America the ram is more usually crossed with the she-goat than the sheep with the he-goat. The well-known 'pellones' of Chile are produced by the second and third generation of such hybrids (Gay, 'Hist, de Chile,' vol. i. p. 466, Agriculture, 1862). Hybrids bred from goat and sheep are called 'chabin' in French, and 'cabruno' in Spanish. In Chile such hybrids are called 'carneros lanudos'; their breeding inter se appears to be not always successful, and often the original cross has to be recommenced to obtain the proportion of three-eighths of he-goat and five-eighths of sheep, or of three-eighths of ram and five-eighths of she-goat; such being the reputed best hybrids."

We have two more female goats. My Lord Hunny.

The Drivel of a Raging Insomniac

I awake at 1:30 am, body sluggish but mind racing, racing with thoughts of unfinished projects, mailing deadlines, and un-run errands.  I briefly think of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” as the water is rising around him and the mops and buckets keep coming.  This prompts a visit to the restroom.

Hello toilet; you’re looking flushed.

I am joined by Apollo, black cat and bathroom ambassador, who puts his paws on my knees, seeking love and attention.  Affection administered, I return to bed, hoping for a return to sleep but instead the voices in my head get louder and louder until I begin to argue with myself.

Shut up.  Christmas is supposed to be fun.  Jolly holidays and all that stuff.  Relax, why don’t you?

My mind warps into an examination of that word.  Relax.  After all, lax is bad; when something is done negligently, it is said to be lax.  How did repeating it, as in re, make it okay?  Am I the only one who finds this odd?

Next I begin to write, poems with rhymes quickly forgotten, first something about wishing for a maid (what sounds like slobber?) and then a Rancho Laurena 12 Days of Christmas.  I only get as far as five; five assorted ducks doesn’t quite have that golden ring to it but I like the turkey in the Palo Verde tree.  Veering away, I post to the blog; I must apologize for whining yesterday and not being funny on top of it.  Someone kidnaps my sense of humor when I feel overworked.  What can I say to make up for it?

Turn, stretch, plump pillow, drop head, repeat.  Realize I have pulled the fitted sheet off the corner of the mattress in all my fidgeting.  Also realize I am too lazy to get up and fix it.

Hear the clock chime.  Count.  Is it four already?  Okay, if I am not asleep by 4:30, I am getting up.  Clock chimes the half hour.  Alright, five.  But no, 4:42, the pint-sized awakes, very wet and cold, just like the last two mornings and despite a diaper change just before going down for the night.  Oh, well, might as well try to type some of this up.  Good morning cyberspace!

I Need Another Week or Ten

Christmas cards made and mailed- check.

Portrait commission of

Wheaton

terrier painted – check.

List of knitting projects to be completed before Christmas –the polar opposite of check.  Of the seven to-do’s listed, I have completed exactly one, Anthony’s really big stocking.  As confident as I am in my knitting abilities, I have to say finishing the list in 8 days is pretty darned close to impossible.  Maybe if I could just sit and knit while everyone else cares for the pint-sized, chases the cats out of the Christmas tree, handles farm chores, washes clothes, and cleans this pig sty of a house, I could complete the top three.  Since the moon is not blue and Hell has not frozen over, I am hoping to finish number two, my mother’s Hug-Me-Tight.  (This is no spoiler; she picked it out herself.)  I am half way there.  Help Mr. Wizard!

My Oven is Talking to Me

Dear Lauren,

Next time holiday baking comes around, remember Christmas 2006 and the ridiculous and expensive mess you made trying “new things.”  Those “Super Gooey Chocolate Drops?”  A disaster.  And you tripled the recipe.  Maybe you could have tried it as a single recipe once?  Maybe you might have realized that a cookie recipe that called for neither baking soda nor baking powder might not turn out too well?  Maybe you should have purchased the parchment paper it said to bake them on instead of trying buttering vs. not buttering the cookie sheets?  I recall you had a very difficult time getting them off the cookie sheets no matter how long you cooled or did not cool them.  Remember how you tried to reform them with your fingers when they glopped up and you burned yourself over and over?  Perhaps you recall the tremendous amount of dough you ended up sticking in the fridge rolled in wax paper because you were exasperated with the process 8 dozen into it?  And the recipe said it yielded 2 dozen large cookies.  You silly sometimes baker!  You believed that hooey?  Did you actually think 4 eggs in a recipe sounded like something that would make 2 dozen?  For shame!

And what about those “Jewel Cookies?”  You had made those before; you knew they turned out well and yet you didn’t increase the amount you were making.  Then, when it came time to assemble the gift packages you only had enough to put four measly cookies a piece into the bags.  What those people must have thought receiving four cookies:   

“Woohoo! I was watching my portion size and this makes it soooo easy!”

At least, you made enough fudge.  I sure hope they liked it; though it’s not like they have never had it before:

“Fudge from Lauren; what a surprise.  Yeah.”

In conclusion, please remember these lessons next year.  Baking things all day long is tiring for me, you know.  Have a thought for your appliances.  We are happy to do our jobs as long as the outcome is worthy, but when you make something like “Super Gooey Chocolate Drops,” we find it downright exasperating.

Sincerely,

Your Oven

cc. Stove, Dishwasher, Faucet, Fridge

Toil and Trouble

Today, I am falling prey to my more domestic instincts and making and baking.  Of course, because this must be done today (the company Christmas party is tomorrow) Anthony decided not to nap.  That would have been too convenient.  Thankfully, Jessica came home from school prepared to take over for a while.  Imagine, teenagers truly are good for something; and you thought they were here on earth to make our lives miserable.

Every year I make fudge, good ol’ plain fudge, no nuts, no raisins, as they would interfere with the chocolaty goodness.  I’ve made fudge for almost the entire 20+ years that David has worked for JWC and it is expected of me.  I cannot shirk.  Unfortunately, I bore easily, even when it is only making the same thing once a year and something deep inside my psyche forces me to make more, which is not expected of me.  I pulled out my old recipe from my Martha days and chose “jewel cookies”, which are only fancy thumbprints.  (I don’t think Martha could admit shoving her thumb into balls of chopped almond covered batter.  That would be unladylike.)  Somehow I finished them, complete with the raspberry jam filling. 

One down, two to go.

Next, I found a recipe for something called “Super Gooey Chocolate Drops,” which has cocoa, semi-sweet, and bittersweet chocolate all mixed together.  The yield says two dozen large cookies so I tripled it (I’ve got eight gift packages to assemble ) which meant I added three sticks of butter and a dozen eggs!  I am out of eggs for the first time in recent history.  I have to go have a talk with the befeathered ones outside to step up production a bit.  They have to appreciate it is the holidays after all.  After looking at the almost finished batter, I think these must be the largest cookies ever and certainly not deserving of the moniker “drop.”  Look at the bowl!  I cannot stir it by myself and had to find yet another use for the teenager who stirred whilst I held.  We began quoting MacBeth, “Double, double toil and trouble.”  Not for the first time I realized how unusual a family we are and thought I’d sit down and share our peculiarities.  I can write as I can’t finish the cookies until David returns from Costco with two more huge bags of chocolate.  Hopefully he can stir the thing.

Finally, I will break down and make the fudge, dull though it may be.  I will spend the next 29 hours trying to keep my kids and myself out of it.  I can’t gain back those 18 pounds I have lost, no matter what time of year it is.

Ah, David’s home; back to work.  Chop, chop, stir, stir, bake, bake.