Love Apple Farms

An Update On Our Dairy Goats: The Breeding Season Is Here!

To the unfamiliar eye, female dairy goats can look a little masculine: the udder may be a dead giveaway, but their beards and horns give them an appearance few would describe as girlish. Here at the farm we have three females, and most of us had never encountered a male goat before.  But with the milking season drawing to a close the time was nearing for us to breed one of our does, so we took a trip to a local goat farm in search of a suitable mate for our girl Totes (get it, Totes the Goat?  She's totally awesome!).

Dairy goats need to be bred every year to produce milk, but since our goats are new to the farm this would be our first experience with breeding.  Goat expert Sara—owner of four rambunctious billies up at Boulder Creek Goat Farm — walked us through the basics of the breeding process.  The first step is to acquire a “buck rag” to encourage your doe to go into heat.  Male goats have extremely powerful scent glands behind their horns, and when a rag is rubbed across these glands and presented to the doe, the odor alone can have her ready to mate within a matter of days.

 

Just how strong is this odor? Conjure the most intense, masculine smells you can imagine and multiply them by ten.  Standing by the billy goats’ pen it was all we could do not to hold our noses.  If we thought Totes’ beard and horns were manly, they were nothing compared to those of her prosective mate, Manly Man.  The bucks were quite possibly the most testosterone-charged animals any of us had seen.  They raged around their enclosure butting, mounting, and peeing as Sara attempted to get our buck rag properly scented.  In the end though, the smell’s potency paid off: Totes was in heat within a week.  We took her back to meet her new boyfriend in person, and after letting nature take its course, we are now expecting baby goats on the farm this coming March.

Let's hope they are as cute as this little one:

Photo courtesy of Boulder Creek Goat Farm (they give fun goat farm tours!).

Transplanting Brassicas with a Little Dog Help

We planted out some Brassicas today: Purple and White Kohlrabi and a bed of Purple Sprouting Broccoli.  Although we've had these growing all winter, and we've been harvesting them for the chef, I am trying to get one more opportunity for these cool-loving crops before the garden gets taken over with the summer plants.  The tray of Purple Sprouting Broccoli above was seeded in our greenhouse about 9 weeks ago, and then pricked out into our small rose pots about 4 weeks ago.  We do an off-set spacing with them in our garden beds, taking maximum advantage of the space by doing so.  Here is what I mean:
Broccoli gets pretty big when mature, so we space them about a foot apart, and start with five across.  The next row's plants are then placed in the middle of the previous, in an off-set (or grid) pattern.  That allows us to place more in each bed.

Since I wanted to give James and Rois as many "farmy" experiences as possible, they were asked to help out popping the seedlings in the ground.  As usual, they cheerfully obliged. 

One of my main tips on transplanting seedlings, is to get them deeper in the ground than they were in the pot.  Don't compact the soil as you back-fill.  We give them just one gentle push to settle the soil around each fragile root-ball.  Looks like the Brits have the technique down:

Our farm dogs, Indy and Trinity, always find lots of opportunities to check out what we're doing and try to horn in on the action.  We're never too busy to give them a quick cuddle before carrying on.

Dogs certainly can make life more interesting, and our dogs are real characters.  I don't think we'd have nearly as much fun around here without them.  Sara always has a smile for a dog eager to distract her from her duties.

Class: Backyard Chicken Keeping

2009 CLASS DATES NOW SCHEDULED: Even city dwellers can keep a few laying hens in their yards. Participants will take home three live chicks – after learning how to care for them. Class participants also receive a brooder starter kit containing heat lamp system, feeder, waterer, and chick feed are included in total fee.

Farm Animal of the Week: Dali the Pot-Bellied Pig

Does she scare you, or do you think she's adorable?  I get both comments from visitors to the farm.  People who have never seen a pot-bellied big are both delighted and repulsed by Dali.  She's often confused for a male, but let me tell you, if you saw a full grown pot belly pig boar, there'd be no mistaking the gender.  The boys have tusks, heavier bristles, and their fright factor is such that you do NOT want to run into one in a dark barnyard.  Dali is positively the embodiment of femininity in comparison.  Rubens would have delighted in her generous curves and folds: Dali was brought home as a tiny baby, about 8 weeks old.  She was only 10 inches long and a spitfire from the beginning.  I remember holding her to try to get a walking harness on her, and she squealed so loudly, she completely freaked out the neighbors.  The decibel level coming out of a body so small seemed impossible.  Since then, we've let her be, and the best we can do is scratch her back and her ears. Although my friend, Manny, has bribed her into letting him fondle her considerable jowl.  He calls it "buche," and claims it to be a delicacy in Mexico (although I've also heard that buche is pork tripe, so if anyone knows definitively, let me know).

All this talk about pork may make you think that Dali is scheduled for the table at Manresa.  But no, she's a pet, and alive she will remain.  But I have heard the chef exclaim, with more than a hint of covetousness, "Dali, you are looking really tasty, today!"

I asked my son, Zach, to name her when she was a piglet.  In the middle of a very interesting seminar of AP Art History, he decided to name her after his favorite painter, Salvador Dali.  When I reminded him that she was a girl, he said, "No matter.  Her name can still be Dali."  When I pronounced it "dahl-ee," Zach corrected me.  He said her name is properly pronounced "doll-ee," emphasis on the latter syllable, like Demi Moore.  One can certainly make the argument that Dali's belly resembles that of the very pregnant then-Mrs. Willis on that famous Vanity Fair cover.

Besides bringing sexy back with her own rotundness, Dali has another talent.  She has an incredible sense of smell, much like her French counterparts, who are trained to hunt truffles.  Dali has never enjoyed a truffle, but she can detect a cheeseburger at 200 paces. She doesn't get many treats lately;  I found out a whileago that I had been feeding her too much, so sadly for her, Dali is on a diet.  Which would make you her new best friend if you brought her a Big Mac should you come over to visit.  She may even let you fondle that beautiful buche.

 

Farm Animal of the Week: Buff Laced Polish Hen

Isn't she a pretty girl?  This breed is called a Polish, also known as a "Top Hat" chicken because of the feathers poking out of the top of her head like some crazy Rod Stewart impersonator.  These chickens' head-dresses are so lush and full, they sometimes obscure their eyes, much like a hairy Lhaso Apso dog.  Her coloring is called "buff lace" because of the delicate white edging around her beige-colored feathers.

With chickens, we just can't call them a regular color name, like beige or grey.  For some reason, the poultry breeders have to sex it up a bit and euphemize it, much like nail polish.  "Red" is changed to "Hot Kiss" and "Pink" is not going to sell unless it's named "Valentine Ice."

So the same with chickens.  We call brown "buff" and grey "silver."  Is this more than you wanted to know about chicken colors?  Perhaps for most of you it is.  But for the few of you who have thought it might be cool to have your own hens for homegrown eggs (not ANYTHING like store-bought eggs, mind you) and manure to enrich your compost pile, then you might be interested in my "Keeping Chickens" class that I'll be having on April 19th.

You don't need to live in the country to keep a few hens.  You can do so with proper planning in your backyard.  At this class, you'll learn how to keep baby chicks happy and healthy until they are full sized and start laying eggs.  You'll learn what to feed them, how big of a yard they need, how to keep them from flying out, how to get them to lay eggs throughout the winter months when they usually stop laying.

You get to take home three baby girl chicks (no roosters - your neighbors will thank you), along with supplies to keep them happy until you can build or buy a proper coop (about a six week window).  We'll talk about coop design and a simple do-it-yourself plan will be one of the hand-outs.

The three chicks you get will be a Polish like the cutie in the picture, a Cochin, like my previous post, found here, and an Araucana chick.  Each breed lays a different egg color, so you will end up with white, brown and green eggs, like those shown in this gorgeous photo taken of our eggs by Pim Techamuanvivit.

So if any of you in the greater California Bay Area want to come learn about chickens, click here to be directed to my "Upcoming Classes/Events" page.

 

Farm Animal of the Week: Indiana Jones

This is my Australian Shepherd, Indiana Jones.  We just call him "Indy." We have loads of pictures of Indy, because he's so photogenic, but this is my favorite of him, taken by Pim, of Chezpim fame.  I also call him "Superstar," because he's completely charismatic and everyone instantly loves him. His ears are always turning inside out, as you can see here as well, which makes him doubly cute.

Indy takes his farm duties very seriously.  He's always on the look-out for danger, whether it be a deer trying to eat the veggies or a chicken that needs herding back into the pen. Check him out here just lookin' fer trubbles:

He is the boss of all the dogs on the property, and makes sure they know it if another dog tries to steal his thunder.  Should one of our other dogs senses danger before Indy does, he'll jump up with an "Aaarghhh," and chase down the other dog, nipping them a bit like he would a sheep he was trying to herd, then go running off trying to figure out what the other dog was so riled up about.  Sometimes he never does find the problem.

Indy tries to help out on other projects as well.  Here he is supervising while the Chef buries our Prep 500 last fall.  He's as close as he can get to the hole without actually being in it:

Indy also gets impatient when I'm in the house taking too long on the computer, which seems to be quite a lot these days.  He's always poking his head up from under the table and looking at me with those big amber-colored eyes, telling me, "Hey we better get outside, there's trubbles out there to herd up and sort out!"

Indy and his sister, Trinity, who you will meet at another time, are rescue dogs.  They adopted us when they were 4 and 3 years old respectively.  Although we've only had them a year and a half, I can't imagine my life without these lovebugs.  I urge anyone who has space in their home and in their heart to adopt an adult dog from a shelter. They'll repay you tenfold with devotion.

Farm Animal of the Week: White Cochin Hen

Isn't she gorgeous?  She's a Cochin hen, a large breed that is known for their gentle natures and fluffy feet.  I call them my Frodo chickens (for those of you not familiar with Hobbits, they have furry feet).

My son, Zach took this picture, and he was lucky to get it with the hen eating a sprig of parsley.   We give our hens just about everything we don't send to the restaurant or compost.  Weeds, Manresa kitchen scraps, our own kitchen scraps, harvest trimmings, or brush trimmings, the girls get most of it.  It keeps our feed costs down, gives the hens treats that they dearly love, not to mention that a diet rich in lots of different things results, I believe, in better tasting eggs.  I swear their eggs are extra herbalicious when we do our twice annual cutting back of our herb garden.  I'm not sure how the bugs they are always catching affect the taste of the eggs, but at least it's really good protein.

The hens know when we're bringing them treats.  They see us walking toward them with a bucket or a wheelbarrow, and they come running.  We dump the receptacles in their pen and they happily scratch, squawk, and cluck in delight.

What I've noticed over the years is that they're not the biggest fan of tomatoes.  Could it be they instinctively think it's a deadly type of a nightshade?  I'm convinced they can automatically tell when a plant or a piece of kitchen scrap isn't good for them.  Despite this eerie instinct, they eventually reluctantly accept the tomatoes, preferring the seedier varieties.  Maybe I'm imagining this reluctance.  It couldn't be that they're just tired of the hundreds of pounds of tomatoes they get fed over the course of a season, could it?  Sometimes I almost see them sigh when I give them yet another bucket of tomatoes. 

It does make for some pretty tasty huevos rancheros, though. Thanks, gorgeous!

Farm Animal of the Week: Poopers!

I asked my foreman, Christopher Donovan, to write this post.  These are his words:

When Cynthia first suggested that the initial blog in this series ("Farm Animal of the Week") should be about my dog, Poopers, I became very excited.  She also had some
suggestions about how I should focus on various personality and behavioral issues relevant to farm life that Poopers purportedly manifests, and I suppose I have to honor her wishes, as this is her blogsite, and she is my boss/mentor, etc. 

But the truth of the being of Poopers is so much more than any sundry, or even tawdry, laundry-list of daily misdeeds. To begin with, there is the story of how Poops and I were  brought together...  I was driving down a highway in Oklahoma, and she darted out in front of me -- chasing after an old beat-up van, which was speeding away.  I executed a fast turn-and-brake procedure, and called the little pooch to me.  She cowered on the pavement.  And from that point on, she was mine. 

Poops is an absolutely intelligent being, as is apparent to anyone of even moderate intelligence.  Everyone adores her, whether because of her winning disposition or enthusiasm or intelligence I am not certain.  There is a song I sing to her almost daily, which sums it up nicely: 

You're . . . Patient, obedient, and kind.
Loving, forgiving and joyful . . .
You're Poopers, you're furry, you're mine . . .
Poopers, I love you some more, each day.

Okay -- now that's the good stuff, but the truth is all of the other farm animals (dogs, cats, pig, chickens, birds, etc.) have had to learn to adapt to the addition of another boistrous presence here at Love Apple Farm.  Poopers has a penchant for chewing any leather glove we accidentally leave lying around, apricots, and unripe watermelons.  She especially relishes a mouthful of chicken feathers, which, unfortunately can only be gotten from the source.  She has, like her owner, resisted learning a great many things (though different things than her owner) -- like not chasing cats, not terrorizing the chickens, and not jumping in or through vegetable beds. 

Right now Poopers is in the midst of an intensive training period, one guided by the book "How to Become Your Dog's Best Friend, a Training Manual for Dog Owners."  It's by the Monks of New Skete, and I recommend it heartily.  So she's learning how to pay attention to her master -- a master who may have loved her too much, at first, and taught her too little.  So now when Poops takes off after the neighbor's cat, I get to chase after her, and perform what is called the "alpha-male roll-over" (rolling her onto her back, and saying "no! no!," while maintaining eye contact).  She actually seems grateful for having clear expectations and being communicated to in a way that is meaningful to her. 

Thanks, Cynthia, for making a place for Poops and her master on your farm!