Farming in the shade

We just returned from a week in Brown County, Indiana. Over 100 sock knitters (of the circular sock knitting machine type) came from 3 countries and most US states for a week of learning and practicing new skills. The Farmer had a fabulous time meeting new people and cranking out socks for 10 hours a day, several days running.  The rest of us spent some quality time hiking, biking and swimming in the Brown County State Park. This park is a jewel and shouldn't be missed. If you can possibly swing it, go when it's not sweltering summertime. We had mostly good weather, with the heat waiting until the last 2 days to manifest itself. Toward the end, the family faded a bit, while the Farmer knitted on...

Just in case we weren't tired enough after our hay-a-thon... Our next door neighbor was up in the night, feeding her newborn baby girl, when she saw our cattle on the lam. Headed east, her husband told me over the phone. They were indeed headed east, and had trotted down the road about 1/4 mile. Fortunately, we don't live on a busy road. Did you know that you can't really see ditches very well in the dark, despite flashlights and a full moon? Fortunately for us, one of the steers found the ditch before we did.  The Farmer is even now fixing the fence where they made their escape... What next?

We put up 1,016 bales of hay Thursday evening. We had a wonderful crew of 12, with a support staff of 1 (keeping us hydrated and fed and supplying us with ice cream at the end).  We put up 1,200 more (an estimate, as the bale counter broke) last night. Seven hours of last night, that is. We have never, ever, EVER put up this much hay in that short of time. Ever.  We should feel extremely sore and lucky to be alive, and we do. We should feel extremely fortunate and satisfied with our work. And we do. But the fortunate and satisfied feelings are diminished somewhat by the sound on the roof just now, in the middle of the night. For, you see, it is raining. And there are two more fields of hay cut and waiting to be baled...

This new blog design is courtesy of Linda at RS Designs  and was a bloggy giveaway prize that I won! Thanks to Linda for her patience and great work...

Visit this blog  for a chance to win Shady Side Farm goodies. Runs through Saturday, June 21.

A fellow home-educating blogger is hosting several giveaways at her blog this week. The first giveaway (open until the weekend) is for OceanBreeze Jewelry . Mompotter, of OceanBreeze, is a wonderful artisan. Please visit the Life Nurturing Education blog and enter the giveaway . Other Schooling at Home Etsians will be featured in the giveaways this week, including a $10 giveaway from Shady Side Farm . Stay tuned...

Today was a so-busy-I-didn't-even-take-pictures type of day. Several of us picked 52 quarts of strawberries (some from our garden, where the strawberry plants are literally dying before our eyes from too much water last week) and some from my sister-in-law's garden. We topped them and washed them and smashed them (with sugar added) and froze them in freezer cartons for winter enjoyment. There are a few quarts left, so tomorrow we will make strawberry jam. Of course we eat them fresh. My favorite food in the whole world is strawberry shortcake. Here's a family heirloom recipe: Grandma Ovens' Strawberry Shortcake 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup shortening 2 eggs 1/2 tsp. salt 2-1/2 tsp. baking powder 2-1/2 cups flour 3/4 cup milk Cream sugar and shortening. Add eggs and continue to cream. Add salt, baking powder and alternately add flour and milk , beating until smooth. Bake in two 8" round greased pans or one 9" x 13" greased pan for 20 minutes at 400 degrees F. Cak...

This is a very old photo of my oldest daughter, and shows her personality early. Focused. Today we visited her at camp, where she is a counselor for the summer. Starting tomorrow, she'll find out how exhausting kids around the clock can be. We are proud of her. She's a fine young woman (in spite of some seriously imperfect parenting).  May God continue to bless you, my dear.

Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall! Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him: Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, That we may offer the fruit of our lips. --Hosea 14:1-2

This is our first post-schooling week. The first real week of summer. And, despite helping with two different barn cleanings (I have the aching muscles to prove it), I have great big chunks of time on my hands. What shall I do? I think to myself. This is very strange. I suppose it's partly because I'm not running people here and there. And it's far too wet to work in the garden. There's no reminding people to finish their math... What shall I do with myself? Ah! I know--I'll go weave. I have spent literally hours out in my converted-chicken-coop workshop, weaving away merrily. I set a goal of weaving five rugs this week, and I'm already on rug #5. Here's a peek at two of them:

Life is returning to normal. The sunshine came back today (finally), and the only reminders of this weekend's weather event are the articles in the paper and the still-flooded fields. The Farmer has located some more corn seed, and so we wait for it to dry out enough to replant, though we wonder if it's too late already... In the grand scheme of things, wet hay and flooded corn don't matter all that much. But you may be able to relate if I told you that losing our corn crop is like losing a couple of months of your annual paycheck. Feel it? You betcha. Boat-sinking? Depends on the year, and your savings and whether or not you're willing to get a job delivering pizzas  at night to make up for the loss.   The Farmer made the ascent to the top of the grain leg again late this afternoon to snap these photos. Notice the improvement over Sunday's photos. Notice that the improvement is slow.  Yesterday I called our drain commissioner. He was out assessing the damage (good ...

Don't forget to vote in the poll on the left sidebar. Three days left! It's interesting to see what people will be doing differently this year. Stay tuned for some good info on pinching pennies. By the way, I put the last option in as a laugh, and because I knew my mother visits my blog and I wanted her to have a poll option that worked for her. Thanks, Mom, for being frugal, and for passing on the knowledge... Oh, and by the way, if you have a great idea for saving money and you don't see it in the poll, comment under this post so others can benefit, too.

We've had a wild day. About 24 hours ago, I was mowing the lawn and The Farmer was cultivating corn. The weather experts predicted severe thunderstorms and perhaps tornados. It began about 8:00 with winds and heavy rains. We lost power by 9:00 pm, and our generator kicked on automatically. We watched for a while, checking to make sure that everything was okay, and headed for bed.  Before we fell asleep, the power went off again--the generator had quit. We grabbed flashlights and headed out to see what was up. A hose had blown, spewing coolant fluid everywhere. The engine then overheated and quit. We struggled to repair the hose and reattach it (all by flashlight) and then ran to an outdoor faucet (the closest one) to fill the coolant system up with water, a jugful at a time.  We prayed and hit the manual start button, and were ever so happy to hear it roar to life. These all would have made great photos, but when life happens I sometimes am too busy to grab the camera. This morning...

Every year it is a bit of a gamble to get the hay in. Hay needs to be cut when there are 3-5 days of good dry weather coming. If we put up wet hay, it (at best) molds or (at worst) heats up, spontaneously combusts and burns the barn down. Nothing to trifle with.  This year we've had our April rains in late May and early June. I have never seen so many 5-day forecasts with rain predicted for almost everyday! We have already lost a small field of clover hay to the rain. Every time hay gets rained on it loses nutritional value. We finally called our dairy farmer neighbor and offered the rained-on clover to him as haylage.   It looks as though haylage may be in our future, as well. We experimented with it on a very small scale last fall , with good results. But of course we don't have the equipment or set-up needed to do haylage on a large scale. We'll have to hire it done...

One of my fellow homeschooling crafty moms ( Schooling at Home Etsians ) has featured Shady Side Farm on blog. Go check it out, and please consider commenting on her blog. We blogger types like comments--otherwise we feel like we're talking to ourselves...

Usually we have the garden planted by Memorial Day. Our garden plot is low and wet, and so is one of the later fields to dry out enough to till. And in Michigan, we get these late season frosts that make us rethink planting tender shoots in early May. It  has  happened that we've planted in early May. But not often.  The Saturday before Memorial Day was Garden Planting Day this year. We seeded beans, corn, and carrots using our handy-dandy seeder. By hand we planted hills of squash and cukes. Using a little recycled spice shaker, we planted lettuces and all sorts of weird things for the fair and for fun: okra, kale, swiss chard, kohlrabi, turnips, etc.  We planted tomato and pepper plants, purchased from a greenhouse, as well. We're going to have a bit of trouble with grassy weeds in the garden this  year.  I was on 'tiller duty. Here's what I look like after 'tiller duty... "Mom? Mom, are you okay?"

A couple of weeks ago, we purchased about 20# of asparagus from a farmer up north. We  chopped it: Blanched it: Cooled it off in the sink: And froze it on cookie sheets. The final step (after freezing) is to chip the asparagus off the pan and put it (still frozen) in large ziploc bags for winter enjoyment. We won't eat much of it this summer, as we'll have fresh-from-the-garden goodies to eat. But next winter we will appreciate the work we've done now. Michigan asparagus growers have suffered hard times lately because of the cheap imported asparagus from Peru. Apparently our government thought they could make a dent in the drug trade by enabling Peruvian farmers to grow asparagus instead. They got a hand up and a hand out, and now the Michigan growers (with their higher labor costs) are struggling to compete. Good intentions, but every action has some unintended consequences. Read a New York Times article about it here.