The Answer..

...to my little riddle is that I did it, made one of those big decisions. Borrowing this quote from Judy's blog (fullfreezer)
--Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
-Mahatma Gandhi
I have taken a step towards harmony and happiness. The meeting was with my business partner- I informed her of my desire to sell my share of the practice back to her. I will work my normal schedule until school gets out-then I QUIT.

I began this blog when I realized I wanted something more (actually less) from my life. Less hurry-more meaning, less junk food-more slow food, less debt-more time.

For the past three years I have been a dichotomy, living in two worlds, bread earner- bread maker, business owner- TEOTWAWKI-er (that's not a word but you understand!), six figure income- goodwill shopper, suburban during the week- country by weekend. No wonder I'm nuts lol.

We took a step in the right direction by moving out of town onto our 20 acres of grass. But a house in the country is just a bigger lawn and a longer commute! Now what? Our goals center around two themes: 1) to spend more time -good time- with the girls, to shape and teach them in a positive way 2)to become more self reliant as a household, both from a food and energy standpoint but also income. We wish to build this 20 acres of grass into a thriving pasture based farm, not only producing food for us but an income to see us into 'retirement'. I had posted once about 'when i retire' and this farm is our retirement package.

One of us needs to be at home -to be here for the girls and to be the farm person. We went back and forth but it came down to biology and health insurance. I could embrace the business and its income to become the 60 hrs per week single bread-earner while DH nurtures the farm and the kids. He has the organizational skills and the muscle for farm and running the affairs of house and home. But it didn't feel right to either of us-I was freaked out and trapped by the idea of being the sole income earner and DH was not comfortable with the nurture role and chauffeuring girls to extracurricular activities.

We then 'tried on' the gender roles of male income earner and stay at home/farm mom. In addition to making sense on a number of practical levels, it 'felt' right. I can sell my % of the practice and pay off a number of large bills (student loan, vehicle)to make the income drop tight but do-able and have capital to invest in our retirement/farm. I still have in-demand skills as a DVM for relief or other part-time work if we need the income, whereas DH's income from the manufacturing sector is not so portable. He also has insurance benefits. I priced out very basic, very high deductible health insurance at $800 per month for our family. We have fallen back to genetic programming but that's okay with me, nature is too big to fight with!

I am a little worried about my body holding up to the rigors of farming. I am 40. I am overweight. I have carpal tunnel and a crunchy knee. Self sufficiency is about being responsible for yourself. I am high with the idea that my life is MINE to shape as i wish now -no shoulda's or oughta's. From here on out it's in my hands. My health is no different, time to take responsibility for that too.



Some fall pictures of our grass

Next Post: the winter coop (or my first attempt at building something with power tools)

Love Those Leghorns!

We have eggs! Our layers are nearly five months old and I was beginning to ownder if we would have eggs this winter or if the short photoperiod would delay onset of eggs.
The hens are in a chicken tractor which was remodeled from last year-we boarded up a few of the nest boxes since it seemed like the previous inhabitants only used 2 for eggs and the remaining as toilets :) It appears they can still squeek into those boxes and yesterday i discovered a leghorn sitting on a dozen eggs in there! I did a little dance in the field! Several were cracked but all the rest were beautiful inside and out! The girls and I had a pan of scrambled eggs which bordered on orange.
A little more about our laying hens: hatched on June 6th and purchased from My Pet Chicken-what can i say ... i wanted a few of each kind! We ordered a dozen and although they were supposed to be all hens we ended up with 2 roosters. The order was 3 each: rhode island red, leghorn, welsummer and araucana. My selection process was simple -cold hardy birds with pretty eggs. The leghorns of course are white, reds are light brown, welsummer a deep chocolate brown with speckles and the araucana are the easter eggers. Sadly one araucana chick died early on and another is a rooster. My crew consists of 3 leghorns, 3 welsummers, 2 rhode islands and one araucana.
They are still on pasture in the tractor despite some cold weather (down to 20 Thursday night) and doing well. We are working on their winter quarters now-partitioning off a 5x10 section of the shed and insulating it. We were originally going to house the 2 rabbits in their as well-we'll see.

I'VE MISSED YOU GUYS!!

Where to start? I've been gone from Small Life so long...the house is up, we are no longer living in the camper (yay), we successfully raised and marketed 120 Freedom Ranger meat birds and the girls have adapted well to the small school. We have 9 nearly 4 month old egg chicks on grass in their tractor. Their winter coop will be up sometime in the next month...(think warm thoughts for us in WI). Our house has not YET sold, although I think we have it at the right price now and have had 4 showings in the last 2 weeks (fingers crossed!)

Overall the move is a positive one; I love the space, the views, the sandhill cranes calling and the geese migrating. Now the struggle will be to make this life different from the previous one-not just a longer commute and a bigger 'lawn'. Is 'GrassWorks Family Farm' a business, a hobby farm or a homestead?

We (I) am still struggling with work/professional issues. Sell or don't sell the business, work for the local clinic part-time, local relief work, stay at home? It sure is nice to have options, but choices make me crazy! If GrassWorks is to be a business then we need someone to be home. As I write about it the choices seem clear (but then I pay bills and come to different conclusion!)

I am writing this at a WiFi connected cafe on my 'going to town' errand day. I hope to have internet at home soon but for now the posts will be sporadic.

What do you want to hear/see more of? Questions, suggestions welcomed otherwise I will continue to ramble and diary our progress.

Gut Check

I had a moment today. We were in our weekly Dr's meeting this morning and my partner was talking about farmland her husband purchased from a farmer in foreclosure. This is(was) a large landholder and ALL his property is in foreclosure. The parcel they purchased was 560 acres and a cabin on a lake! I had an immediate sinking feeling. 'what am I doing, rejecting that path?' Accumulation of property and power, isn't that the goal? It took me a couple hours to process the emotions that discussion brought up for me. I was such a relief to get back home to my girls (**and my CHICKS). My carefully nurtured plans tend to fade to a poorly defined image when exposed to the values of normal society. This is a big part of the reason we chose to buy property in the boonies. I WANTED the girls in a different district, I WANTED to NOT be so close to work that it was 'business as usual'. I need physical distance to help me preserve this vision and not make it too easy to turn this 'small life adventure' into just another house with a really big yard.

We are on the right path and this is a good thing because tomorrow is D-day. We sign the construction loan and move rabbits and cats into their new home. The 130 meat birds should arrive tomorrow. The 12 (now 11) egg layers have been in the basement for 2 days now and growing like mad. They will join the Noah's Ark-like procession tomorrow.

The Future is Here!

The girls last day of school is tomorrow and then our adventure truly begins! Our house had its first showing Sunday (they are coming back with their parents to look again next wekend!) and another showing tomorrow evening. The 142 chicks arrive at the end of the week -130 freedom rangers (the reason behind that exact # lies at the bottom of a wine bottle-never shop for chickens with a credit card and an empty bottle of wine!) and 12 laying hens-3 each of white leghorn, easter-egger, rhode island red and welsummer. I agonized over the laying hens-and ultimately picked for winter durabliity, laying ability (duh) and egg color. I ordered the layers from My Pet Chicken to avoid having to buy a large number of a single breed. I am a bit nervous about the chicks, but there is a first time for everything-go for it!

We begin living in our camper more or less full time at the end of this week. Until the house sells we have the option of coming back here for showers, laundry or as a stir-crazy escape hideout if needed. Tom and I are having a very hard time sleeping in the camper bed. It is big enough-although maybe too soft after putting the memory foam pad on top. Perhaps it has nothing to do with the bed and everything to do with a lack of background noise, or that we are sore from the extra work. Whatever the problem is I sure hope we resolve it quickly!

I am giving up on the homemade bread and yogurt (and homecooking in general) for the time being. Once we get a routine down I may be able to pick those things back up. Right now I am struggling with the transition from camping cooking to everyday cooking. I cannot live on grilled hamburgers, brats and foil dinners for the entire summer. We used the camper oven to make muffins and it worked great-6 muffins at a time!

The girls are enrolled at the small rural school. I have such mixed feelings about this. To go from 450 per grade to 30 is a big change. Some good, others not so. I am most concerned about Erin -our 12 yr old. She just finished her 6th grade year with straight A's in all AP classes. 96% in math, 100% for science last quarter, now she will be in regular classes and I am afraid she will be bored to tears. I need to find some enrichment material she can do at home. The time may come when I can home-school but not for a year or two.

The garden is thriving, now that we have had a little rain. I still have some transplants to put in. I was waiting until I could be around daily to water (or cover!)

I promise to remember the camera next trip out so you can have some visuals to go along with my descriptions! And sorry for all the ranting before this-I am going to remove most of that post to protect identities!

Weekend Work

We had a cold weekend, and frankly we were tired so we had a convienent excuse to NOT spend the weekend at the camper. Brrr...3+ inches of sloppy wet snow. I was happy to be in a real house! We spend Sunday at the land. The weather was perfect-very little wind, sunny and 50-60 degrees. DH installed the board walk in front of the camper along with the 10x12 'patio'. Everything is constructed with treated wood in 3'x10' sections so we can use at the house this fall. I am happy to have a spot out of the dirt and mud this summer. We put the 'patio' at the back end of the camper-we will put our deck table and chairs out there along with the umbrella for (a bit of) shade. The camper also has an exterior shower on the back so we can 'hose-off' on those really sticky days.

DH planted his open pollinated sweet corn-I forget the weight -but it was approx 1000seeds. I think it is a little cool for sweet corn, but even with a low germination rate and deer/coon/bear predation we will have alot of corn!

My day was spent in the garden! Yay me! I put in 10lbs of seed potatoes-I ended up with 3 25ft rows ( i must have cut them into smaller pieces this year) About half were the leftovers from our winter storage. I have pictures to help me remember row spacing etc for next year:

We hill the old fashioned way so I think I am still going to wish for more room between the rows...
I also put in two more rows of peas, a whole bed of beets and a row of radishes. The dandelions are taking over the rows and sides of the raised beds. I took the hoe to their tops and that felt very good! I know it will not help long term so next weekend i need to bring stuff for row mulch-I was thinking brown paper shoppping bags covered with lawn clippings. I also need to come up with bean trellis ideas. DH has too much on his plate and after all -I AM HANDY TOO!
The kids entertained themselves -playing 'tennis' on the tractor road:

(we are going to need more balls!)

moving day

Not out of our suburban house, but moving the camper onto our own patch of earth. I wish i had pictures but it was a very highs stress situation for DH and stopping to take pictures would have been a very BAD idea! We have a nice big Dodge truck but it is not heavy duty or anything. The trailer is a 26 footer at the top end of the Dodge's hauling capacity. When we hooked it up the hitch only cleared the ground by 6 inches on flat ground. The road out is nice for a car but bumpy with curves and runs through a slough which has washed out and been redone a few times since we put the camper up in the woods.


On the right-the road out of the woods and through the slough-taken 2 (3?) years ago

DH was having visions of the camper tipping into the wetland. The hitch began to catch dirt before the slough. DH went to town to put more air in the truck tires (and recover his cool), meanwhile my Dad, brother-in-law and I went to work removing the raised 'crown' of the road and redistributing it to the sides, raising the tires and giving the hitch a low spot in the middle. Success!
Thank you to everyone in our 'work party'. Our camper is now parked on our hill. It looks like redneck heaven right now, but we will get things straightened up over the next few weekends. We watched a hawk float in the wind not more than 30 feet from us. He was dropping towards the grass looking for mice and swooping back up into the wind without a wing flap. The first of many encounters I am sure.
The wind will take some getting used to-we had 40mpg gusts Sat night and the camper sure rocked. I think some some digging may be in order to lower the campers profile a bit-either that or tie-downs :)
We have 130 freedom ranger chicks coming in June along with 12 laying hens, the floor plans are done for the house-just waiting now for the estimates so i can go to the bank and ask for $. It is all feeling very real!

Too Busy To Post

I am finding it harder and harder to call this place home! We becoming more invested (emotionally AND financially) in the Grass Works Family Farm, and I so look forward to the time school gets out so we can relocate. This weekend I planted onions and garlic and turned over another 2 rows of the raised bed garden. The dandelions were having a field day-but no more! I still cannot get the girls interested in their gardens. They will help me but want to play, not work. I won't push it but they WILL be required to help with the main garden.

View of the building site from Dad's hill. The truck is parked in it's staked out 'garage'. The brown patches of dirt mark the area which tested okay for the drainage field. Below those is a low spot we hope some day to build into a pond!

DH broke in a new tool, the pick axe, to dig a ditch in which to place heavy duty PVC pipe to improve Dad's road through the slough. Every spring it washes out, and every summer more material gets added. Perhaps this new drainage under the road instead of over it will be the answer.

We were both very tired and stiff, so naturally today was a good day to transplant spruce trees for my Aunt's gravel pit (THANKS PEGGY!) to the western edge of our field. In 10 years we will have a nice wind break :)


We are meeting the well driller this week, and arranged with a local farmer to have our field planted to pasture. He will plant a timothy, orchard grass, white clover and alfalfa mixture -along with oats. The oats will grow tall more quickly while the rest establishes itself underneath. He will combine and harvest the oats and straw in August leaving us with a usable pasture by late summer. It is cheaper than buying a tractor this year, but I need to check around to be sure he is not taking these city folks for a ride!
Tired but happy and taking glucosamine for my aching joints!
Kris

Peas and Oats

Two more work days in. The last of the charred remains have been hauled away -the entire patch rototilled. We used the garden tiller-didn't want to have to replace one of Dad's tractor tires by running over a metal spike :) Then the girls and I flung a 50/50 mix of field peas and oats over the area. The feed mill guy said the typical application rate was 2 bags per acres--well we used 3x that much -but we aren't machines planting in rows and we had seed fights (I had oats in places where the sun don't shine!) One job complete!
Then DH got out the 'big tiller' which runs behind the garden tractor. He tilled up about 1/2 acre and the peas and oats girls went to work again. He plans to work up another plot this size to plant sweet corn in (for both us and the wildlife), and start a rotation between corn, p&o, and pasture. We girls decided we don't want to seed 1/2 acre of corn by hand--I see a seeder purchase next month!
My next job was to help the girls with their gardens, just lay out the walkways with mulch. That didn't go so well. Erin turned into this evil pouting thing (i think it's a tween phenomenon) Fine with me-it is YOUR garden. If you decide not to plant it I'll turn it in to popcorn, or flax, or sunflowers. It's all good. She will just have to ask me NICELY if she wants help in the future.
I planted a double row of both shell peas and sugar snap peas, a little spinach and lettuce and a few kolrabi seeds. Nothing too crazy. It is still April in Northern Wisconsin and historically speaking we still have 6 weeks before the 'frost free' date. It is just so damned dry and warm already. We had 80 degrees last weekend and only one nice rain this spring. I have an extra package of peas- what do i have to loose if they get frozen?
I just realized I neglected to buy any seed potatoes. I meant to do some research about blight resistance but never got around to it. Does anyone out there know what the latest word is. We didn't have any problems with either the tomatoes or potatoes last year-but we have had drought conditions.
DH is going back out to do some more work tomorrow, while I stay home to catch up on cooking and housework. I love having homemade bread, yogurt and leftovers for lunches but it takes time! My body is tired-i will let Tom dig fence post holes tomorrow, I know he will enjoy the alone time.

Our Ginseng Clean Up

Goodbye YMCA membership -there is a new fitness program in my life. It's called the Grassworks Family Farm and I have never been so tired. It's a good kind of tired, that comes with a sense of accomplishment and a tangible outcome. Two overweight, out of shape, city folks got initiated this week. This is our project:


Ginseng made some Marathon County farmers very wealthy, but like so many things it was not sustainable. Part of our acreage was in ginseng 15-20 years ago, the roots were harvested and the slatted wooden rafters (a ginseng crop needs artificial shade) stacked up for another crop. Except the prices dropped by more than 50% from $40/lb for dried root and $100/lb for seed. So there sit the stacks and stack of rafters. We asked that they be removed before buying the property and they were-mostly. They missed a little bit:




What was left behind was pounds and pounds of metal-staples, spikes, nails, etc-all the hardware which held the artificial shade structures together. We don't have the equipment to bury it so we are hauling it to the scrap pile on Dad's property. Every farm around here has a rock pile/scrap pile where stuff goes over the decades- his has coils and coils of rusty barbed wire, old implement parts, rusted out livestock watering tanks. I used to look at these sites and think ick, what an eye sore-but now I see them as a necessary evil and sort of an archaeological site-lots of information about how farming has changed over the years! Anyway -THANKS DAD!

We spent our freakishly warm (80 degree) April Fool's day raking and shoveling and dumping. When we realized we were NOT going to finish in one day the fight went out of us and we moved on the the garden -something we CAN finish(see previous post). I think we will finish this burn site next weekend and get the area hand rototilled (not with the tractor -I don't want to have a punctured tractor tire to replace!) and spread some sort of grass/clover seed on the site. I will never feel 100% comfortable grazing livestock over here, but since this will be the main 'cross-country' route between dad's place and ours we won't leave it as is. There are 2 more burn sites like this one running parallel to our driveway, we won't tackle these this year.


Ahh, the grass is growing and spring is here. Hopefully next year this will be an established pasture and pond at the low site at the right.

Grass Works Family Farm

Begin with the end in mind...I don't know exactly where this will END but within the next 5-7 years we would like to be living a very different lifestyle. This will be the home of our retirement, the homestead which we will bequeath to our children.

What are we hoping to find in the country? The first is space -both physical and emotional. To get away from such close proximity to the consumer rush, to watch the sun rise and set on land in our stewardship. Personally it is also a test; a way to gauge and build my grit and gumption. I have always been the smart one, good at reading, comprehending and taking tests. This has gotten me far in my life, but I wonder, do I have what it takes to thrive and persevere when things get tough? Take me out of the office- can I cut it? A measure of self sufficiency is important to us-food as well as power. That will certainly not happen in this home, we are too comfortable here with the status quo.

We plan to create the Grass Works Family Farm as a small business this spring. Admittedly the first years will be significantly in the red but that is part of the plan-the losses will help negate some of the (taxable) profits from my small business. We plan to market pasture raised meat chickens (Freedom Rangers). The first summer we will only be able to raise one run for immediate family; but by 2011 we should have some kinks worked out and be able to direct market (we have some ideas for that too).

We have been reading alot about rotational grazing this winter and it is our goal to stay within a permaculture model. Allow chickens to be chickens and cows to be cows, let them do the work! To get by with the least amount of physical struggle and capital investment. Instead of bullying the earth with equipment to use our minds and our creativity to achieve our desired outcome. Hence to farm name: Grass Works.

Nineteen acres of beautiful productive grass pasture for pastured meat and layer chickens, a dairy goat or two, the Norwegian Fjord horse. Field rows of native oak, crab apple and other food and cover for wildlife. A large garden from which we can feed ourselves, a garden for medicinal and culinary herbs. The orchard and small fruits, such as grapes and blueberries. All very idyllic, no? What about jobs, property taxes, health insurance, college saving for the kids, and let's not forget the 5 months of winter in wonderful Wisconsin!

For this story-book ending to happen we need to do a couple of things. In the next year or two one of us needs to stop working outside the home(stead). We are both pretty well paid professionals, we have a nice income but also alot of debt (student loans, loan for purchase of business). We need to pay down our debt to allow one of us to devote time to the farm business. If this is to be more than a hobby farm one of us will need to not be working outside the home. If worked full time I would have the higher income but DH has the health insurance. Is is a good problem to have in these times. We have so much to learn about food storage, gardening, livestock, real cooking, and oh how I could go on... it is exciting and a more than a little daunting, but it is REAL now, no longer a dream.