So, back on the hom front

On the cooperative household side of things, we had a very lean fall. For the first time in more than ten years we were actually empty for about a month. The cooperative household can be as much as 25% of our cash flow, so being empty put quite a dent in our financials.

And when things are lean, I have to admit I am willing to be more flexible than I would otherwise. Mostly that means we have been willing to work with shorter terms than I have in the past. In our state, there is a duration dividing line between places of accommodation (hotels) and real estate, and we make sure to structure what we have to offer as real estate rental, not a hotel. Generally it has not been an issue in the past. Three months has been about the shortest period we have worked with. But with tenants in short supply we have been reduced to the legal limit recently. So we have had a cop who was new to the area and his permanent digs weren't available yet, a research student from Chicago, A med student doing a rotation at the local teaching hospital, an electrician on temporary assignment and next up a Physical Therapist doing a stint at a nearby hospital.

Having this much turnover is a little taxing. Doing reference checks and interviews easily eats a day. And for every one we get to the point of doing references check, we consider/interview another ten. Training a tenant is also part of the over head. Cutting the duration of stay by a third triples the overhead efforts to turn over new tenants. It also triples the losses due to gaps between tenants.

Short duration has been a choice that worked for us in the past. Short term people come with less baggage. Their foibles are easier to endure because of the limited exposure. Temporary situations like ours can be difficult to find, so people who need it are willing to consider the conditions we place on it. And it's nice to have fresh faces cropping up from time to time.

So, accepting less than optimal terms in times of trial is something we do to endure until things are better.

Food Snoot

A friend has rescued me. Well, thrown me a lifeline, anyway. You know, one of those donut floating things. Well, it's better than drowning, really!

I've been through two or three gallons of feedlot milk. I even mistakenly bought 1% milk. Friends have come to my rescue with a shipment of milk from their goats. It has been great to have real milk in the house again. I had an image in my head that I would quit drinking milk when I dried off the goats. But quitting a forty year habit has proven difficult. Even just until Ruffles kids in March.

This is kind of a good segue for something I have been thinking about for a while. Over the past 10 years I have become snooty about food. Ten years ago I felt pretty superior about cooking a dinner that was a supermarket turkey, store bought potatoes, packaged stuffing. Today, I turn up my nose at eggs that didn't come from my yard, I feel bad about feeding my goats grain from away. My wife and I talk behind our friends backs about their shopping habits. We now sell food and produce from our farm. And my eating habits have truly changed.

It's probably been a little annoying for my friends who are ahead of me on this curve. Urgently emailing them at all hours of the night with some food related tidbit of news that they have known about for years. I appreciate their forbearance in these matters.

Flat on my back

I was flat on my back for a while. My wife hurt hers maybe two weeks earlier. Nothing dramatic, I leaned too far out lifting the ice chains onto the tractor wheel. A strain. But it hasn't been fun. And I am getting to try out the insurance I have been paying for all these years. This is the first time I have gotten more than a tetanus booster. Can't say I am impressed with the insurance either.

Since all lifting is out for at least another week, we went ahead and dried off the goats a month early. I am not happy about that, I was hoping I had the pregnancies timed right so the first doe would kid about the time I dried off the last one.

We have eked along with the help of a friend. She was already staying with us while between gigs. She is the stalwart type and has been a great help, keeping the animals watered and schlepping wood. If you try sometimes, you get what you need...

Last pint of milk for our goats' 2009 lactation cycle

Changes in time

For the past nine months or so I have been periodically taking a series of photos and assembling them into panoramas from one location near where we have been developing our market garden. As is always with these time stop projects, I wish I had thought to start sooner and had captured more of the changes. But we have to start somewhere.



We started with an open field that had some trees and brush grown up in it.

My trailer is a fairweather friend

I think I over did using my trailer by one day this year.

I have a smallish 5X10 flat bed trailer that I use to to move things around with. It's a road trailer, single axle and it's rated for 3800 plus 800 on the tongue. It's not big enough to move my tractor with. But it can haul about 5 yards of horse manure, maybe seven yards of wood chips. It can hold as much as I want to haul with my two wheel drive 92 GMC van.

I have been making regular runs to a horse farm about ten miles away, building up a serious pile of poo. I figured I was about done with manure for the year, but I wanted to do one more run. I wanted to cover up the goat manure I got a week ago and I wanted to make one more dent in the horse farm's pile. It's good for them, saves renting a truck or paying for hauling to get rid of it. And it's good for us, we need a lot of organic material to incorporate into our silt and sand soil.

I have been pretty spoiled with the weather. Fifties into December. Over the weekend, we just had our first snow that really stuck. I intentionally waited a couple of days to be sure the roads would be clear. When I spoke to the horse farm this morning he threw in an aside, be carfully of the downhills, there might be some ice... But it was just an aside. I figured he meant some drainage water had frozen over night.

When I got there, the farm driveway looked fine, wet gravel. It winds in, mostly down hill, until the end, where there is a little rise. But as soon as we got onto the north side of the hill, it was all solid snow packed into ice. And somehow I didn't have enough momentum at the end and I started spining short of the top. And with the trailer, there was no faking it by hitting the gas and hoping you dig in. The problem got trickier, not only could I not get up the hill, I couldn't hold where I was, I started sliding backwards. Behind me, there was a pond on the north side and a ravine on the south. The road was basically a dam that formed the pond. And I had a choice of brakes or stearing. Pretty soon, I had the trailer jacknifed and was headed for the ravine. A distinctly unpleasant prospect. In retrospect, the trailer saved me, as the ravine only got steeper. The trailer draging like that is what brought me to a stop. And even if I had manged to make it into the farm without event, I never would have made it out. The hill is twice as long and high going out.

I bent the step bumper and tweeked the bumper hitch pretty good. Other than that, I think my pride is the only thing that really suffered. Getting pulled out of the ditch is embarassing. But I stilled managed to get two loads of manure home, about 10 yards. And my pile is now full. No more manure runs till dry weather in the spring.

Goat Latte

I like a goat latte in the morning. Here's a video a friend of mine made that morning:

Goat Latte by WannBee Farm Productions

Having goats means milking every day, every day. It's an obligation, but it has its perks. Bruce, note the Canyon REO cup. When in Flagstaff, we use Canyon REO as our preffered outfitter. That cup is from a trip in 2000, I think. Damn fine cup, for the price.



I like to milk in the morning. We have tried it several ways, but mornings work best for me. I generally get up, put coffee in the press to steep, go out and feed the chickens. When I come back in I have fresh coffee to take up to the field when I milk the goats. While I am there, it's nice to get a little extra milk, blood warm, and foam to boot. Heddar doe doesn't seem to mind.



And if I am lucky, I get a few minutes to sit and enjoy the view from the milk house.

Sung to the tune of Grandmas Feather bed

"Oh, It was 8 feet wide and fifteen long

Sleek as a big ol' brick

Made from the steel of four dump trucks

Took a whole pitt crew to make her tick

We didn't get very far

But we had a lot of fun

In the back of CJs chevy van"

I have to apologize to Bruce King. I recently dismissed his vehicle troubles saying I had never had a starter go completely bad on me. It wasn't fair, as it's not like I have never had one fail to operate and I have replaced enough so I have a small cache of them in the barn. Instead, it is more accurate that I have been foolish enough to run them longer than I should by keeping a hammer handy but still managed to always replaced them before I got completely stranded without tools.

In retribution for my flippant remarks, I had to replace one I could not revive. And to be sure I learned my lesson, I had to replace this one twice as I foolishly replaced it with one from the barn first. I should know better than to try to reuse a starter. Of any component, starters suffer more than most from inactivity and degrade quickly on a vehicle or not.

Bruce, my apologies.