Our friends at the Big Farm raise pigs every year on pasture, moving them around in electric net fences like the ones we use with our chickens.  But pig-sized.

So two of these piggies will be ours this fall.

In the mean time, they will root in the earth, clean out tons of brush in the old pastures, drink in the sun, eat hickory nuts, roots, and lots of green leafy things, and play in the mud holes they create.

In short, they will have the best piggy lives possible, free of hunger, predation and fear.

Thank you, piggies.

Our friends at Kinney Valley Alpacas have been raising some pigs this year, one of which is ear-marked for our freezer this fall.

Hard to believe those 20# piglets from April are now topping 220# and growing. 

By the time winter starts to blow in, our freezers will be packed with meat that we and our friends raised all within 10 miles of our farm.

It doesn't get much more "local" than that.

Who grew your food?

This broody hen (which informally goes by the name of Nancy) escaped from the laying flock here at the Big Farm about two months ago.

About six weeks ago she started sitting on a clutch of eggs.  But we knew they were unfertilized since all the roosters are still with the rest of the laying flock.

We kind of forgot about her for a few weeks until 21 days ago when Papa Bear and I switched out her clutch of thirty one! unfertilized eggs for a clutch of 6 fertilized ones.

So today, like clockwork, when we checked on her in the barn, we spied a baby peep poking its head out from under her wing. 

Her and her brood of 5 have been relocated to the safety of the spring house, where they are in a dog kennel with their nest of hay and food and water and can watch the antics of the other 60 or so chicks that hatched 10 days ago out of the incubator.

Happy Belated Mother's Day to all the mother hens out there and all of their broods - feathered, furred, or human.

Cheers - 

Have you ever had one of those weeks where, despite your best intentions, working hard and focusing on what you want instead of obsessing over what's not right, things just don't work out the way you wanted them to?

This has been one of those weeks.

It's shearing time here on the Big Farm. That means over 150 head of alpacas need to have their fleeces shorn off, one alpaca at a time.

Sometimes the alpaca spits from one end and pees and poos from the other, simultaneously.

Sometimes the people you're working with get tired or frustrated or rushed.  And sarcasm and crankiness ensues. And you want to spit at someone.

Sometimes inadvertently people push all your buttons and it's all you can do not to flip out or go cry in a corner.

Sometimes you flip out and go cry in a corner anyway.

And if you're really, really lucky, your family and friends will still love you.

Despite yourself.

And when that happens, you count your blessings and hug your loved ones and say a little prayer of gratitude to whatever powers you believe in.

And then you get up the next day and do it all over again.

Without the crying. 

Cheers - 

It's pretty hard for me to believe, but it seems like spring has really sprung around here. After a record-breaking warm winter, signs of spring are about 5 weeks ahead of schedule around these parts.

{We don't really say 'around these parts' around these parts, but it made me laugh to write it so there you go.}

Instead of 12" of melting snow we have 12" of new green grass.

After four months in the barn on hay, the three female herds were gathered together into one big herd and moved down the laneway and up the hill towards a newly fenced pasture stockpiled with grass.

There's always a tense moment on the part of the shepherds when moving a large group of alpacas to a new location, worrying that the leaders of the herd will miss the gate and turn around and run pell-mell past us in the opposite direction. 

{Not that that ever happens here on the Big Farm, mind you.}

But they all made it through the gate and then the real fun began.

150 girls galloped away from us to the far end of the field, then turned as one and ran down the fenceline until they had circled the entire perimeter, learning the boundaries of their new (albeit temporary) home.

Grazing together on one side of the field as I stood in the middle, the herd suddenly as if on silent command began loping towards me, the dried stalks of last year's Queen Anne's Lace plants snapping and crunching under their advance, then moving past me on either side until they gathered on the far side of the field where they resumed grazing again, only to repeat the process a few minutes later with another collective gallop past me back to side they started on.  They repeated this pattern every 5 minutes or so for the hour that I stayed watching them.

I don't exactly know if alpacas experience joy or happiness, but it certainly appeared that way to me.
I do know however that I experienced much joy and happiness standing there watching them enjoy their first tastes of spring.

As if it wasn't a perfect enough day already, the first baby of the season was born, healthy and happy.

A girl.

Oh, but anyway, Toto, we're home. Home! And this is my room, and you're all here. And I'm not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and - oh, Auntie Em - there's no place like home!

I have been feeling a little bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz these past few weeks, ever since arriving back in the Midwest after living on a Hawaiian coffee farm this winter.

Have you ever noticed when you leave some place then come back again, everything seems bright, shiny and new?  Or maybe just fresher, greener and sunshiny-er?

I always tell my husband, "The best thing about traveling is coming home again."

Not that we don't enjoy our adventures, mind you.  We do.  And there will be more, I'm sure.  There will always be more adventures when half of your spirit wants to constantly be on the move, and the other half wants to plant itself firmly in farm ground.

We've been busy little beavers since our return to western WI, where I have taken up residence once again in my friends' bunkhouse - this time however with my sweetie beside me (and our kitties!).

{Note: Our friends here are pretty much saints we've decided.}

Together we have been doing a lot of fenceline clearing since it's high tensile electric and even tall grass will take the charge out of it.

{If you ever want to freak out your grown child, walk into the bedroom carrying a scythe like the one above. She will run screaming from the room in no time. I blame too many scary movies myself.}

Unfortunately most of the brush growing along the fence is now raspberry brambles and buckthorn saplings.  Ouch.

My arms have never been so scratched but it was a great excuse for Papa Bear and I to go shopping at the Amish Walmart, which is actually just an Amish farmer that sells everything from machetes (we got two - his & hers - at $3.50/ea) to scrap metal to lambs (we put a deposit down on a small flock) to overstock produce (we bought an entire BOX of bananas for $6.50).

Really people, where else can you buy machetes AND lambs AND bananas, all at the same place?  The farmer also tried selling us 400 laying hens but we declined. You've got to draw the line somewhere, and after all, we had just bought an entire never-ending-box of bananas.

When we're not outside working the fencelines we've been inside feverishly slicing and drying bananas in the new dehydrator given to us recently by Papa Bear's mom (thanks again for the early birthday gift - I love it!).

{Note to Self:  Before buying an entire box of never-ending-ripe bananas in the future, please invest in multiple dehydrators.}

We got through 7 batches (at 10-11 hours/batch) before the bananas turned too soft to cut, then froze the rest for banana bread yumminess later.

We attended our first ever cattle auction (grass fed) and were astounded at the prices they were fetching (up to $1.90/pound!). There were a few conventionally grown cows sold at the end who went for $1.02-$1.22/pound, a testament to the fact that more and more people want clean food and are willing to pay top dollar for it.

We've been doing a bit of farm-sitting  here and there and taking every chance we can to run next door to visit the neighbors cows, sheep, new lambs and of course their bottle-baby Puppy, who has completely stolen my heart (and hubby's too I think).

{Yes that is a beer bottle above. And no, we had nothing to do with that.} 

We've also been enjoying the 2 newly hatched chickens (Vim & Vigor, since they were the only 2 to survive) and everybody knows peeps RULE in my cuteness category, right up there with baby lambs and alpacas.  And kitties.  And bunnies, although I haven't gotten any of those.

Yet.

Oh, and of course, in the evenings and weekends, we're still farm shopping.  This time however it is much easier with sweetie beside me to check out our favorite listings.  We hope to have good news on how this is progressing very soon.

Whew.  Are you tired yet?  I am.

That's the news from Western Wisconsin, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.  (I know I know, that's actually Lake Wobegon in MN.  But it still applies.)

Until next time -

Victoria

This is Frank's Sugar Shack.

Literally.

As in, tapping, collecting and boiling down maple sap to make maple syrup.

As in, real maple syrup, not the fake stuff made of genetically modified corn and food coloring made to look like real maple syrup.

(Don't believe me? Check the labels people.  Only, you won't find "GMO" listed in front of corn.  Big Ag doesn't have to label its genetically modified ingredients. They figure you don't really need to know what you're eating.)

Me? I like eating real food, not GMO-derived.

There's no GMO in Frank's Maple Syrup. It's the real stuff.  The good stuff.

Some years Frank has had 600 taps in his sugar bush.  And if you didn't already know what I was talking about that sentence would sound a bit... strange.

(A sugar bush is a stand of maple trees being utilized for maple syrup production.)

At peak production they can turn out 120 GALLONS of maple syrup. And when you do the math, about 30 gallons of sap to 1 gallon of syrup, that means about 3600 gallons of sap were collected.

One bucket at a time, like this:

As if it weren't enough to spend all day long collecting and boiling down maple sap into syrup, Frank and his family were also running the rest of the farm and milking cows, too.

Farmers work harder than just about any other group of people I know.

The next time you visit the local farmer's market, shake a farmer's hand and say "thank you" for working so hard to produce your food.  Then buy everything you can directly from the hands of the farmers that produced it.

Because you know what happens when you bypass the farmer's market and decide to buy the cheapest food available from the big chain store instead?

You get GMO-corn fake maple syrup.

And really, who on earth needs that?

Who grew your food?

So, if you haven't already guessed it, we're back on the mainland after spending most of the winter in Hawaii.

I understand the winter here was very mild, much more so than normal.  And for that I say, "You're Welcome."  I'm sure if we had stayed here it would have been a typical Midwestern winter.

So, what next?

Although this question occurred to me every now and then throughout our stay on the Big Island, I spent surprisingly little time or energy worrying about the answer.

In fact, I spent surprisingly little time or energy worrying about anything at all except how we were going to get to the grocery store to restock our pantry every week.  It was a refreshing break from my normal gerbil-ball-brain.

I just kept reminding myself, after all, we do have a 1971 Airstream Travel Trailer. We won't be completely homeless when we return.

We do actually have some real Farmgirl plans however.  Such as, find a parcel of farmland to call our own. We have resumed our farm hunt with vigor.

Nothing like a little vigorous farm-hunting to get the blood flowing, eh?

In between shopping for farms I've been reacquainting myself with the Big Farm. My girls are both here, and we brought our cats, too, who are sharing the second floor of my friends' bunkhouse with us.

{the cats, not the alpacas}

I have completely fallen in love with the neighbor's lamb named Puppy who was brought back to life by their dog.When I go over to help bottle-feed her, I call out and she comes running through the paddock and across the barn to me, bleating all the way and sucks down her bottle with a gusto I can only admire and occasionally emulate. 

I've helped catch and move this flock of 65 chickens - twice - and enjoy their pastured-eggs every morning.  And now I am also enjoying two new peeps hatched from this very same flock. 

I've hauled firewood and cut raspberry brambles and pitched hay and hauled water and grain and visited a maple syrup sugar shack and taken sunset hikes into the hills and sat with the alpaca herd for no reason other than just to sit on a hillside with a beautiful view surrounded by beautiful animals.

But mostly I've been enjoying the company of new and old friends we have in this area, friends and mentors who have taken us under their wings and are helping us get our Farmgirl feet planted squarely on the ground.

{or Farmboy feet, for my hubby}

In other words, life is grand, and we are blessed beyond measure.

What blessings are you counting these days??
 

There are many things I'm learning at the Big Farm this year, even things that have nothing to do with alpacas or chickens.

Like how to spot and harvest wild ginseng.

And how to collect and crack hickory nuts.

If you're going to pick hickory nuts, I recommend taking along a couple of small children.  Preferably, ones that did not come from your own loins. 

That way you can enjoy them swinging from tree branches and hollering like Tarzan, burying your nuts in the sand before handing them to you, and emptying their Papa's bucket into yours, "just to help."

If you've never tasted a hickory nut before, you're in for a treat. If you can get into that shell (I was shown a way to do this with a vice, applying pressure from two directions just until it cracks) what rewards you will be something reminiscent of a pecan crossed with heaven.

{nom}

A good hickory tree will yield a 3-gallon bucket full of nuts in 45 minutes of picking.

Allowing you and the children to "go nuts" in record time.

The week started out pretty dreary, with heavy rain on Monday and more dreary on Tuesday.  So when the weather broke on Wed., before I hit the road for the long drive up to Washburn, WI, I decided it was time for a few new pics of Brigid's cria, who is now about a month and a half old.

Unfortunately, he was hanging around the back of the barn where the composting hay and dung lies in steaming piles on cement slabs.  Not a pretty backdrop.  But when you're photographing in a barnyard, there's not always much you can do about the background.

We've nicknamed this fellow "Mr. T," in reference to his little white goatee chin.  He was a big boy at birth and has grown nicely ever since. Brigid is a very attentive mother, and Mr. T is never far from her side.

I only wish I had more time to spend with them and the herd. There is still so much to learn, so much to observe. I suspect these large brown eyes, watching me attentively as I pass among them snapping photos, know more about my body language than I know about theirs. 

But in the meantime, I will have to be content with snapshots and glimpses as I move through the herd and my busy fall schedule, living in two states on two farms, missing home when I'm with Brigid, and missing Brigid when I'm at home.

This too shall pass. 

Next spring, we will all be together again.  Next spring, after our time in Hawaii, we will park our little silver bullet travel trailer on a hill with a view of the valley, breathing in the fresh air, memories of this summer apart fading slowly into the dusk.

Blessings -

Last Saturday afternoon, in less than an hour, Papa Bear and I purchased our next home - a 1971 31' Airstream Travel Trailer. One giant silver piece in my Gypsy Farmgirl plans, complete.

After three+ months of living in two states, splitting my time between our rented 2-acre Little Farm outside of Minneapolis, MN and the 170-acre Big Farm in Ontario, WI, it is nearly time to begin the next phase of my Gypsy Farmgirl journey – leaving the mainland!

At the end of November, Papa Bear will start a leave of absence from his job which will enable us to spend 3 months away this winter. We decided to cross several items off of our collective "Bucket Lists" and head to Hawaii for two months, staying and working at Earthly Delights Farm, a member of the WWOOF program (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms), in Honaunau, Hawaii, on the western coast of the Big Island.

There we will spend two months helping harvest tropical fruits, nuts and Kona coffee beans in exchange for room and board and a whole new set of farming skills, plus easy access to the Pacific Ocean, surfing (my bucket list), snorkeling (Papa Bear's list) and lots of beautiful Hawaiian sunsets (both of our lists).

We will be returning to the states some time in mid-Feb. (which we realize  be too cold in rural WI to move into our little silver bullet).  Having a "mobile home" will allow us to have a place to live on bare land until we build a permanent, year-round structure, and will allow us the option of escaping our Midwestern winters any time we feel a great need (hopefully on a regular basis!).

We haven't yet figured out exactly where we will park it next summer - hopefully on a little plot of land that we own.  Plans for that are still in the works. I'm sure something will manifest itself, as it always does.

PB's already making plans for refurbishing the 70's interior of our new little home, brightening up the cabinetry and capitalizing on clever storage options to maximize use of the roughly 200 square feet of living space.

I've been drooling over some of the beautiful ideas on the Hoffman Architecture website, where, it seems, this LEED-certified architect has drummed up quite a demand for refurbished Airstream campers and has several more in the works already including one he will be shipping “down unduh” to Australia by the end of the year.

Who says "tiny" can't be practical AND beautiful?

All of this is very exciting for us. Our plans for this have been in the works for several years now (probably in one form or another ever since we met in 2000), as we worked our way through piles and piles of debt, raised a child, sold our duplex and acquired a location independent salary.

We resisted telling folks about it for a long time because of, well, the "lobster-effect."  Some lobsters will try to crawl out of a pot on the stove, but their buddies still in the pot will pull them back in.  If you've seen the movie Revolutionary Road you'll understand what I'm talking about. 

We had no intentions of becoming Frank & April by prematurely discussing our newly hatched plans before they had a chance to grow into something so real and attainable, nobody could pull us back into the pot.

We are at that point now. The leave of absence is approved, the farm in Hawaii is confirmed, the plane tickets are purchased.

There are still a few {major} obstacles we need to overcome however.

Such as, where to put all our stuff when we move out of our house this fall. And what to do with 6 alpacas, 3 spoiled cats and 14 chickens, for three months.

But we are confident that will all come together, just as all of the other details have. Things have a way of working themselves out when you truly believe they can and will.

{Who wants to chicken-sit this December?}

So, what about you? Have you buried your Wildly Improbably Goals  under the piles of clutter in the basement of your comfortable home in suburbia, convincing yourself this is all you ever really wanted to do with your life?

Or are you one of the rare and brave souls who still cling to your dreams of travel and adventure and a life of your own design?  Are you trying to climb out of that pot?  Do you need a boost out?

If so (and I truly hope you are!), here are some of my favorite links and resources to get you thinking and dreaming of your own personal Paradise:

• Tim Ferris - Four Hour Work Week book and 4HWW blog - Designing and creating a mobile lifestyle.
• Rowdy Kittens - Tammy Strobel's personal story of simplifying life and her belongings to less than 100 things and downsizing to a 150 sq foot home on wheels.
• Nora Dunn - 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget  book and GREAT article, 'How to Travel Full-Time on Less Than $14,000/year'  -- This full-time nomad shares how she lives and travels the world for less than you probably make already.
• Ramit Sethi - I Will Teach You To Be Rich book and IWTYTBR blog -- Get out of debt, automate your finances and get rich - no gimmicks here, just smart advice to make your finances, and life, easier.
• Location Independent - Creating a mobile income for living/traveling abroad. Includes a section on extended traveling with children.
• Boots n All - A great all-around travel resource, but it also has several articles about how to earn money while you travel including this article on working vacations and this one on the 12 best jobs that combine work and travel.
• Travel Hacking - Subscription service for earning 100,000+ frequent flyer miles/year even if you don't fly very often (guaranteed!).

Drop me a line if you find these links helpful, and if you're going to be on the Big Island this winter, please please look us up!

Aloha!

For most of my adult life I've been struggling with how to simplify things.  Everything from how much "stuff" I have to how many hours a week I work to how many hobbies and activities I pursue.

This summer I have been living a "simplification" experiment as I work 4 days/week at the Big Farm in WI, taking with me only the basic necessities for the week ahead. 

Four work shirts, a pair of work pants, a warm long-sleeved shirt, a cooler packed with food for the week, one bowl, one fork, one knife, one skillet.

There are a few other things - minimal toiletries, a warm jacket, gloves, a hat. And of course my computer gear, for my "real" job.

I have been doing this for over three months now.  And you know what?  I haven't missed any of my "stuff" at home. 

Not once.

Not only has my "stuff" been simplified, so have my routines.  After I arrive home (in MN) Wed. evenings, I throw the weeks' worth of clothes into the wash.  When they're done, I fold them and put them right back into the suitcase.

{Yes I've worn the same 4 t-shirts over and over all summer.  And didn't die from it.}

We shop for groceries Fridays, prepare the weeks' meals Saturdays, freezing them in individual portions until Sunday when I leave again for WI.

Meals are, by necessity, simple. Breakfast quiche made from our own chicken eggs and herbs from our garden. Lunches and dinners are simple salads made up of locally-grown pastured meats that I precook and toss with fresh spinach greens and other organic veggies and local fruits.

My daily routines are also simplified. There are morning chores, then my computer work, then noon-hour chores, more computer time, then dinner and evening chores.  In exchange for chores, I get a bed in the bunkhouse, access to the kitchen and bathroom (and shower!), and boarding for two of my alpacas.

There is no "what's-for-dinner" angst anymore, as I have already pre-planned, pre-pared and pre-cooked all my meals. I reheat my daily portions in a tiny cast-iron skillet (my favorite cooking tool!) on the stove top in the bunkhouse kitchen while I prepare my salad. I'm not much of a salad person, but these salads are amazing.  After dinner, I wipe the skillet and rinse out my bowl and fork and I am done with dinner and cleanup.

Because I have so few, if any, distractions in the evenings, I am free to spend as much time as I want up on the steep hillsides of that lovely valley, watching the mama alpacas grazing in the cool of the dusk, keeping a close eye on on their babies (crias) who spend the time romping and chasing one another (something we call "pronking").  I hear them munching on grass, the quiet humming of mamas to their babies and to each other. I smell the sweet damp night air and fresh grass. 

At this time of the year, it doesn't take long for dusk to turn into night.  But I am not afraid. 

Me who was terrified of the dark for most of my adult life, will walk out into the pitch black night without a light, through gates and over electric fences, climb a hill and shut the chicken coop door while the coyotes howl and the chickens murmur ghost stories to each other into the night.

There is no rush to come back inside. All the chores of the day are already done.  If I could stay up on that hillside forever, believe me, I would.

The problem is, when you're up on a hilltop and all the world seems beautifully simple, eventually, you have to come back down that hill. If you're lucky, what awaits you at the bottom will be a cozy bunkhouse, a warm bed, and just enough "stuff" to make it through the week.

For most of us however, what awaits is usually a long list of chores and responsibilities that come from owning a house (or farm) that is probably more space (and acres) than we really need, filled with stuff that needs to be fixed, cleaned or taken care of, and debts that require both of you to work off the homestead and leave little time or energy to pursue what you really enjoy - family, friends, even the farm and animals themselves.

And yet, the images of my simple living experiment are never far from my mind.

When Papa Bear and I decided to check out rural WI as a potential place to set down roots, we had a clear vision in mind - a small parcel we could buy with cash, with a lot of daylight and a view of the sunset.  We felt we'd be happy with just 5 acres and no debt and no house at all (perhaps we'll live in an airstream trailer first and build a tiny house or grain bin home later with the cash we saved), and we can certainly grow a large garden and run a few animals on 5 acres and probably even find farmers in the area that would let us run a few more animals on their land in exchange for our labor.

Since we first started visiting properties a year ago, that vision hasn't changed.  What has changed is other peoples' perceptions of what we should want or need. 

Instead of a small parcel for cash, we're being encouraged to look at big beautiful farms that come with  big scary mortgages and require two incomes to support. Farms that would easily eat up all our free time  AND cash. 

Sure, it would be pretty cool to own a 40-acre farm.  But, is that what we really wanted, or needed, or asked for?

How much is enough?  How much land?  How much house?  How much debt?

My experiment this summer has given me a glimpse of a much simpler way. A way that allows for us to work in community rather than solitarily, to work collaboratively rather than everyone recreating the same wheel.

And what I have learned is that when we can work together in community with others to ensure that not only our needs are met but so are our neighbors, what we really need is far, far less than what we think we need.  When we pool our resources and help each other, we all grow exponentially. 

So that even a little bit of land can feel like an empire. 

And even a little bit of land can be simply, "enough."

Somewhere deep in the heart of Monroe County, WI, the Wild Ginseng grows.  The locations of ginseng and morel mushrooms are carefully guarded secrets of the deep woods in this region.

This spring during our (legitimate) property search we often came across land owners that warned us we had "better not touch (their) morels while we were out looking around!"  With a price tag of $135/lb dried, I can see where folks would be a little protective about their famous fungi.

But even morel prices pale in comparison to the $200-$400/lb price tag of dried ginseng.  Ginseng locations are such carefully guarded secrets I had to be taken blindfolded in a car as they drove around in circles to confuse me.

{Well not really, they kind of figured I was already confused enough and even if they led me right to it, I'd never find it again. And they were right.}

I've heard there is something called "getting your eyes on" when searching for morels.  I think there is something similar to searching for Ginseng.  It seems impossible to find, and you can wander for an hour and turn up empty-handed. But if you're lucky enough to go with someone who knows what they're looking for, and will point the plants out to you, suddenly you'll see the plants appear where previously all you saw was the nameless green undergrowth of a dim forest.

The bright red cluster of small berries on a slim stem are the dead giveaway this time of year.  But don't let the May Apples fool you - they are abundant, and their red berries will certainly catch your eye and fool you into thinking you found something else!

If you see ferns growing, you are in the right type of environment.  Ginseng needs about 70-80% shade to grow well.  You will almost always find ferns where the Wild Ginseng grows, but not always the other way around.  If you're seeing grass, the area is too sunny for ginseng - move along to a shadier area to search.

Once you find one plant (we didn't harvest anything with less than three prongs - there are typically 5 leaflets on each prong) you will likely find more plants in the same area, so look carefully around the plant you found for more.

I was taught to take the red berries and squish out the seeds, burying them slightly under the soil first near the harvested plant, then a little bit farther down as well.  Spread them out a bit.  Give 'em a chance to sprout in more than one location. Since the plant takes time to grow to harvestable size (6-8 years), you don't want to take it all when you harvest an area.  Leave some plants for future harvest as well, and always plant those seeds!

Removing the root can be done carefully with your fingers, brushing the soil from the root and following it carefully into the ground.  It may have several branched rootlets so be carefully not to break those off as you expose the root.  Breaking them off will decrease the roots' value, if you're planning to sell it.

Take your harvested roots and wash them gently, but don't scrub. A little dirt on the growth rings can also add value.  Let them air dry out of direct sunlight.  Small roots may dry in a few days, large ones can take up to three weeks.  Dry them until they just start to snap when they bend enough to break them.  Once dried, keep them in a dry, airy, rodent-proof location until you are ready to use or sell them.

I found a lot of good information here on the Wild Grown website, but most of what I learned just came from following someone around the woods for awhile and having them explain it to me.

If you can find someone that not only knows Where the Wild Ginseng Grows and will take you there to find it, you are doubly blessed.

What have you been foraging for this summer??

Tonight, a lifelong ambition of mine came true.

No, it wasn't finishing my novel or discovering a new way to make electricity.

I milked a cow for the very first time.

I mentioned earlier this week, on our way to harvest grapes at Nordic Hills Farm, we passed by Daffodil, the Olsen's milk cow, on our way to the vineyard. I love Jersey's, their color, their huge brown eyes, their sweet nature. 

Not that I've personally known one before mind you.

But I was about to.

After calling her in from the pasture, lured by the rattle of alfalfa pellets in a bucket, Daffodil was led to a post where a lead rope was clipped to her halter and the pellets were deposited in a feeder.

While Jim went for the milking tools, I stood watching Daffodil eagerly lap up her alfalfa and munch on the 3 apples Jim gave me as a "getting-to-know her" gift. (The mattress pad is to keep the flies off of her while she's being milked).

From time to time, she'd pause in her eating and gaze at me with her unbelievably big brown eyes as if to say, "What are you standing there for?"

As I watched and waited, I was not alone.  There were the kitties, too.  The sweet calico and the Siamese kitten I saw the other day.

I love this Siamese kitten.  She (at least, I think it's a "she," but I can't say I'm an expert in sexing kittens) lets me pick her up and hold her, purring like crazy and rubbing on my hand the whole time.  She is sweetness wrapped up in a bundle of cuteness.  I could hardly stand it.

{Have I ever mentioned what a sucker I am for a beautiful kitten?  Oh, I have? Never mind then.}

She would make a perfect addition to our own barn.  If we had a barn.  But I don't think Jim & Mary are quite ready to give her up.  So for now, I'll just admire her when I visit. And love on her as a replacement for missing my own bundles of feline furriness.

But back to Daffodil, who is still standing patiently in the barn.

Jim returned with an ice cream pail and a enamelware milk canister, and began his instruction.  An old milk crate turned upside down (how ironic, eh?) became a milking stool. His agile hands quickly got her to let down her milk, and streams of the palest creamy yellow shot right into the pail.  He could even do this two-handed, although the flies were bothersome enough that Daffodil would take a step forward or back from time to time and he had to grab the bucket and pull it out of the way lest it get kicked over.

Finally, it was my turn.  I gripped her teat exactly as Jim had shown me and tugged, extracting exactly nothing.  I tried again - nothing.  And again.  Finally a short stream shot out and missed the pail.

Eureka!

From then on, the milking was easy peasy.

{not}

Sometimes it seemed I had the system down, and the milk came out in a nice stream.  Other times, I tugged, to no avail. I tried doing it the same way every time, when I had success, but it was still very intermittent.

Jim suggested I place my forehead into her flank.  I tried that, too, but I think she could tell it was not Jim's.  A cow, I'm sure, gets used to her milker, and she knew I was not him.  She swiped her tail into my face, which managed to get behind my glasses and get me in the open eyeball.

{ouch}

But she was still patient and calm and beautiful, despite my clumsy attempts, and I was in heaven for being there.

At the end of it all, I got to take home a quart of fresh, still-warm Jersey milk with the cream rising up on it.  And a sack of zucchinis.  And a grocery-bag full of apples.

And I have another date with her tomorrow.  Maybe I'll even get to meet her calf, a Jersey-Holstein cross named Fudge.

Fudge & Milk - what could be better than that?

Cheers -