I dialed the number for the post office of our tiny town, population 532, hoping they were open. The post mistress answered, and I asked, "Has a shipment of birds arrived  for me today?" Then held my breath for her answer.

"Why yes, they have!"

"Can I come and pick them up?"

"You surely may!"

I hung up the phone, giddy as a young child on Christmas morning. I hurried to grab my wallet and keys then ran out to the SUV.

A short 1.5 mile drive later, I was walking into the little post office, greeted by the unmistakable peeping of baby bids - turkey poults to be exact - a shipment of 15, a mixture of rare breeds from Porter's Heritage Turkeys.

The cardboard box holding them seemed unbelievably small and light. It was peppered with air holes which emitted a constant stream of peeping {peep holes!} and through which I could catch glimpses of baby fluff.

These young babies had traveled two days by post already, living only off of the nourishment absorbed from the yolk as they hatched. They would be hungry and thirsty when I unpacked them.

I set the box gingerly in the passenger seat then drove the short distance home.  The three house cats lolling on the back step watched me with curiosity as I carefully carried the peeping box inside.

A small brooder had been set up in the kitchen, a temporary house in order to observe the poults frequently during their first day, watching for any signs of weakness or illness.

Carefully I cut the masking tape holding the top on the box and held my breath as I lifted the lid.

Seventeen pairs of eyes gazed up at me from a sea of colored fluff.  Several birds from four different breeds made up this "grab bag" mix - chosen both because I didn't know which heritage breeds I'd like to raise, and also because if I wanted specific breeds I would have had to wait an additional 2-3 months for the hatchery to ship them (they sell out fast!)

Tiger Bronze, Chocolate Pencilled Palm, Sweetgrass, and Jersey Buff babies with varying plumage {and various red and green and purple marks on their foreheads to indicate which breed was which} milled around in the box, watching me and waiting to see what would happen next.

I gently lifted out one baby at a time, saying to each: "Welcome to our farm.  We are very happy to have you here. Here is where you drink (dipping their beak into the water) and here is where you eat (dipping them into the food).  We love turkeys and we hope you like living here!"

{Yes, I'm that kind of turkey-lady}

I watched as the colorful flock swarmed around the small brooder, drinking and pecking at the food and anything else that caught their eye.  They all seemed healthy. They would not have to stay long in the small brooder, probably only a few hours.

I left the room, heading for my home office. A chorus of loud peeps followed me. Turkey babies, even more so than chicken babies, have a tendency to prefer to keep their human "mamas" within eyesight.

But I had work to do, webinars to run, a farm to check on. 

Well, maybe just a few more minutes.

Cheers -

Hard to believe these little itty bitty chickens will be ready to harvest in as little as 7 or 8 weeks.  To see a day-by-day photo journal if our batch from last year, click here.

You have a lot of growing to do between now and then little chickens.

Peep!

Cheers -

Add caption

After a winter that continues to cling tightly with below freezing nights, snow and ice storms, signs of spring are finally starting to emerge.

All the spring birds have returned including our pair of Eastern Bluebirds and Mourning Doves, not to mention a host of other birds like Red-winged Blackbirds, American Robins and Sandhill Cranes. The morning air is awash with birdsong and it fills the heart with joy.

The grapevine shoots we snipped off in Feb. and stuck in water until we could plant them outside are growing leaves.  We can't wait to have more of this wonderful, 50-year old grapevine popping out clusters of juicy purple Concord-tasting grapes.

The maple sap has nearly finished running and the trees are budding out.  So far we've boiled about 10 gallons of sap down to 2.5 pints of syrup. And somehow it tastes even sweeter knowing it came from our own trees.

The apple seeds we planted are sprouting (yes yes, we know specific apple varieties don't grow from seeds, they grow from grafts... but we're willing to take a chance - all the best applesauce and cider apples used to be planted from seeds - aka Johnny Appleseed-style).

And to top it all off, my first batch of turkey eggs are hatching!!

And yes, I can already see the resemblance to my breeding pairs of Blue Slate Turkeys, although we can expect a mixture of colors to come out of our slate-to-slate pairs including black, slate and self blue.

Of course I will love them all no matter what color they are.

My heritage turkeys can breed naturally, unlike 99.9% of the turkeys in this country, the Broad-Breasted Whites that grace most dinner tables during the holidays. 

I feel honored to be witness to this miraculous event, the looping 'round of the circle of life, right beneath my eyes.

Cheers -

I almost titled this "the things we do to avoid doing our taxes," but  my mother-in-law might read this and then we'd be in trouble.  Because she's our accountant.

In fact, if you're my mother-in-law, you might want to skip this post and just imagine us diligently working on our taxes.

I also want to warn you that if you're following my blog by RSS or e-mail, this is a post from April that I never posted.  I'm posting it now and back-dating it, mostly because I want my on-line journal to reflect what I was doing back when I was actually doing it, so when next year I scratch my head and think, "When did we order those heritage turkeys?" I don't have to check my June posts for something that happened in April.

I know I've not been posting very much so far this year. There is a good reason. And it's not that I've been too busy preparing my taxes.  I've been neck-deep in a 5-month certification testing process for my job. It has quite frankly sucked all the free-time and creative-writing-energy right out of me.  Not to mention, all my time - day and evening.

But I'm almost done certifying now. Light at the end of the tunnel and all that.

Rah-rah!

I don't study on the weekends, since that is sacred time to spend with Papa Bear and all the farm chores that get put off during the week. So here's a snippet of some of the stuff that's been happening around here lately {and by "lately" I mean last April} when I'm not studying {and we're not doing our taxes}.

Playing with the turkeys. My original batch of turkeys are still alive and well. All four of them. They escaped Christmas dinner. They escaped Easter dinner. My females have been laying fertilized eggs since January, and there are a dozen turkey eggs in our incubator about a week away from hatching.

{EEP!} 

Or rather, {CHEEP!}

We keep meaning to eat some of them (the adults, not the incubating eggs), but my females keep jumping in my lap to snooze and cuddle, and my boys are so tame and sweet that unless they suddenly turn nasty on us, it looks like they may stick around for awhile. 

I also ordered about 15 heritage turkey poults from Porter's Rare Heritage Turkeys last week, and I have a local source for some Midget Whites that also might be showing up some time in May.

Yes, I know this puts me at risk for being labeled "the turkey lady." I'm OK with that. 

Have you seen a baby turkey before?  Have you heard their little peep peeps and trills?  It is nothing like a chicken, and I think baby chickens are freakishly cute, too. It's like a little flock of tree frogs.

But much much quieter and sweeter. 

{mostly quieter}

It snowed up through the first week of April and is still threatening to snow again.  My friends at The Big Farm nearly got their tractor stuck in our pasture trying to move some large round bales out of Molly's Haymow.  In April.  Which was a darn good excuse for PB to put off doing taxes for the entire day, "helping them out." 

And then we found a dead racoon in the machine shed.  Just lyin' there frozen stiff, back leg all busted up. Kind of creepy, I'm glad PB found it instead of me, and I'm glad he found it before it thawed.

The coon's buddy however is alive and well - we discovered him (her?) hanging off the gutter of the house one night reaching for our bird feeder and later snoozing in the haymow with a dead opossum lying next to him.  I am guessing the opossum was there first and the 'coon didn't want to share.

Or the opossum is just really good at playing dead. He joined the dead raccoon out in the hay field.

You can barter hay for just about anything after a bad year for rain.  We bartered some of ours for pigs and lambs this year.  We're hoping for more rain this summer so nobody has to send their herds to auction just because they don't have enough hay to feed them.

The local auctioneer drove down my driveway last week to personally tell me he had some sheep in the auction the next day that I should come and take a look at. And bid on.

We sat in the back row, behind the young Amish farmers bidding on cows. I almost bid on a Brown Swiss steer yearling. 

{Almost}

I didn't bid on the lambs. They were vaccinated and conventionally grown {read: GMO grain-fed} and me and my customers want GMO-free, grass-fed.

We boiled down about 8 gallons of Maple sap into nearly 2 pints of maple syrup. It took 1.5 days on the stove in the kitchen.  Which means we have 7.75 gallons of maple water in the air in our house now.  And it gave us 1.5 days not to work on our taxes.

Zoey decided she can climb the big white pine by the house.  Kali is extremely jealous of Zoey's front claws.

Mojo followed us all the way out to the back pasture.  He's never done that before.  He did spend the entire jaunt complaining.  I think he was saying, "You're going too far!  Come back to the safety of the house! 

{Come baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccckkkk!!!!"}

Big News - we've renamed our farm.  But I haven't had the time or energy to fix the website I'm creating for it. So you'll have to stay tuned for the grand opening celebration.

There will be door prizes and lots of clapping.

Cheers - 

I remember visiting a sugar bush once when I was a child. It was a family event, traipsing out into the snowy March woods.  I don't remember the tapping or the collecting.  All I remember is I had to pee really badly and we were a long, long way from a bathroom so I had to wait a really long time.

And when you're little, a really long time seems to take a lifetime. 

Then when we lived in Duluth I volunteered with the Outdoor Program at UMD. One of the programs we offered was tapping maple trees with elementary students from the local schools.  With a hand drill we took groups of kids out, showed them how to identify leafless maples, place taps and hang the buckets, told them stories about the way the Native Americans had collected sap, then made them snow cones with finished syrup on top.

So naturally with all of this memory and experience behind me, I wanted to tap our maple trees this year.

Here is our short list of things you will need for this project:

Maple Trees
Free buckets with lids {try your local cafeterias, grocery stores, etc.}
Taps & tubing {or old fashioned metal taps and metal sap buckets if you have them or can borrow}
A cordless drill with a battery that still holds a charge, with a drill bit size 11/64 or an antique hand drill
An old, clean shirt
A large stock pot
Canning jars and lids
A heat source - preferably outside

Last fall in all my wisdom I decided we should traipse up and down the ridge flagging all our maples with pink tape so I could still identify them when the leaves all fell off.

After all the traipsing we had identified exactly four maple trees on the property.  

That didn't deter us from continuing with our plans.

We get a lot of free buckets from the food co-op and cafeteria in the building where Papa Bear works. We use these buckets for everything.

I've been told you can't farm without a skid steer, but I think rather you can't farm without free buckets.

We borrowed some new-fangled plastic taps & tubing from our friends at The Big Farm.  They're modern and plastic and work really great in that the buckets can keep their lids on with this setup and keep out most of the rain water and bugs.  And you don't have to hang the buckets on the tree, you can keep them on the ground.  Papa Bear drilled small holes in the side of the buckets big enough to thread the tubing through.

This task required buying a whole new drill, because the rechargeable battery for his old drill wasn't made anymore.  So I guess it's not really "free" maple syrup, because Papa Bear bought a drill.  But he did buy it with his own allowance money, so I guess it was free for the rest of the family.

{Thanks Papa!}

Our spring was so odd this year, with daytime and nighttime temps below zero for so long, then jumping up to day and night temps above zero, that for the first several days we collected absolutely zero sap.  The sap runs best when the nights are below freezing but the days are above.

At the end of the first week I checked the bucket on the tree near the house and was startled to find it half full. After traipsing up and down along the ridge (next year we're running the tubing down from the trees to a level spot) we had collected a whopping total of about 8 gallons of sap.

I know that's almost nothing but it felt like quite the haul to us.

We brought one bucket in the house and poured the sap through a clean shirt into the largest stockpot we had.

We put the pot on the burner on high and kept it boiling all day. We added a little fan to help the evaporation process.

We added more filtered sap as the day progressed, but by night we had not finished it, so we turned off the stove and went to bed.

The next morning we resumed boiling. It took about another 4 hours or so until it had reached the right consistency.

Lacking a syrup hydrometer we used the "spoon test," watching for "sheeting."

We kept disagreeing at this point as to whether or not the syrup was done.  (I didn't think it was done yet, PB did).

We got out our store-bought bottle of syrup and compared the way the syrup dripped off a spoon. We watched several YouTube videos. Then suddenly the syrup changed the way it was boiling and indeed when it dripped off the spoon now, a little bit clung in a peak after the last drip.

It was done!

Before this point we had sterilized our glass jars & lids so there was nothing left to do but pour the syrup into the hot jars and screw on the lids.

And taste a little.

There's just nothing sweeter than syrup you've made yourself, from your own trees, for {nearly} free.

Cheers -

I grew up in the country and have returned back to living in the country where it is, to borrow a phrase, "darker than the inside of a cow" at night.

This isn't a problem unless you're afraid of the dark.  As far back as I can remember, I was terrified of the dark.

Family gatherings at our house with other kids inevitably led to rounds of hide-and-go-seek in the dark edges of the woods around our large yard, with me camped out as close to the porch light as possible, nearly in tears that something would eat me before anyone found me.

In high school I was often let off of the activities bus after dark, facing a 1/4 mile hike down the pitch black road to my parents' house. These hikes terrified me. I would sing as loud as possible and run as fast as I dared (no, I did not own a flashlight at the time).

I always figured if there really was something scary on the road, a wolf or a bear, I would probably run smack into it, scream my head off then die of a heart attack, nary a scratch on me, my untimely death forever an unsolved mystery.

If you have an intense fear of the dark or aliens in the cornfield or clowns with fangs hiding out below the sewer grates you know exactly what I'm talking about here.

{Luckily, there are very few sewer grates in the country where I live now, as I would not step foot on one for about, oh, 30 years after reading Stephen King's IT.}

So a few years ago {maybe about 20} I decided I was tired of being afraid of the dark.  I didn't like feeling like a spooked cat every time I went outside, or forcing family members to accompany me, or dragging my little indoor dogs with me to venture out into the dark every time I had to retrieve a bag of groceries from the car.

It was a slow process.  And I'm not completely over my fears.  But I am so much farther down that path that I wanted to share a few insights I've learned along the way.

I'm not a fan of "tossing-a-kid-in-the-pool-to-teach-them-to-swim" method. In other words, I didn't lock myself outside every night until I "got over it." I'm more of the "to-eat-an-elephant-take-one-small-bite-at-a-time-and-chew-slowly" kind of a person. 

Being afraid of the dark was a big, bad elephant in my psyche.  Here are some of the small bites I took to get rid of it.

{Note: Only perform the exercises below if you live in a safe place. I'm not advocating going outside alone in the dark if there is a good chance you will be mugged or worse.}

baby bites

Stand outside near your house or other safe place and breathe slowly, smell the fresh air, let your eyes adjust to the dimmer light, and appreciate the beauty of the night.

You can do this right outside your house (if you don't live right under a street light).  It would be best not to be standing by any bright porch lights either, as that will increase the relative darkness outside of the light's beam. Same goes for using a flashlight. I have a Maglite as long as my forearm that could crush an alien, but it will only illuminate what is directly in the beam. When I turn it off and let my eyes adjust, I can see much, much farther. Not with as much detail of course, but much farther away.

Once I click off the light or step away from any streetlights, my eyes start to adjust to the dimness. I notice the wind blowing through the trees, the moon rising above the pasture, Boo with his snowy white fleece lying near the chicken coop.

Repeat the above exercise as often as you can handle.  Try to stand a little farther away from the house each time. Don't force yourself if you're scared.  Set a goal of 3 minutes, then when you can stand that, try 5.  

give yourself a pep talk 

Self-talk isn't just for learning how to be more confident or gathering courage to talk to a cute guy. If you're afraid of the dark or cornfield aliens, you probably already have a long-standing running commentary going on in your head that feeds your fears.  "Oh it's so dark outside... I'm so scared of the dark... I can't see anything past the porch light... I bet there's lions and tigers and aliens out there just waiting to eat me..."

If you catch yourself doing this, stop the soundtrack.  Replace it with a new, more positive one. "It's dark outside but wow, look at those stars!  I'm being so brave coming out here. I bet I will be even more brave tomorrow. I can walk to the barn without turning on my flashlight. Then I'll turn it on to go check on the critters. I can do this!"

{Nobody can hear you, so go ahead and talk corny to yourself. Sometimes you need to cater to your inner-4-year-old.}

Once you can stand near your house, then a bit farther away, and spend several minutes outside alone without having a panic attack, it's time to move on to something more challenging.

stretch yourself to try scarier things

For me, that meant going on longer walks.  In the woods.  Alone.  I allowed myself to carry a flashlight, and to use it for part of the way, but I would also make myself stop and stand still and turn the flashlight off for several minutes before turning it back on.  Occasionally this exercise was preceded by a glass of wine. Or rewarded by a glass when I returned home without being eaten. Or both.

stretch to even bigger, scarier things

I decided I would try renting a small hermitage cabin at Camp Amnicon as a real test of my fear-fortitude. Three days, two nights, all... by... my... self. I had no problems during the day, going for long walks, enjoying the fall colors, reading, writing, taking photos. 

And then the daylight faded.  And then I realized there was no lock on the door of the cabin.  That night, after shoving all the furniture up against the door, I stuck my earplugs in, gave myself a pep talk, pulled the covers over my head and after tossing and turning, eventually fell fitfully asleep.

The second night I figured I better put on my "big girl panties" and take a walk down to the lake after dark. I had to work up the nerve for this exercise all day.  I stretched out my dinner for-ev-er.  I had an extra glass of wine.  I sorted all the items in my suitcase. Finally, I had no more excuses or procrastination tactics left.

I walked all the way down to the lake (about 1/2 mile) with my flashlight on, but on the return trip, turned it off and walked most of the way back by moonlight.  I was amazed at how much I could see when my eyes adjusted. Small noises still startled me, but did not terrify me.  I did not run into any long-legged beasties.

the scariest test of all

For my 30th birthday I tested treated myself to a solo, 3-day canoe trip to the BWCAW.  I had been on canoe trips before, but always, always, with some form of a big macho guy or pack of tough ladies. This time, I was the big macho guy.

Just like with the retreat cabin, the days were idyllic - perfect weather, paddling at my own pace along my own chosen route, stopping to eat and snap photos whenever I chose. I picked spots to camp that I had stayed at before, to give me some sense of comfort and familiarity. I chose a route that required no portaging.

And I made sure I went into the tent and went to bed every night before it got really dark. With my earplugs in. And the sleeping bag pulled over my head.

Yes, I woke up and heard things several times every night which scared me.

No, the Blair Witch did not come and eat me.

Yes, it was scary AND liberating all at the same time.

Since that time I've backpacked parts of the Superior Hiking Trail solo several times with similar results. My favorite memory was when I was camped in Judge C.R. Magney State Park in my ultra-lightweight Hennesey Hammock, which hugs you like a cozy cocoon.

I woke up after I had been asleep for awhile, and wasn't sure what had woken me. The night was quiet, but then I heard an owl hooting. I felt like the universe was hugging me and cradling me in safety. It was the best feeling I've ever felt while alone in the wild.

At a recent dinner party a guest asked, "Aren't you afraid of living out here in the country where it's so dark and you're so far away from anybody?"  I was surprised by the question, as yes, I've always been afraid of the dark.

And then I realized, my response to her of "No, I'm not afraid of living here in the dark," was finally the honest truth.
 

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

~Scottish Saying

Cheers -

How often do we just sit still and listen?

I can tell you, for me, it's not often, even though my child is grown and gone and my husband works off the farm, leaving me all the stillness I can handle.

You'd think it would be easy then just to sit still for a minute and do nothing but soak up the sights and sounds around me.

It's not.

I'm a driven person - driven by my endless 'To Do' list which revolves in my head like a carousel, a new Task ever revolving into view, the circle of tasks endless no matter how many I accomplish in a given day. 

I also have a full-time job.  Which most of the time I can do from my home office.  A blessing - but again, more stillness, more alone time, more time with my carousel of unending tasks.

In my "free time," I am primary caretaker for over 40 animals on the farm, making sure each one is fed and watered and mineraled, that nobody is acting "off"  or in need of an intervention.

Sometimes this means sitting in the barn for 45mn waiting for one of our turkey hens to lay her egg, watching her pace become more and more frantic in her search for the "perfect" spot. 

I tell her (out loud even) that "It's OK, you can lay your egg in the corner and I will take care of it.  I am here."  She continues to pace, her vocalizations rising in urgency.

I am reminded of myself whenever I watch her.  Of how worked up I can get over the little things, the things that really don't matter and will be forgotten by tomorrow, and forget the big things that do matter - family, friends, my health, this farm.

So this afternoon after my second round of chores I decided I needed to just "sit still and listen."

Despite the cold wind blowing across the hayfield, despite the fact I had already been outside, dressed in my insulated Carhartts, for nearly an hour.

We have two massive white pine trees flanking the west side of our house. When the wind blows through them it transports me to places in the Boundary Waters that I love to visit.

So I chose a tree and sat.

The wind blew around me and above me, making sweet music through the pine needles.

After awhile I heard a strange noise and looked up just in time to see a flock of about a dozen wild turkeys gliding in over the hayfield, most of them landing on the steep bank that rises up to the highlands of our property.

{The tiny speck in the photo above is a turkey running towards the hillside.}

Our heritage turkeys also saw them and called out to them, but the Wild Ones were on their own mission.

Despite their distance from me, I could still make out their calls to each other - slightly strange yet oh-so-familiar, cousins to my own small flock, their calls not so different from my own birds.

I felt a surge of unexpected Kinship with the Wild Ones.

I decided to climb up the steep hill to the highlands and see if I might spot them wandering around.

The climb involved a lot of snow, slippery slopes and crawling on my hands and knees, but eventually I made it up to the top. The turkeys were long gone, although I did manage to startle the last 4 who took off silently, gliding through ancient oak branches and out across the back pasture.

I circled the highlands and started to make my way back down.  My turkeys and guineas were creating a ruckus despite the wild turkeys being gone.

As I made my way down the hillside I realized why - a fat opossum was making it's way up the hayfield toward the poultry paddock.  I slid down the hill coming from behind him (her?).  He never even noticed me, and paid little attention to the noisy paddock of birds.

From there I followed him through the fence (thankfully he crossed near a gate) and wandered his way up to the old garage, stopping to sniff Papa Bear's antlers on the way by, then stopping under the Butternut tree to much on a pile of something I could not see.

By now I was only about 10' from him.  He seemed not to notice, or care.

I wondered momentarily about rabid opossums.  Shouldn't he be scared of me and run?  What if he came snarling after me?  What would I do?

Then Molly showed up meowing and when it appeared he was going to head in her direction, I made a noise and he turned and walked the other way.  As I followed him and walked past the Butternut tree, I looked at the spot where he had been munching something and realized... it was a pile of cat poo.

And then I realized,if I had gone back inside after my earlier chores like I normally do, I would have missed it all.

The music of the wind through the pine branches.

The surprise of a flock of wild turkeys gliding past.

The crawl to the top of the hill.

The slide down, watching the progress of the opossum.

The realization of what an opossum eats for dinner when it can't catch my chickens.

All I had to do was sit still and listen, to be present for a few moments.

So basic. 

So difficult.

So necessary.

Cheers -