30 days, day 4

I spent two hours last night reading about bees. Research! Biology, how the colony works, why hives are designed the way they are and the important parts of a hive, etc. I found it fascinating. They're incredible.

But on to day 4. Hello, Saturday! Today's goal was a little different: "Today, figure out a way to add some fun to whatever it is you’re working on for the next 30 days. It doesn’t have to be amazing or dramatic, even something small can make a big difference."

And, turns out I'd already scheduled something like that. Yay for happy coincidences! The farm goals lead to the production of food, first in its raw state right from the ground or the animal. But I love to take it farther and do amazing things with it. If you've looked through this blog, you'll know I've been dabbling over the last few years into different types and techniques of cuisine, especially French. 

Our ducks become prosciutto, confit, cassoulet. The chicken is ballotined. Eggs become soufflés. I've gotten the hang of curing pork belly to make my own pancetta/bacon. I find these silly kitchen adventures fun as well as delicious.

How will I do that today? My lovely parents gave me a gift certificate for Christmas to a local cooking school, which happens to be one of Le Cordon Bleu's international campuses. Today I'd already booked a demo on macarons, delightful French cookies that have a reputation for being fussy to make. So today, I get to attend a gourmet class and think about the end result of my digging in the dirt and caring for chickens.

Who knows, maybe I'll find a way to sell fancy cookies from the farm, too :) 

30 days, day 3

The house is quiet this morning after a not-so-quiet sleepover last night as the girls and their best friend enjoy the last few days of Christmas vacation.

Day 3's goal wasn't unexpected - after 'what' and 'why', I figured 'how' might be coming along soon. One nice thing about being intentional on the what and why has been that I've already started sorting through the how a bit. 

Continuing with yesterday's analogy (because I like analogies and all that), if WHAT is the compass point and WHY the engine, HOW, with its breakdown of the larger goal into smaller steps, is the GPS telling me to "turn left here" (thereafter saying 'recalculating...' in that condescending voice as I miss the turn because I was distracted. Which is when I start talking back to it, likely to the confusion/amusement of people who see me talking to myself).

Day 3: In January I will accomplish my WHAT (shortlist farm plans for 2014) for the WHY (to maximize its potential and not waste resources). HOW?

1. research each of the brainstormed options as to: location on the farm, impact on what we're already doing, sourcing of materials/livestock, and practicality of our effort and the inherent learning curve.
2. research government regulations as to potential sales and how they might work.
3. research costs involved and look for any cash breaks or incentives/grants.

homework.

Yesterday's research got me laughing as I looked up hemp as a crop. Hemp (Cannabis s. - yes, that cannabis) has been grown for millennia for use of its fibers in rope, but was outlawed in Canada in the 1930s due to the other properties gained through smoking some varietals. It's been re-allowed under close supervision - including background checks for criminal records, and only using seed of varietals that don't have the medicinal/recreational ingredient in them. 

The idea of it amused me, but it's also apparently a great crop to grow organically for fiber and for the seed, which is a nutritional powerhouse. It was looking promising until I read that seed is only sold for plots of 10ac or more. We're not up to that yet. Oh well.

30 days, day 2

"A WHAT goal is great. It’s a fun start, but it’s not enough. We need a WHY goal too.

What’s a WHY goal? It’s the heart of the reason you actually want to accomplish that goal."

It felt good yesterday to sit at the table and brainstorm. We won't get to a lot of the things we dreamed about, but with no destination we have no direction. The WHAT gives us the compass point, the WHY is the engine.

So. WHY should we sift through things and ideas, research annoying regulations and back-to-basics how-tos? My WHY is, because if we have no shortlist then we drift. This place is so big, had been let go so far, that there is literally no end of stuff to do. It is not static. Things grow, need tending and husbandry; fences get more decrepit; weeds and regrowth reclaim. If we don't focus our time, energy, and resources, then we are not going to accomplish nearly as much.

The larger goals for our farm - removing dependency on factory-produced food and giving others the opportunity to do the same; giving ourselves and our children a great place to live; reconnecting with creation - need those smaller goals to happen.

Day 2: Why? I want to do this so that the farm can approach its full potential and we aren't wasting our limited resources (time, energy, and money).

We want to make the farm live again, to be productive. This while D has a full-time job, I homeschool M in grade 8, and A&R are at high school every day. This will take focus. I don't want to reach May realizing I should have put in a permit for something or figured something out in March, thus nixing that project.

Today, continuing in the little steps: get a google map of our property into line form so that my funny-looking scribblings of "beehives could go here, pigs could live here" are actually made more legible and we get an overall picture of how things could shape up. And keep that WHY in front of my mind.

(Secondary goal-that-really-feeds-the-primary-goal: Spartan Sprint at the end of June, and a shoulder injury's had me laying low. Physio is this afternoon but I want to be fit for (a) farm work and (b) the race.)

30 days

I'm an introvert who is blessed beyond measure yet still manage sometimes to struggle with both the intensity of anxiety and the quiet fog of apathy. Weird extremes. I love to create, but dislike self-promotion (which makes being a success in music a bit tricky). But talk to me about something I love, and you're doomed to listen to me ramble about it. Things that stress me out, I tend to internalize. I recharge in solitude and am happy to sit and involve my mind in the way the dew on a spiderweb catches the sun's early rays, or watch the consistency of the sauce I'm making thicken into yummy smoothness. Problem is, those things will distract me from getting much-needed things done.

But then I signed up for '30 Days of Hustle' by Jon Acuff, a writer who's made me laugh AND think deeply over the years. The project: spend the next 30 days working toward a goal. So that's what I'm doing. Today's goal was to define the WHAT of the goal. So here goes.

Day 1: in the next 30 days, we will shortlist the plans for our farm this year.

With many options and only so much time and money, the short list needs to be workable. It requires research into cost, benefits, impact on our current farming, permits, and all that stuff. This will be the challenge for me. 

I enjoy learning about the how of farming. What's the best housing for bees? Where should the hive go, and what precautions should we make? Can that old set of discs in the barn be retrofitted for out current tractor, since the hitches are different? What's the best housing for turkeys? The best alignment for a greenhouse? I'm finding that I love low-tech solutions and learning the old wisdom of farmers.

Where I bog down, zone out, and run away looking for something pretty and shiny, is in the legislated side of things. We are producing food, first for our family, but with the goal of producing extra to sell. And once you're selling food products, you enter the area of government regulations. Reading these makes me dizzy. Remember how the adults always talked in the Charlie Brown TV specials? That's how my mind reads legalese.

So: next 30 days? Research enough to make that shortlist. Not every item on the list will happen. My dream for a small orchard will likely be stymied by the house needing work on the roof this year. That costs money, and so do apple trees. But the list will be there on paper, research and groundwork done, so that before the ground thaws and we start to do something, we've already got our feet pointed in the right direction.

little red

We have drama in the henhouse. Bullying, even. And it's all my fault.

When I ordered my last group of chickens for meat, I decided to try a new breed. I'd always gone with the Cornish white rock birds, who love to eat and will get to roaster size some eight weeks after hatching - though we deliberately slow this down by encouraging them to be outside running around and eating grass. It seems to keep them healthier, and I prefer to take ours to market around 10 weeks of age. This new breed was supposed to reach similar weights but take more time to get there.

She knows sitting on me is a safe spot.

Turns out, it was going to take far too long to get there. By the time the group of 70 birds was ready to go, the three of the new breed were all still almost too small to make it worthwhile. The two males went anyway to make two rather small roasters, but the female I decided to keep so that she could live to lay eggs and join the hens. The little red hen moved over to the field coop.

I call her Little Red, but I've been informed by D that her name is Kqabawwie. It's a deliberately confusing, utterly mangled spelling of R's first pronunciation of 'strawberry' when she was a preschooler.

And the other hens, my lovely ladies who purr and run over to see me and take treats from my hands, have been mean to her. Harrassing her so that she hides in a corner. 

When I go over, the hens all run over to see if I've brought them a treat. Once they're milling around, I'll hear the cheep-cheep (she hasn't started clucking yet) from the coop and Red will poke her head around, see me, and run over. It's really quite adorable. 

I know it's part of the pecking order and all, but I feel bad for the little girl. She will fit in, I know, but we go over a few times a day to make sure she gets a chance at food and water. She'll sit on my lap or weave around my feet while I tell the others they really should know better and be nice. They just look at me funny, but maybe it'll sink in.