Month: November 2021

Our friend, Heather, was here when Belle was born.

I think if calves could have godmothers, Heather is Belle’s!

But Heather is also a kindred spirit that thrives here at the ranch and so we all feel more joy when she visits and throws herself into ranch life with gusto.

This visit included the journey over Grizzly Summit to find the 2021 Christmas tree. With Heather’s help, we broke one of our newer tree harvest rules (thou shalt not attempt to carry a heavy tree up the mountain). There was a lot of huffing and puffing, but the three of us managed to get the tree uphill and loaded. It was good that there was no snow. But it is bad that there is no snow.

Here are some photos Heather shared with us from this trip:

Photo credits: hks

It hit me yesterday … David and I are literally, physically, made of this place.

This soil.

This water.

This sun.

So much of what we eat grows here that we are pretty much made of this place.

We are like the trees growing here, physical manifestations of life from this spot on the earth. (It seems like we work a lot harder than trees, but that just may be my inability to understand what the trees are doing).

It feels like we are merged with the life force here. At some level of course we are all merged with the life force on this planet, in this universe, with each other. But all that starts getting a little abstract if it is not felt, and I think one has to start with the proximate things to feel.

We have taken some time to relax a little during this holiday season. Here’s a random video I took of Belle in the pasture. She’s three months old now. She is a delight!

I’ll start this post with a link to an article with photos about turkeys, including fresh, grass-fed, all-natural turkeys (like ours) and about the frozen Butterballs — their availability and prices this year: Here’s the link:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/nov/22/yes-there-will-be-enough-turkeys-for-thanksgiving-at-a-price

We harvested six of twelve today. The toms weighed in the low 30s and the hens right around 20 lbs. The article above mentioned all-natural, grass-fed birds going for $5.99 / lb, so ours are a bargain at $3.50 / lb.

The six which remain will continue to be herded out to pasture each day until the Christmas/New Year holiday. These birds had a great spirit this year and we know they will be key to a few, wonderful and nourishing family/friend celebrations, including ours.

We are thankful.

Oh, and for humor, check this out: an-animal-chewed-the-turkey-i-left-out-to-thaw-can-i-still-cook-it

This week, the well pump and solar panels were installed for our new, emergency well, and a bittersweet development — Belle looks to be destined for new home around New Year.

Here are some photos of both:

I’m so happy to have the Japanese maples (Acers) back this Fall in full color!

Meanwhile, as the leaves go brilliant around us, we are pedal-to-the-metal as always with projects, chores, and food production. Just a few of those things include: 1) making cheese every three days (including mozzarella, cheddar, feta), 2) wiring and plumbing the shop, 3) rebuilding the creek pump (new structure out of metal and raising pump above flood level), 4) trimming trees and making brush piles to burn.

Both of us are frequently saying things like: it takes so much time … (fill in the blank) … to make food from scratch … to build structures and plumb or electrify them, etc.

But when we stop and think about it … we are incredibly productive and self-reliant. We rarely have to hire out a project, we have a lot of materials on-site so have minimal trips to hardware stores, and the shopping list has continued to dwindle. Every few months we will get 10 lbs of coffee, 50 lbs of flour, a few pounds of rice, pasta and sugar. Every couple weeks some avocados, mushrooms, sandwich bread, and tortilla chips. Our biggest monthly shopping bill is for animal food! We are pretty much rolling in food otherwise … grown and produced right here!

Anyway, back to the Fall colors … we do stop to admire them, to breath them in … and then we resume full-speed ahead!

Today we had ten, five-gallon buckets full of apples and made ten more gallons of cider.

It took only two hours with the resurrected apple crusher! (which we used for pomegranates not long ago).

This was an amazing apple year. We lost track of how many bushels of apples we’ve had, but we still have one tree full and a bunch of pears!