Fantastic Farmers Market

Wow! This past Saturday at the Carlisle Central Farmers Market was just ripping! People were wall-to-wall and snapping up locally grown foods right & left. Again, our Bratwurst was a hot item along with yogurt, Bovre and Quark from Keswick Creamery. There was dancing from a local Clogging troupe and Dickinson College ended their "Step It Up" bike ride at the market and then gave out their "Carbon Friendly" awards. Several people came up to the stand and thanked me for providing fresh, sustainably grown local foods. They would say how they moved her from Seattle, Ithaca, Tempe, Boston, and other progressive cities in which there are active producer-populated farmers markets and were so disappointed there was nothing like that in the area. I've had customers actually hug me when they find out we sell goat meat by the cut!
Although it's the end of the growing season, I've been taking as much produce out of our gardens along--beets, swiss chard, kales, mustards, herb and salad greens. Customers actually get excited when they find bugs on the greens because they know I'm not using any sort of chemical pesticides. I tell them them I don't charge extra for the bugs.

For anyone who wants to serve the freshest possible food for their Thanksgiving feast, the market will be open on Wednesday, November 21st from 10 AM to 2 PM.

We'll have fresh pastured Heritage Turkeys, salad greens, fresh sage and sun chokes in addition to all our other regular products.

Dishing Out the Worst

WARNING
This post contains stomach-churning images & descriptions.

The right side of Emma's udder which is milking just fine.

I believe that the Universe has a way of testing you before allowing your dreams to be fulfilled and the last few days must be my baptism-by-fire for my long-time dream of wanting to milk cows and make butter. It wasn't enough for Emma to calve a week early in the pouring rain. The heifer calf survived and is aptly named "Gray Skies"...Gray for short.

The next challenge was getting Emma to let her milk down. You see, cows' teats aren't like spigots. They just don't turn on with a squeeze. Any woman who has ever given birth understands the concept of milk let-down and cows are no different.

But Emma just wouldn't give it up. I tried removing the calf (the first choice was to dam-raise) and massaging the udder for a few minutes prior to trying to milk, still only a few squirts would come out and then stop. We fired up the Surge Milker and still no milk. We used oxytocin and got a little more, but not much.

The calf had chosen to nurse the left side which began to milk out fine, but despite repeated tries at milking the right side, it continued to swell and finally Emma's udder split.

The left side of Emma's udder which is a total mess.

No, this wasn't a crack...it's a nasty tear right down to the subcutaneous udder fat. No bleeding, but a lot of weeping. The majority of the serum trickled down over the front teat forming a hard scab and essentially closing up that quarter. I washed the entire area with a mild Betadine solution and called the vet. He set me up with injections of Lasix (diuretic), Dexamethasone (steroid) to reduce the edema and a jar of antiseptic cream.

The morning following the two injections and a liberal dose of cream, the right hind quarter finally let the milk flow.

Needless to say that all this mess on the right side has set up a nasty case of mastitis. Ralph was helping out and made the comment, "Look, she's already producing butter inside her udder!" as the bright yellow chunks hit the bucket. All the color drained from his face when I explained that it was pus...not butter. The milk was fairly chunky at first, but cleared up about half way through the milking. The front teat still refused to open up. I could feel the chunks inside and knew that when that teat opened, it was going to be equally nasty, if not worse. Milk from a quarter with severe mastitis.

The vet suggested I strip her several times a day in order to clear out the pressure and mastitis. Four hours after the first milking, I went out again. The front right had some flecks, but the milk itself appeared fairly normal.

The front right teat finally opened. Foul doesn't even begin to describe it. Putrid would be a much better word. Images and the Internet can do no justice to what came out of poor Emma's front right quarter. The relief must have been welcomed because she gave out an incredible sigh after I got a quarter cup of solid waste stripped out. I only got about a pint of sludge, but I'll go back in a few hours and see what can be stripped out again.

The milk from the right side appears and smells normal. Gray finally got the hang of the bottle and is drinking up everything I get out of the right side as well as some of the replacer I use for the bull calves.

I realized this post has been graphic and a bit disgusting, but this is my experience. No where in any of the books & articles I've read (Keeping a Family Cow by Joann Grohman, Backwoods Home Magazine) is anything like this described. On all the lists and forums, everyone is on their soap boxes about raw milk and the joys of having your own cow, but darn it, sometimes it's just not as easy as it sounds.

This is reality, my reality right now. Is it frustrating and discouraging? Yes, but I believe this is just life asking me if this is really what I want to do.

Back on Grass

Despite offering her some grass hay, alfalfa hay and even a little sweet feed, Emma hasn't been too interested in eating since calving on Wednesday. To coax back her appetite, I decided to set her up on the freshest, choice grass and clover on the farm. That patch also happened to be our front yard. After spending the time to get the portable paddock all set up, Emma refused to get up. Finally, I gave her an ultimatum--either get up or lose out on fresh grass. Nothing was lost in translation and she lumbered to her feet. Once outside, her head went down and that's where it stayed for the next few hours while the calf followed her around nosing all four teats, which she is now draining, thus, alleviating my need to milk much. Thanks to all that good milk, the calf had plenty of energy to burn off running around in the grass.

When I did a 'barn check' prior to turning out all the lights for the night, there was Emma chewing her cud and her calf by her side.

A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has come out to support the Carlisle Central Farmers Market! Our stand continues to evolve. This week I was able to pick some red beets, tomatoes, chard and kale to take along. The hot items this week were our all-natural bratwursts, the Wallaby cheese from Keswick Creamery and the fresh pastured chickens from Otterbein Acres. Each week I have met many new people as well as learned to recognize the regulars. The market continues to grow and expand. Saturday hours have been extended an extra hour, plus there will be all sorts of special events taking place in November. On the 3rd, the Critical Mass Bike Race will end at the Farmers Market. On the 10th, there will be a Medieval Event, sponsored by the local SCA groups and on the 16th & 17th, there will be a Holiday Market in conjunction with the kickoff of Carlisle's Holiday Festivities. Hope to see you there!

The Learning Curve

While hand-milking a few goats is no big deal, I knew I'd require a little mechanical help when it came to a dairy animal with an udder the size of New Hampshire. A few years ago, my neighbor had given me an old Babson Surge Milking System, complete with vacuum pump and portable bucket. However, since he had milked his goats, too, with the bucket, the unit had been modified for two teats instead of four. At first, I thought I could get away with just doing the front quarter and then the hind quarter, but after cruising on eBay for a few weeks I came across a really nice unit at a reasonable price.

Another reason I was anxious to get the Surge Milker going was to further alleviate my chances of getting the snot kicked out of me. Trust me, you just don't go and start tweaking teats on a first time freshener without any argument. And goats don't kick no where as hard as cows do.

The first day of trying to milk Emma was frustrating for the both of us. She managed to knock off my glasses with her tail. By the time I was done, I had more milk on my clothing than in the bucket.

The Second Day
Realizing that Melanie, Ralph or Jessica won't always be around to help, I decided to tackle milking single-handedly. Getting a better idea for what's going on, Emma was much more agreeable today. Her calf had been nursing regularly and she knew what that giant thing between her hind legs was for now. Plus, to help reduce the swelling, I was also rubbing her swollen bag regularly with "Udder Comfort", a natural cream that contains Peppermint Oil, Tea Tree Oil, Menthol & Lanolin. I can't believe I paid more for cream to rub on my cow's udder than for something I'd put on my own face!
Every few hours, I'd go out and milk Emma. She would start off agitated, but when I whipped out the cream, she'd relax. We always ended on a good note, and by the afternoon she would just stand there without even being tied.

So by late afternoon, I was ready to fire up the Surge Milker. Everything was cleaned & sanitized. All I would have to do is hook up the regulator to the vacuum compressor, adjust the inflation rate and try to convince Emma that the alien contraption I was about to attach to her udder would not kill her. But when I went to plug in the compressor, I couldn't find the cord. Upon further inspection, I couldn't find the motor! And then it hit me. We had taken the motor off the compressor earlier this summer to use on the hay elevator.

So I'll be hand-milking until I can get to Tractor Supply and get a new motor. We've decided to dam-raise the calf so I really only have to milk out the right quarters since the calf prefers the left side and has been draining them herself.

Freaking Out
Around three-three thirty, the milk turned a strange color. It was watery and brown. Jessica said it looked like iced-coffee. Frantic, I called Melanie who was in Philadelphia with the Pennsylvania Farmstead & Artisan Cheese Alliance visiting White Dog Cafe, Reading Terminal Market and meeting with Jeffrey Roberts, author of Atlas of American Artisan Cheese, at DiBruno Brothers. It was a trip that I was supposed to be on, but with the calf's arrival, I knew there was no way I could swing it.

"Don't worry. It's just capillary bleeding and it's colostrum," she assured me. I'd seen plenty of colostrum, but never anything this dark. Maybe it's true that brown cows give brown milk.

Regular Raw Milk, Yesterday's Colostrum, Day Two Colostrum

While cleaning out the horse's stall next to the cow's stall, Emma laid down and took a nap, but when it was time to clean out her stall, she refused to get up. Panic-stricken, I called Melanie's mom, Susan, who has been milking for 30 years and is a walking encyclopedia about cows. If Emma wouldn't get up, she suggested calling the vet.

Twenty minutes later, Dr. Trent and his darling daughter arrived. The moment he pulled in, Emma stood up and began eating. "There's nothing wrong with her," he assured me. Her ears were warm, her heart rate and breathing normal. I showed him her milk. "That's colostrum from a Jersey. Don't you know that brown cows give brown milk?" I love my vet. He's got a great sense of humor.

Let the Milking Begin!

The radar indicated that the downpour this morning would pass so I settled into my upstairs office with a cup of coffee and caught up on the latest news about the fires in California from my friend, Anne, who lives in San Diego. Despite the rain, the rising sun shed enough light that when I looked out at the pasture I could see there were five cows instead of four and knew immediately that Emma had calved.

She wasn't due until Halloween and I figured I would put her in the barn three to five days prior to the 31st depending on the swelling of her udder and vulva. When I checked her last night at feeding, both were still fairly normal. I figured that this weekend I'd give the milking equipment a good cleaning and get everything set up. At least I had the foresight to buy the E. coli vaccine for calves yesterday on an impulse when I was at the local farm store.

But the calf was here now and I was all alone...Jess at school and Ralph in Texas...so I called Melanie, over at Keswick Creamery (where Emma came from). She's birthed out enough calves in her lifetime, that she can do it in her sleep. She was here within minutes and between the two of us, we got mother & baby into a nice dry and deeply bedded stall in the barn.

Our next task was to milk out about a pint into a calf bottle to feed along with the vaccine. Without the confines of a parlor, it was a chore that required both of us to complete. For the uninformed, cows (and goats & sheep for that matter) need to get used to being milked. Until they get the routine down, they put up a pretty good fight and fighting with a thousand-pound cow is a lot harder than with a goat or sheep.

Thanks to Select Sire's sexed semen, the calf is a heifer (female) out of 7JE590 Action.

Of course, after all this was done it quit raining.

Check Out Those Mammaries!

Ok, so I'm a little excited about the impending freshening of Jessica's heifer the end of this month. This shot is for you, Anne! Our breasts are nothing compared to these babies and they are only going to get bigger. So, just what am I planning to do with all that fresh, rich Jersey milk? Of course, I'm going to be making plenty of butter and some cheese, but we had four new additions to the farm today that will also get some of Emma's milk.
Keeping track of bull calves that all look the same is difficult so they always get a generic name. These guys are going to be Eenie, Meenie, Minie and Mo. The "mommy bucket" is back in action. For those of you who frequent our stand at the Carlisle Central Farmers Market, look for freshly made Bratwursts and premium cuts from these calves' predecessors. Remember, there's no hormones, antibiotics or guilt trip with our naturally & humanely raised veal.

Clipped Wings

We are often asked what's the difference between a heritage turkey and a regular turkey. Had anyone been visiting last night at dusk, they would have had first-hand experience.

Heritage turkeys can fly. Unlike commercial birds such as the Broad-breasted Bronze and White which have been bred to grow amazingly fast and develop oversized breasts to the point they are too heavy to fly or even naturally mate, heritage turkeys have smaller breasts and are still able to take to the air. This was becoming increasingly obvious last night as several birds hopped the fence when Jessica fed up her Farm Show goats in the pen next to theirs.

So Ralph and I had to do the duty. Clipping wings on small chickens and turkey poults isn't all that hard and I've done it by myself quite easily, but last night's task was definitely a two-person job. He would grab each bird by their legs, flip it upside down and I would clip their wings. Don't worry, there's no blood or mutilation involved...just a simple clipping. It was fairly easy to tell who had been clipped because I only removed the white-striped portions of their flight feathers.

Plenty of flapping, but no flying.

A Glorious Fall Day at the Farm

What a wonderful fall day it was today. The breeding does cleaned up a long strip on the back of the large pasture. Mr. Martin is still actively doing his thing. Miss Kitty, Truffle and Phyllis where on his hit list this afternoon. I'm anxious to see what Pumpkin Pie (belted doe below) throws out of the black headed buck. She's 75% Boer, as is the majority of the breeding herd at this time.
The turkeys are getting big and gobbling up a storm. I'll miss them after Thanksgiving.

Miss Bango checking out the scenery out of her stall door in the barn. She's turned out most of the day in one of the pastures.

These are the young does turned out on what I consider "fresh pasture" although most farmers would have a coronary if their pastures were as weedy as mine! Actually, this is a typical browse pasture. I was browsed in June and this is secondary growth. A really good browse pasture is one you can't see through. I've found that when I run the goats on thick browse, they gain faster and carry a minimal parasite load.

Keswick Creamery

Hey everyone, Keswick Creamery finally has their website up and running so check it out! The URL is www.keswickcreamerycheese.com.
Melanie & Mark have been a HUGE inspiration and help in the trek toward making butter & cheese here at Painted Hand Farm. The Jersey heifer they sold Jessica just a little over two years ago will be freshening (having a baby calf for the non-farming folk out there), soon followed by the dairy goats so we'll be going online and fresh handmade butter as well as fresh Chèvre (correctly pronounced 'shev(r^&), NOT 'shev-RAY') should be available from our legally licensed operation by February.

Hitchcock at the Farm

Great writers and film makers are often inspired by real-world occurrences and the late, great Alfred Hitchcock was no exception. Actually, his movie was based upon a short story by British novelist, Daphne du Maurier. But there's no doubt that both of them had in their life witnessed the fall migration of birds, often amassing by the tens of thousands to begin their trek south for the winter. The past few days here at the farm, we've witnessed cackling flocks of birds blackening the sky in a mile-long swath.
This morning, the sound became deafening drowning out the television and radio, so I went outside to check it out. Anyone who has been here knows the size of the pine tree in the front yard. That tree was entirely full of birds, along with just about every other tree on the property, the barn roof, the telephone and electrical wires. They began taking off in waves, one after the other. Their departure took nearly twenty minutes until there were few birds in sight.

Happy 40th Birthday, Dave

Today is my brother's 40th birthday. It's kind of hard to believe that we're really that old now. It seems like only yesterday we were kids living in Holly, fishing in Mountain Creek, sneaking up to the Holly Dam to go swimming and working over at Orners' Greenhouse. He's still fishing--even celebrating his milestone fishing with our sister, Joan, at her place in New Hampshire. So, Happy Birthday Dave! And just so you wouldn't get mad at me posting an embarrassing picture of you as a kid, I included one of me, too. We were four & two. Look on the bright side, at least Mom never did that to your hair.

Squirrel Whisperer

Folks, this is my dad, the famous Squirrel Whisperer of East Pine Street. Scurious Sciuridae skitter from miles around to eat treats out of my parents' back yard. He has the squirrels so tame that they literally eat out of his hand.

But it's not just the personally harvested chestnuts, walnuts, hickory nuts and ear corn that the bushy-tailed rodents are after---it's the FUN! Mom & Dad's backyard is literally a squirrel amusement park. There's the whirly-bird gadget to which four ears of corn are attached and my personal favorite, the bungee-cord feeder. Not only does all this provide endless hours of entertainment for the squirrels, the humans are equally amused.

WAgN Field Day in York

I have found that field days are one of the best ways how to learn both what and what not to do when it comes to farming. Yesterday's PA Women's Agricultural Network field day in southern York county was an excellent example of both ends of the spectrum.

We started off the day at Swissland Acres. While they had many great ideas, especially in regards to poultry, these people were a glaring example of what NOT to do when it comes to dairying--mainly, selling raw milk without any sort of testing or a legal permit.



At the State Senate Ag Committee Hearing on September 18th, during the open comments, they stood up and said they were operating under the "single cow exemption" and were quoted in news articles stating so, however, they are actually milking a small herd. "We each have one cow," I was told. But the crowning moment of idiocy came when they allowed a full grown breeding Jersey bull with horns to blow through two strands of electric fence (that was turned off so no one got shocked) into the same pasture with everyone checking out their pastured poultry. Despite reassurance that he was a "nice bull", anyone who has had any experience with breeding bulls knows that these animals are unpredictable and dangerous. Here was a group of strangers between a pawing, bellowing bull and his cows. Needless to say, many of us kept our eye on him until we were safely out of the pasture.

Marc Shearer shows off his brooder design. Above is their home-built killing cone system and drum-style feather plucker.

A delicious lunch was served at our second stop of the day--Spoutwood Farm, home to the Mother Earth Harvest Festival (this weekend!) and the infamous May Day weekend Fairy Festival. Our gracious hosts, Rob & Lucy Wood shared with us about their farm, which includes a 100-member CSA. We toured the gardens with Rob offering samples of freshly-picked herbs & vegetables as well as his wisdom.

Rob Wood leading the group through Spoutwood's vegetable gardens.

Our third stop for the day was at Perrydell Dairy Farm, a third-generation dairy farm that bottles milk (legally, I might add) fresh at their farm. Although they only offered bottled raw goat milk from a neighboring (and permitted) farm, the Perrys hope to in the future be able to offer their customers raw cow milk after they transition from a conventional to grass-based dairy. For me, this was a great example of reality. Reality in dealing with circumstances and taking the time to effectively plan for expansion and change.

The Perry family in the bottling plant at Perrydell.

You can tell these kids live on dairy farms.

At the end of the tour, the Perrys treated everyone to an ice cream cone made from their cows' milk.

Green Grass Everywhere!

I finally got around to re-painting the mailbox after one of the local drunks whacked it off the post in broad daylight one Sunday afternoon on his way home from the local American Legion. Ralph built the post to take an impact and just pop off the arm on which the box sits instead of breaking off the whole post. His plan worked well, but still required some body work and a re-primering paint job on the mailbox. I'm sure the damage done to the truck was much worse.
We've got beeves on grass, veal on grass, goats on grass and even turkeys on grass! Grass-fed animals are better for the environment and better for eaters' health.Our veal calves lead happy lives on pasture instead of living in cramped, manure-laden pens where they are only fed a slurry of antibiotics, whey and bloodmeal.
We use the "follower" method that emulates the natural cycle of small & young grazers followed by larger grazers with birds...the cleanup crew...bringing up the rear.

This is the breeding herd meaning that this spring we'll have an explosion of kids come early spring. This season we are breeding to a black-caped purebred Boer buck bred by Joan & Bill Smith of BIJO Boer Goats in Gardners. Support a grass-based farmer today and help save the earth. :-)

A Man on a Mission

As you can see, Ralph has been a man on a mission these last few days. Those first two beds have been amended, rototilled, sifted, tamped down, watered and planted with all sorts of tasty fall greens. To keep weeds at bay in between the rows, he's cut rubber roof. I'm sure his method of gardening will be much more prolific than me planting and then rooting through the weeds to find what I've attempted to cultivate.

Forget the Energizer Bunny

Some things keep going and going....like our rototiller. I heard the familiar sound of the Briggs & Straton 5hp engine on the old red rototiller that was given to me by my dear friend Joyce Lathan back in Ojai. When I lived on Rice Road, each year I would borrow her old rototiller to work my garden prior to planting. When she retired and left Ojai for Yuma she gave it to me. It worked like a champ for years until one day the engine froze. Before I could scrap it, Ralph and I happened upon an auction of old equipment at the city equipment yard. There were two edgers with the exact engine. I won the bid of $5 for both. The rototiller complete with another engine went back to work, this time at our place in the orchard on Fairview Road. When we moved across the country to Pennsylvania, the rototiller came with us. Each year it has continued to spring to life, its tines chewing into the dirt, mixing rich compost into the shale to produce yet another plentiful garden. Ralph is readying one of the gardens for a fall planting of hardy greens. With proper mulching and floating row covers, we should be eating fresh salad greens until the end of the year.

An Overwhelming Success!!

We did it! This morning at 8 AM, we opened a market stand in conjunction with Keswick Creamery, at the Carlisle Central Farmers Market. For hours, the market was awash in people from south central Pennsylvania checking out what all there was to buy...and buy they did!

This is our organically grown heirloom tomato salesperson. She did a great job when she wasn't eating Thai Pink Easter Eggs out of the cartons.

Chef Jason Turner from Alibis Eatery & Spirits gave the morning cooking demonstration using fresh ingredients from the market. In the afternoon, Chef Ross Morris from Piatto made a phenomenal batch of Butternut Squash Risotto as market manager Maryellen Stetz looks on waiting for a taste.

Saturday is Market Day!

While I attained my goal of selling meat produced on the farm at the farmers market at Dickinson College's local foods event in April, this Saturday marks the grand opening of the Carlisle Central Market in downtown Carlisle where we will be sharing a booth with Keswick Creamery. Please come out to show your support for local farmers, local foods and local businesses. The market is located at 111 Hanover Street and will be open from 8 am to 1 pm on Saturday and on Fridays from 11 am to 7 pm. We hope to see you there!