Foggy Morning Commute

Can you feel the hint of fall in the air on these foggy mornings?  I'm resisting the end of the summer, despite recent conversations about firewood stock piles and winter hay.  I'm not ready! 

Brandon is in the second week of the fall semester, and he's learning new technology so quarantined students can follow his lectures and do their homework remotely.  His nose gets raw from wearing a mask while teaching, and he said sometimes he has to go to his office, take off his mask, and scratch his beard like a dog!  

His classes start early, so we are up before the sunrise and ride into town together.  It's nice to be able enjoy the changing light on the landscape while he drives.  It's also nice that we encourage each others coffee addiction and indulgence in Starbucks.  I'be been arriving to work early and jittery from the caffeine. 

Someone told us that when they moved to Kentucky, they really wanted to buy a place out in the country, but ended up with a place in town and closer to work because they were afraid of the daily commute.  I've had at least a forty minute commute to my job since I started working nearly twenty years ago, so I'm used to it.  I enjoy listening to the radio.  Actually, at the end of the work day, when I drive away from town and toward the forests and farms close to home, I can feel tension and work worries leave my body and my mind.   

In the mornings we drive on the highway down a long hill where the rock has been cut away for the road, so there's a high wall topped with trees on either side right before a long bridge over a big river.  The river valley is usually filled with a dense cloud of fog, and sometimes I can't see the sun or the other side of the bridge.  It appears that the cars in front of us disappear into the mist.  This always triggers a memory from my childhood, of a cartoon where some kids get on a roller coaster, pass through a fog to a new dimension, and end up in a new world of magic and adventure, but they can't figure out how to get home.  Entering the bridge fog in the mornings makes me a little apprehensive.  Where will I come out on the other side? When I mentioned this memory to Brandon he knew exactly what I was talking about!  It's the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon intro from the 80s!  Now I know!  Do you remember this too?  

Joe-Pye Weed

Look how big and pretty the Joy-pye weed is!  It was just transplanted from a friends house last fall, and already the ones that were planted in the corner of the zip line field are taller than me.  One of the best things about this pretty native plant is that the goats don't like it that much.  They take a nibble here and there, but so far they haven't chowed down on it.  

Did you know that Joe-pye (Eutrochium fistulosum) is a member of the sunflower family?  

It has a reputation as a feast for pollinators.  I've seen wild ones with blossoms covered in dozens of butterflies.  Hopefully in time, the butterflies will find these plants too.  

The plants near the goat fence, which are marked by some red tomato cages to keep Brandon and his mower away, are doing okay, but they didn't grow as tall as those planted in the most soil by the zip line.  

The native sunflowers in the weed patch wildflower garden in the backyard are starting to bloom.  It won't be long before the New England Aster is blooming too.  Despite the dry gravel filled soil in this location, the Joe-pye that was planted here is doing all right. I empty the hot hose water onto them before I fill the animal water buckets.  I'm hoping that if I water them this year, they will get deep enough roots to live in this poor soil without my attention in the future. Like most natives, I think they are hardy plants.   

If Goats Could Talk

 

Shuck Beans and Cabbage

The garden has been overtaken by weeds.  The ragweed is nearly twelve feet tall and has stems so thick they can't be cut with the weed eater, and need to be manually removed before they start dropping seeds.  The squash vines are dead, the cucumbers are buried alive, and who knows what state the potatoes are in - they haven't been seen in weeks.  

In the greenhouse, under domes of cloth, cabbages and rutabaga have been growing unsupervised for nearly a month.  They weren't watered, weeded, or fussed over in all that time. I was afraid to lift the cloth and see what was happening under there.  

But look, the rutabaga are growing!  I didn't get very many of the seeds to germinate, probably because it was hard to keep the soil moist under that hot greenhouse plastic, but once there were plants a few inches tall, I assembled the hoops and tucked them in.  They might actually make a rutabaga!

The cabbages were planted early, and were plagued by caterpillars before I managed to erect some homemade hoops from sticks and cover them with cloth.  I was fearful that they would be ruined.  

They had lots of bug bites on the outer leaves, and a few seemed munched by rabbits, but once I peeled the chewed parts away, I was left with a whole basket of little cabbage heads!  

After I harvested the cabbage, I pulled up all the weeds, sticks, and cloth, and now have a nice place for another crop.  I'm encouraged by the cloth covering.  I think if I put it on before the bugs lay their eggs, I might be able to grow a bigger cabbage head next time.  

A few years ago I met a man named John, who showed me photos of his green bean plants.  They were beautiful!  He had a whole wall of lush green plants and shelves of canned beans.  I've had his green beans in my mind for a long time, and this year I think I may have a trellis and harvest to rival John's.  

I've picked baskets of green beans.  Last night I made a meat loaf and surrounded it with green beans and onions and baked it all together.  The beans cooked in the juices from the meat and were so delicious.  We've saved all the dripping from baked chicken and baked green beans in it too.  So good!

In addition to the trellis in the garden fence, which is sixteen feet long, I planted beans inside a ring of tomato cages.   The beans flourished.  The goats realized they could climb on the cages and knock them over to get the tender vines on the top.  They gorge themselves, crush the cages, and make a mess of the vines.  I was half glad to think I wouldn't have to pick any more beans! 

Brandon helped me pound in some fence posts to prop the cages back up, and I crawled around inside the ring of beans and picked another giant basket full.  I don't think the goats ate enough to hurt the vines at all, and there are plenty of tiny beans still on the vines.  

Picking the beans is the easy part.  The tedious part is pulling all the strings.  

In years past, I've frozen green beans, and they are handy for soups and stews.  This year I cleaned up the food dehydrator and have been drying the beans.  They shrink so much it seems hard to believe it took hours of breaking beans to fill all the trays only to have a few quart bags.  Brandon's mom made the best beans from dried white half runner beans.  I hope my beans will be half as tasty as her shuck beans.   We'll see!

The Long Hike with Sack Pie Before Hay Bales

 

Saturday, the day of our longest hike so far, started very early.  I fed the animals and did my morning chores by headlamp, and admired Wendigo's white coat gleaming in the barn light as she scarfed her breakfast and the sky began to lighten as the stars faded.   

Brandon was congratulating us for leaving on time, when we got stopped by a train on the tracks near home.  There's no time for delays when a long and challenging hike is on the schedule!

We arrived on time anyway, and everything about the meet up went according to the plan!  We had our cars situated at the end point, and the six of us were ready to hit the trail before nine in the morning.  My bag weighed fifteen pounds, including over three liters of water and a bottle of coconut water.  

We started our adventure at Laurel Lake, and walked across the Laurel Lake Dam.  

On one side of the dam is the fog covered lake.  There were folks in the water training to scuba dive.  

On the downstream side of the dam, clouds were settled in the deep valley under a blue sky.  This is the side our trail followed - over fourteen miles along the river valleys all the way to Cumberland Falls State Park.  

The trail was challenging, but beautiful.  The last time I hiked this section of the Sheltowee we camped along the way, but this time we wanted to do the whole thing in one day.  

Everyone had smiles in the beginning, despite scrambling over treacherous rocks and tangles of roots in the trail.  

We walked along a short stretch where the rock cliffs are exposed to the sun, and kudzu on the trees creates strange shapes.  

We each found a comfortable rock seat for our lunch break.  Brandon has perfected our trail meal in a bag.  Riced rutabaga cooked with meats and vegetables, and served in a zip lock bag with a plastic spoon.  Somehow this meal has earned it's own trail name, "sack pie."  It is yummier than it sounds!    

This box turtle had brilliant red eyes.  

We could catch glimpses of the river through the trees, and hear the rush of water over boulders.  

Such cool rocks! 

We took a trail detour to visit a water fall and soak our weary feet before making the final trek to Cumberland Falls.  After over fourteen miles of stone and root lined trail, plus multiple sets of stone or wood steps, I didn't even have the energy to take the path to see the falls.  I was pooped!  

I got lots of bites from teeny little ticks, my feet hurt like they were bruised the next day, and my legs were tender to the touch, but that didn't stop us from putting up over a hundred bales of hay on Sunday!  We've been told that the hike we did was just as hard as a twenty-mile section of the Sheltowee in other places, so we should be able to meet the challenge that starts this winter.  We still need to practice two consecutive long hikes.  I can't imagine hiking that hard two days in a row!  

The Shepherd and the Goatherd Go Hiking

I got to spend several weeks out in the woods at night, catching bats.  The photo above is a federally endangered gray bat.  Despite their endangered status, in certain parts of Kentucky and Tennessee where there are lots of caves, we regularly catch gray bats.  In this photo you can see the little metal bracelet that I put on his forearm.  This tag has a number that will be entered into a database, and if anyone in the future finds this bat hanging in a cave, or tangled in their mist-net, they will report the number and we will learn about how far this bat travels.  I think the bats get used the bracelet pretty quick, but I always feel a little guilty about making them wear one.

Despite being very busy with travel for work, things have been happening back at the farm.  We have sheep!  This is our new ewe, named Lamb Chop.  How did we get into the sheep business?  Our experience butchering one of our goats taught us two things.  One, we can definitely butcher an animal and make meat, and two, it would be more worth the effort if the animal was meatier.  Katahdin sheep were recommended by our vet because they shed their wool, usually give birth out on the field with no problems, and aren't prone to parasite problems.   Plus they are little butterballs and make good meat.

This is our ram, Pistol Pete.  He's a big boy already, at only five months old.  He and Lamb Chop are hopefully the foundation of our flock.  

I have always been the driving force behind the goats.  Brandon is tolerant and supportive - building fences and shelter and taking care of them while I'm gone, but he has never thought they were worth the effort if it wasn't for my enjoyment of having them.  The sheep are different.  Brandon has an enthusiasm for these sheep that he never had for the goats.  He made all the arrangement for getting them, subdivided the pasture with electric fencing so he can rotate their grazing, buys and mixes grain to supplement their feed, and checks on them daily.  He's the shepherd and I'm the goatherd.  

We've been hiking every chance we can get.  We're practicing for some serious overnight hikes we plan to take every month starting in January.  Since June, we've hiked approximately 47 miles.  

It's been so nice to have something to do with our friends that is outside, where we can keep our distance from each other.  

Kentucky has so many great hiking trails.  Some of them have pretty stone arches.  

And mushrooms!  Hiking with mushroom hunting enthusiasts means we get to see lots of pretty fungi. 

Chicken of the woods.  

Cauliflower mushroom. 

Trails near swimming holes are perfect during the summer.  Laurel Lake always feels like home to me.

Although hiking in my bathing suit resulted in poison ivy on my leg.  Between the time spent outside for work, hiking in the forests on the weekends, and fighting through the weeds in the garden, my skin has been itchy from bug bites or poison ivy all summer!  

This year was the first zucchini and spaghetti squash harvest since we've been at the farm.  The weeds and the squash vine borers have taken their tole, but not before I was able to get a harvest.  There are green beans on the vine, waiting to be picked.  

We sold some of the goats, including Little Buck.  It was hardest to part with him, but I needed to reduce the herd size and I didn't like making little inbred babies.  Little Buck was purchased by a local man who is starting a herd and was grateful to find a nice buck.  Donnie is now my only buck, and he is with Peaches and Little Buck's daughter, Newnoo, so they can make more kids.  I still have the River Brothers too.  Brandon was amazed that anyone wanted to buy the goats he put on craigslist.  They sold within the day, especially Peaches' little bucklings, that were only two months old.  After making enough money selling the goats to buy his new ram lamb, Brandon was suddenly more enthusiastic about the goats too!  

The goats have been relocated to the new fence down in the woods.  Brandon built them a small shelter.  Five goats is easier for me to manage on walks.  With my set up, the goats stay healthiest if I let them out of their small pasture regularly so they can browse.  

The new goat pasture is full of honeysuckle vines and shrubs, and they are quickly eating every leaf.  When I let them out for their daily walk, they eat my green bean vines.   Doh!