Another customer rant

Here comes another rant.
We are not open at the farm for cheese sales. My schedule is so packed that when I am home, I am busy in the dairy making or packing the cheese, or in the barn tending to the goats, or in the house enjoying some well-deserved family time. Poor Brad doesn’t need any more interruptions from customers who drop by and want to buy a teeny bit of cheese or, worse, “see the goats.” We usually suggest that customers come seek me out at a farmers’ market, or check a local store. If I’m not home, I”m usually on the road, with all the cheese.
But somehow people just don’t get it. They just can’t manage to get to a farmers’ market or a store, and insist on just dropping by. Just this week, someone had a gift certificate to redeem, and although I caved in and said, sure come on over, they still couldn’t manage to come during the two days that I was home and waiting for them, and they showed up in the middle of a blizzard.
I do six farmers’ markets a week during the market season, and one a week during the winter. That’s at least 150 opportunties to find me somewhere with a full array of cheese ready for their selection and my full attention.
And yes, we do have a "closed" sign. It's up permanently...

Snowmobile Hell

It’s been such a snowy and early winter that the snowmobilers must be living on their snowmobiles. Many trails go through our neighborhood, and this year, they are also using the roads. It sounds like a heavy industrial park around here. It drives me nuts. I want to go outside and hear nothing but the snow falling. I don’t want to hear the roar and snarl of those damned snowmobiles.
In contrast, Brad’s iceboat customers have been strangley quiet. Usually he starts getting the calls to get their sails repaired as soon as the first ice is safe. This year the snow came before the ice, and it’ s not looking good for good skating or iceboating ice. Somehow, iceboating and skatesailing appeal to my sense of winter sports much more than snowmobiling. Probably because it’s quiet.

Classic New England Seasons

We enjoyed the most perfect snow day this week. We had no where we had to go; it was a snow day from school, and we’d planned a down day to recover from our weekend holiday sale. The snow was picture-perfect - fluffy and light. We stayed inside all day and just watched it fall, baked bread and ate the whole loaf hot from the oven with homemade butter. Then I made an apple pie for supper.

We continue to get light snowfalls to renew the snow cover. It really is classic winter weather, and fine with me for Christmas.

On reflection, I realized that this fall’s weather was the most beautiful in years, following a summer of perfect weather. I now expect a perfect spring. I just wish it wasn’t four months away...

We are rich

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and we’re busy planning the menu. Of course, we’re taking the local food challenge, which isn’t too difficult for us in Maine. We can find all that we need, right here in Maine. We are so lucky and so rich!
Turkey - Mainely Poultry, Warren
Vegetables - our garden, or
Peacemeal Farm, Dixmont, or
Freedom Farm, Freedom
Fail Better Farm, Unity
Shrimp - locally caught in Penobscot Bay, gifted to us by a local fisherman
Butter - I’m making it from organic cream from White’s Orchard Dairy
Bread for stuffing -- Borealis Aroostook Wheat
Sausage for stuffing -- Cornerstone Farm, Palmyra
Mushrooms - Oyster Creek Mushroom Co, Damariscotta
Cranberries - wildgathered and bartered for
Cranberry chutney and cranberry butter -- Half Moon Farm, Montville
Herbs - our garden
Spices - gifted to my brother from a friend who got them in Spain, then sailed home
Coffee - gifted to us by Louella, and picked by her in Mexico last winter
Honey - Gardiner’s Honey, Swanville
Maple Syrup - either Brad’s or Freyenhagen Family Farm, Union
Eggs - ours
Cheese - ours
Milk - ours (but all milk available here is Maine grown and produced)
Salt - maine sea salt
cider - our apples, picked by Brad, pressed at Sewall’s Orchard
apples for the pie - ours
fruit wine - Winterport Winery, or Brad’s

The last and final nut to crack: nuts. We’re looking for Maine walnuts or hazelnuts. We know they’re out there!

Hunting Season

All jokes aside about the month of breakfasts given in our honor, hunting season just makes me sad. Poor Lucy has to wear the silly collar. The goats have to stay in the near paddock, and can’t roam the woods. I don’t feel safe driving the backroads. And I worry about Mrs. Deer, who lives just on the other side of the goat’s fence in the corner of the field. Every summer she appears with her annual twin fawns. But for all that, I’m glad I live where people can still hunt if they want, and harvest the surplus of the woods. People who hunt understand that in order to eat meat, a life must be taken, and at least these lives have been full and free.

Empty nesting

Jessie left a week ago. Louella left in August. Fiona left in September and is settling in at college.
Even my spring kids are kids no longer, but are goatie teens with raging hormones.
I miss my girls of summer.

What do they read to kids these days?

During a conversation with Jessie the other day, I realized that I was always referencing the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series.

Then I got thinking about other books from my childhood that were about what you might term survivalist skills: Swiss Family Robinson, My Side of the Mountain. And later on, anything by Helen and Scott Nearing,

These should be required reading for anyone considering farming. Heck, they should be required reading to any kids growing up. Which begs the question: what are they reading to kids these days???

Butter Trials

My apprentice Jessie and I have been talking all week about the components that would go into a truly local Thanksgiving. I've realized that butter is one area that I need to Get Real Get Maine in... so we've been conducting butter trials all week. We found some at the Coop that's made in Brooks, not too far away, as well as Kate's butter from Old Orchard Beach. But our biggest triumph of the week is that we made butter on Friday! It was so easy -- we bought two quarts of cream, put it in a gallon jar to ripen at room temp for the day, added a touch of MM starter at the beginning. When we got home from market, we took turns shaking the jar, wondering how long it would take, and all of a sudden, there was butter!!! We got 5 8-oz tubs out of two quarts of cream when we were all done. I don't think it was exactly a pound, as it felt lighter than that, and the butter seemed slightly whipped. But the bottom line is that we did it, it was fun, it was delicious, and now we can wow our families with butter at Thanksgiving!

Now I just need to find those Maine nuts to replace the pecan pie..... I need a recipe for a nut pie with either sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds?

Customer Fatigue

Customer Fatigue is a new term we came up with this season at farmers' market to describe that reaction you get when the 100 thousandth customer asks the same question AGAIN.
Here for your entertainment is a list of those questions:
1. Do you have to milk the goats twice a day?
2. How much milk does a goat give?
3. Do you eat your goats?
4. Is your farm organic?
5. Is this cheese pasteurized?
6. Can we come visit the farm?
7. Will this cheese be OK in my hot car for ten hours while I drive back to (---fill in the blank ---)?
8. Is this cheese vegetarian?
9. Where is Appleton?
10. What is chevre?
I'm not sure what to do with this list, but some days it sure is hard to smile with the answer.

Goodbye, Summer!

Goodbye, summer! Goodbye super-apprentice, Louella! Goodbye daughter Fiona, off to college! Goodbye summer customers at farmers' markets. Goodbye warm nights and owls hooting and crickets chirping and Perseid meteorshowers.

Goodbye flies in the barn, and goodbye summer traffic!

Welcome crisp fall mornings, red maple leaves, geese flying. Welcome pumpkins, apples, squash, cranberries, turkey. Welcome Orion in the early morning sky.

The best animal on our farm

The best animal on our farm is Jenny the barn cat. She came to us 13 years ago, pregnant, and had to be at least two years old at that time. She has seen several generations of goats come and go, and outlasted most of them, as well as three dogs. She never asks for a thing, except for a full bowl of crunchies. When her bowl is empty, she will gently remind me with just a look. She has given us six kittens, lots of loving, and squeaky purrs. She never complains, always comes home, and loves to show off the hot snacks she catches around the barn. This winter, perhaps I will allow her to come in from the cold. After all, we are both old and gray, and the winters are getting colder.

Thoughts on being a lifelong Localvore

I have to admit that I am a little puzzled at the new excitement surrounding eating locally. This is what I have done all my adult life. This is my family legacy modelled to me by my grandmother, who raised a large family during the depression and wartime, and continued by my uncle on the farm in NH. I can’t remember the last Thanksgiving we ate a turkey purchased other than from the local turkey farm or grown on ours. One of my greatest pleasures in life is to sit down to a meal grown totally by us or by our friends and family. I got into a huge argument last summer with a man at farmers’ market who insisted that I must go to the grocery store for something, and all I could come up with was detergent, olive oil and salt. And even salt I could get locally.
Worried about food contamination? Eat local.
Worried about disruption to the food supply caused by weather extremes? Eat local.
Worried about real flavor in your food? Eat local.
Worried about your carbon footprint? Eat local.
Duh.

Attitude Adjustment

What a difference a week makes! From five inches of snow and obscenely cold temperatures, to 70 degrees, shirtsleeves and crocus blooming. The bees were swarming in the crocus yesterday, which valiantly took up where they left off three weeks ago when the snow buried them. The goats are lying around, soaking up the sun. My wonderful apprentice Louella did not run screaming when the power went out during the storm, and we had to hand milk for a day.
Maybe I'll make it after all.

... more lies ...

April 13, five more inches of snow. April 15, snow and rain. April 16, wind and rain and power outage. April 17, snow and rain. April 18, rain. Will this nightmare ever end???

The Groundhog Lied

Fifteen inches of "poor man's fertilizer" on April 5, for God's sake.

Silence of the Kids

The kids shipped out on Saturday, to Easter Auction. This is the dark side of dairying, and most people usually don't make the connection. For every dairy animal that gives milk, she has given birth to at least one offspring. It's an even chance it's a male, which makes it useless as a future milker. These unwanted males have to go somewhere, and that somewhere is usually an auction, sooner or later. I don't make any money on it. I never get back the value of the milk it has taken to raise these kids. It's just one solution to the issue. I would rather have them take a short trip to the butcher and end their life in a useful fashion on someone's Easter table, than the longer trip as a possibly abused pet tied to a tree or chased by dogs.
In any case, it's much quieter and calmer in the barn, and I'm getting lots more milk to make into cheese. I don't miss them -- I still have my bottle babies that will be next year's milkers. The moms don't even miss them. Fiona just surprised me by saying that when the kids ship out, it's like Jody Foster's character's experience in Silence of the Lambs, and that made me sad.

Why I hate the telephone

Here goes my first rant... I hate the telephone. It is the biggest time waster man has invented. It is disruptive, rude and intrusive. Perfect strangers think all they have to do is pick up the phone and get some of my time for free. I run my life on a pretty tight schedule: I am in the barn milking twice a day for two to three hours, and can't pick up the phone, even if I could hear it while the mlking machine was running. While I am making cheese, I am using my hands, and can't pick up the phone. God bless caller ID and the answering machine, both of which can screen my calls, should I even be close enough to the phone to pick it up. I don't have a phone in the barn, which is where I spend most of my waking hours. When I get done in the barn at night, all I want to do is eat my supper and enjoy a modicrum of family time before it's good night Irene. I certainly don't have the brain power to talk to anyone in the evening, and who calls farmers after 8 p.m anyway?
The message on my machine states "please leave an email address for the fastest reply", yet people continue to leave messages with their phone number asking me to call them back. When would this be? 5 a.m. while I am drinking my morning coffee? I don't think so. My day job in the school system isn't very conducive to making phone calls, either, even if I wasn't on the district's dime or if there was a phone to use. Of course I have a cell phone, but for now, it serves more as a family walkie-talkie than a business tool.
Four separate times in the past month, I have agreed to take a scheduled phone call, only to be stood up. Waiting and waiting for the call that doesn't come in. Two instances for phone interviews for potential jobs (them applying to me), once for an interview (when will I ever learn?). How rude is that?
So, if you want to communicate with me, please send me an email. I would be happy to answer it at 5 a.m.
And don't even get me started on Sunday visitors.

Special Needs Kids

Every year we have a kid or two that needs special attention. This year is no different. One little twin, born to a first freshener, was abandoned shortly after birth, so I'm bottle feeding him. Of course, he has now bonded to humans, so whenever I go out into the goat barn, he glues himself to my feet and follows me around. But lest I get too attached to him, he'll do this for any set of legs walking into the barn. The other day he followed Brad down into the woods when he was checking the fence. He got stuck in the snow so many times, Brad had to carry him out. Somebody stopped to take pictures of the goats the other day, and the next time I went up by the gate, there was a polaroid photo of him left for us.

These kids always get goofy names. This guy has been dubbed "Teeny little super guy" after the long-ago Sesame Street character. A couple of years ago, we had Peggy Eileen, who had a broken leg, and stumped around on her peg leg, with a definite tilt... Last year's was Moaning Myrtle, who would try eating anything once, and managed to rip a piece of rubber off Laura's rain pants.

In the beginning....

I've always wanted to do this, so I think I will begin.