How to Make a Really Big Pencil Eraser with Materials You Probably Have Sitting Around the Farm

Lorell tried to make cheese the other day, because that is what you do if you are a farmer. Unfortunately, the instructions were not as clear as they could have been about not heating the milk above 88 degrees. The end result was a chunk of cheese that had the structural properties of vulcanized rubber. We fed it to the chickens*, with no obvious bad effects. Here is a picture of said cheese floating in the whey.

*Interesting side note (actually, this is disgusting enough that you really don't want to know this; I write it only in the interest of scientifically documenting life on the farm. So stop reading now. I can't be responsible if you continue reading.) Chickens seem to be able and willing to eat many surprisingly disgusting things with no obvious bad effects. Cockroaches, for example; they snap them up like popcorn. The one that surprised me, however, was that a few weeks ago we were trimming the goats' hooves, which had become way overgrown and thus smelled like Feta cheese. The chickens ate the hoof trimmings with apparent relish. (Don't you wish you had stopped reading? You were warned.)

The Incredible Shrinking Apple Tree

Yesterday was apple tree pruning time. (This was actually the event that led us to start the blog in the first place. Every year, I go out and stare at the apple tree, desperately trying to remember what it is that should be accomplished by this exercise in woodsmanship. So this year, we are documenting the process so that next year I will just read the blog and be ready to hack and slash.)

The before picture:

The goal was to curb the horizontal spread of the tree, because some of the main limbs were getting dangerously long, and to bring the top of the tree down within reach of a fruit picking pole. I sketched it thusly:

The results:

There are still some places that are too tall, but I couldn't really cut them without being able to levitate. (We keep telling the Proto-vet to learn to fly, but she has not been obliging so far.)

Social Climbing Chickens

We got a call from the next-door neighbor that their bug man (not a man who is part bug-he is actually their exterminator) had found a nest of chicken eggs. As they do not own any chickens and we do, our chickens were deemed to be the culprits. The house next door is rather largish with a Tuscan Vila architecture, and the chickens were laying their eggs in the entry courtyard. Their desire to move up in the pecking order is understandable.

Here is the basket of exterminated eggs. That is a lot of social climbing.

It's Alive!

The little seeds are sprouting like crazy. It feels like spring in the laundry room. The little paper cups seem to be working well so far.

(It also feels like spring outside the laundry room, since the highs are in the mid seventies and the trees are all sprouting leaves.)

I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes

We found this spider hanging on the screen outside our kitchen window. It was, according to the proto-vet (those of you who know the family know who this is), trying to get through the window and eat her, because she is small and succulent. It was big enough to do just that.

And snakes are actually not that bad. Unless they touch you. Especially with their forked tongue.

Age-Activated ADD

The reason we need this blog is Age-Activated ADD.  Because we really are busy all day, but we can't figure out why things don't get finished. And farming requires consistency-remember the law of the harvest.

This video explains why things don't get done.

Scotch Tape is the Answer

But we don't know what the question is. Actually, it is good for holding paper planting cups closed. Although future archeologists will sift through our garden dirt and find the little strips of undecomposable tape and surmise, wrongly (hopefully), that we choked to death on the plastic. And that we deserved it for having done such damage to the environment.

But that's not really the subject of this post. We are planting seeds in little paper planting pots so that later this spring we can transplant them into the garden.

Hello World

So, we have decided to start blogging, mostly so that next year we won't be asking the same questions that we did this year and trying to reinvent the wheel year after year.

Besides, farming badly can be highly entertaining...