Farm and Lit

Locavores gather to mingle, munch Eating close to home catching on as way to promote health

2011-06-28T06:47:00.000-04:00

Locavores gather to mingle, munch Eating close to home catching on as way to promote health

Word of the Week: Locavore: people who eat food produced locally. Want to become a locavore? Maybe just for a Saturday night? Go here: http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/344/locavore.html

Grass Fed Beef Market Ready to Explode

2011-06-28T06:35:00.001-04:00

http://hayandforage.com/livestock/beef/grass-fed-beef-market-explode-0623/

Gotta love news like this. Keep up the grass-fed love!

More Words from the Root Cellar

2011-06-23T14:35:00.002-04:00

Can anyone spell busy? I can't, don't have time. (I got a list this long... sorry inside joke.) Anyway, I have been getting some keyboard time in and have the columns/reviews to prove it. Also very excited about offering the VERY FIRST Barclay Farms Newsletter soon, so if you live within a hundred miles of us, drop a line that you want grass fed eggs and chicken or garden produce or at least to know more about it, and we'll get you all the way hooked up. So until I get my poop together and can crank out a few posts a week, here's some columns and reviews... if anyone actually hangs around here anymore lol.

http://www.portlandbookreview.com/featured/3-17-11-winter-is-overrated/
http://www.portlandbookreview.com/featured/5-15-11-on-good-reading-health/
http://www.portlandbookreview.com/words-from-the-root-cellar/6-15-11-grass-cattle-wars/
http://www.portlandbookreview.com/biographies-memoirs/sheepish-two-women-fifty-sheep-enough-wool-to-save-the-planet/

Words words everywhere... what was I saying?

2011-02-24T00:36:00.004-05:00

Plugging books tonight, briefly. Things have been so chaotic since we got back from Denver that I’ve been ready to tear my hair out… when I haven’t been coughing up a lung. Oh yes, the winter crud is here with a vengeance, for a second time in a month, and between that and sixty-hour weeks, I’m wishing for some peace and quiet next to the Platte River. Add another foot of snow and some freezing rain to the mix and I’m calling in dead and sticking in bed with another good book.

One redeeming thing lately has been a plethora of excellent books, from Lev Grossman’s Codex (you might remember the review of The Magicians, which is also a great novel by a fantastic author) to Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart (also see the movie with Brendan Fraser. Awesome!). There was also Paula Brackston’s The Witch’s Daughter, Caribou Island, and From Girl to Goddess by Valerie Frankel. At the risk of sounding like the guy from Reading Rainbow on PBS, you don’t have to take my word for it, pick up one of these, and other books to, at your local library.

Peace out, I need a shot of prose. And when words and work get too clogged up in my head, a BodyRock.tv workout is exactly what the doctor ordered. (Count the number of cliches I've used in this post and I'll sic the bull on you.)

P.S. Don’t forget to check out the PREMIER issue of Portland Book Review. A digital copy is available on their website. And that ad for readers on the last page? Oh yeah, I got to use my InDesign. Score!

Reviews:
The Jane Austen Companion To Love
Greek Myths by Ann Turnbull
Thirteen Years Later by Jasper Kent
And Check out Smooth and If You Love Me, You'd Think This Was Cute under the 14 Reads for Love section.

If You Loved Me, You'd Think This Was Cute

2011-02-03T22:33:00.003-05:00

Check out the featured book reviews in time for VD... that's Valentine's Day, guys and yeah, I made the same mistake. Very important not to confuse candy, wine and roses with syphilis. Happy Reading!

http://sacramentobookreview.com/featured/14-great-reads-to-celebrate-love/

Words from the Root Cellar

2011-02-01T17:25:00.003-05:00

I love books. There's a shocker. I also love agriculture. Again, shocker. So the most exciting thing I've done lately? Getting to write about BOOKS and AG for the newly formed Portland Book Review! Find the link to the column below and make sure to check out, and check back often, for all the AWESOME book reviews there.

http://www.portlandbookreview.com/featured/2-1-11-words-from-the-root-cellar/

Fun Site

2011-01-29T09:39:00.002-05:00

Just discovered this site, http://www.organicauthority.com/, haven explored it much, but offered good advice for spring cleaning so if that's not a recommendation I don't know what is lol.

Also loved Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma," which will render one thoughtful when dining out and unable to ever look at the cereal aisle the same again. Review.

Posting Denver pics soon!

10 Reasons to Learn Sustainable Home Cooking

2011-01-26T17:32:00.000-05:00

http://www.sustainabletable.org/spread/handouts/10_Reasons_Home_Cooking.pdf

Off the Clock

2011-01-07T08:59:00.000-05:00

For all you writers out there who have a life, (aka a job, kids, livestock... okay maybe not livestock, but you get my point), this guy's philosophy is right on the money.

http://sacramentobookreview.com/viewpoints-weekly-columns/1-6-10-off-the-clock-on-preparation-inspiration-time-management/

Book Review: Meridon by Philippa Gregory

2011-01-01T21:18:00.001-05:00

The Wideacre Trilogy has three very unique heroines and Meridon, or Sarah Lacey, is no less formidable than her predecessors.

Raised as a Gypsy bareback rider, Meridon grows up ignorant of her Lacey blood, only sensing that she doesn’t belong in the rough life she leads with half-remembered dreams plaguing her. She remembers a copper haired girl and a place called Wide, but beyond that, she is a girl with only half a past.

Her skills with horses lands her and her sister, born on the same day to two very different mothers, in a circus act. But Meridon’s fears of heights and flying like an acrobat put her sister in the spotlight. When Meridon’s greatest fear is realized, her life changes forever. She washes up at Wideacre, realizing the past she should have had. But money is not all it appears to be, and Meridon learns, like her foremothers, that Wideacre and the Squires of Wideacre are not always of an accord.

Meridon concludes the Wideacre saga, a satisfying conclusion to the struggles of three generations of Lacey women.

January 1, 2011

2011-01-01T19:59:00.001-05:00

Here’s to starting the New Year off right! Who made midnight last night? I passed out on the couch after too much champagne around 10, but was up again at 5 am so might have caught New Years in the Pacific somewhere. :-p

Okay, so resolutions, let’s see, the usual suspects: Lose Weight, Read More, Exercise More, Write More, Submit More, Eat Less… maybe I need better, less self-centered resolutions, like stay in contact with friends more, make more friends, make more time for friends, now we’re getting somewhere. It’s too easy to tip-tap away at a WIP alone in my room, neglecting the people I care about. Now, what else? Try to be more open with my honey, that’d be a good one. Recently, I made the mistake of not talking about the things that were bothering me, letting them fester and tried to hide them with profuse amounts of emotional distance and cheap booze. Not really conducive relationship builders.

I’d like to work smarter and take more vacations, enjoy life more instead of whipping myself when not working like a maniacal self-flagellating clergyman. I need to learn to relax and not panic when the realization hits that I’m having fun and not working.

So will I stick of my resolutions and make 2011 the most productive and enjoyable year ever, even if the grindstone takes the skin off the end of my nose? Probably not. But it’s good to take stock, reflect, and remember that the real things that matter in life are spending time with people you enjoy, who enjoy you, letting them know you appreciate them, and experiencing life rather than let life experience you. Because chances are if it’s the latter, there will be some unpleasant exploration of your nether regions with long cylindrical objects.

Happy New Year everyone!

Transitions

2010-12-08T12:20:00.002-05:00

In this, my blog post for the semester (though far from my last post ever), I’d like to talk about transitions. We spend much of our lives in a state of flux; so much so that few of us even notice. Nothing is stagnant and everything around and within us is constantly changing. We’re often too busy to notice these changes, measured in minutes, days, and seasons, transitions we make moving from work to home, relationship to relationship, age to age, semester to semester.

Webster defines transition a “passage from one state, stage, subject, or place to another : change”; “a movement, development, or evolution from one form, stage, or style to another”; or “an abrupt change in energy state or level (as of an atomic nucleus or a molecule) usually accompanied by loss or gain of a single quantum of energy.”

With this in mind, remember that transitions are not just physical, going from place to place, life experience to life experience; nor are they merely within, our changing thoughts, actions, and personalities; nor is it just the seasons, fall passing to winter, the cycle of holidays coming around again and again, marked with the same mind-numbingly annoying Christmas tunes. It’s all of these, and they’re happening all the time. And things that happen again and again are things we should pay attention to. Whether you believe in serendipity or not, repeated events may help nudge us toward larger transitions and who knows where we’ll end up?

A Lesson in Home Butchering

2010-12-07T12:28:00.001-05:00

Last week my second to last cow finally calved. Ironically, she’s also the mother to the cow (10U) who has had a special needs calf, both of whom have been living in the barn for the past two months. 10U has a nice set of horns on her, rare in my herd, and has been high-headed since birth. She had her first calf this year and he came down with navel ill almost immediately and we’ve been messing with him ever since. (Jason and I were in bed one night going, “I’ve never seen that much puss.” So yeah, calvie was pretty gross.)

So the day Pammy calved, Dad and I decided little Shrek (10U’s calf) needed to be put down. We’d sold all our beef for the year and didn’t have any for our freezer, and since the cow kept charging Dad after he hand fed her ear corn for over sixty days, we decided a first-calve heifer would make a decent addition to the freezer for the winter. We didn’t have the extra money to have her butchered, since Christmas is coming, so, since it was deer season and the guys have honed their skills with butchering, we decided to butcher the cow ourselves. (Well Tom Bemrose and I decided, but that’s another story.)

Dad shot the cow and she bled out. Then we chained her back legs to the tractor bucket and drug her around to the west side of the barn. By this time, Jeff and Tom showed up after hunting all morning and not seeing a damn thing, and stayed to help. They’d done plenty of deer, so the thickness of the cowhide surprised them, but once we got the hide peeled back over her ass end, the weight of it drug it down her sides and we got to the head. Once there, we cut to the joint in her neck closest to the skull and kept paring until the joint showed. I was holding the cow’s head by the horns, rocking it back and forth so Jeff could sever the joint and when it went, it all went, hide, head and all, right to the ground.

We stopped to have a beer and study the situation.

Dad lowered the cow down and Tom carefully slit the belly, being careful not to puncture the intestines and drown us all in cow-gut stench. The intestines came out good, but Jeff and I had to hang Tom by his ankles so he could cut the esophagus out, dipping far down into her rib cage.

By then, all that was left to do was hanging the cow in the barn rafters and let her cure. A beef has to hang for fourteen days before cutting. We got her up without a hitch.

Last night on the way home I was listening to Michael Pollen’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, another book that’s been on my reading list for some time. He talks about the feelings involved with killing the living thing that is to be your supper. I get asked about that a lot actually, doesn’t it bother you to eat the thing you’ve raised? The answer: no. I give my animals the best life I can. Many of my cows have been with me 8-12 years (which is longer than most of my romantic relationships all put together, which is neither here nor there). We expect the steers to end up on our plates and a cow is given every chance to have a successful place in the herd. If a cow is sour, like 10U, she only gets so many strikes, then it’s off to the stockyards or the freezer. I feel bad that we have to cull cows at all. If it was up to me, I’d keep every one of them. But that’s not the relationship people have developed with domestic livestock over the last millennia. It’s easier, I think, in a lot of ways to know the animal you eat. You’re there from day one, from inception, you see the quality of life they’ve had and give them as good and clean a death as possible. You’re able to treat the carcass with respect.

Butchering 10U could not have gone any better and I feel no moral pangs about it because I know the kind of life, and death, she had. When people are removed from the day to day life of animals, it’s easier to feel bad for them, to turn to vegetarian lifestyles, and condemn people who raise livestock for meat. I don’t agree with industrial style feedlots and the cows at work, in a confinement dairy, just about make me weep, but when animals are raised on grass and are allowed to have a strong herd unit, as nature intended, there’s nothing to feel sorry for. In fact, there’s a reverence that comes with harvesting your own food, allowing one to feel that much more connected to the food going into one’s mouth. There’s also the fact that butchering is such a big project that it takes several people to do it, so the social connection is there as well. In a digital, consumer, industrial world, connectivity, in person, is becoming the most important thing of all. And how much more basic can you get than getting together to butcher, swap stories, and remember the basics of being human?

P.S.

I didn’t want to post the pics here in case there’s some squeamish readers, but pics are on my Facebook.

Pastured Poultry

2010-12-07T08:40:00.000-05:00

Here's a template for making the farm make money, the age old debate between my dad and I on how to do it.

http://www.ibiblio.org/farming-connection/grazing/nypa/nypa9.htm

Goodreads.com

2010-12-07T00:27:00.001-05:00

If you haven't found it yet, goodreads.com is a great place for bibliophiles to hang out. Be sure to add me as a friend! :-p

Saddle Broncs and Bulls

2010-12-07T00:04:00.002-05:00

We visited some rodeo friends while up north picking up the bull for the girls. When I got home, I found some pics on facebook of some bronc riding friends and remembered to devote at least one post to rodeo.

Nostalgia and Requiem

2010-12-06T13:25:00.002-05:00

This time of year makes me nostalgic. As the cold and Christmas set in, as the last of the turkey and stuffing get consumed or thrown out, a countdown, of sorts, starts.

My grandpa and I were very close. He made no bones about me being his favorite. After he died, I used to dream about him being at family events, Christmas and such, but I was the only one who could see him, who knew he was there. He died December 10, 1999 and even though I do my best to ignore the date, celebrating his birthday, August 10, instead, there’s still something ticking like a time bomb in my head, ticking down the days. He was the best of all of us and death is roughest on those left behind. Our family is not particularly good at letting go and far from the best about acknowledging our loss and moving on from it. I still compare every guy I date to my grandpa and it’s unfair because who can live up to the angelic memory imposed on the dead? In truth, my grandpa was active, vibrant, with a temper to match and beer or whiskey for anyone who came to visit at the house. He worked hard, he had to. His father kicked him out of the house when he was fourteen and he finished high school, something few did in the 1930s and 40s, while he lived and worked the farm for his aunt, in the house I currently live in. It’s hard to imagine that my kids won’t know him, that they won’t share those memories of him with me. It’s still hard to fathom that I’ll never see him again, that I’ll never be able to drive him around the way he joked about, or that I never got to have a beer with him. He’ll never comment on my cows; and he would have loved having them around. And he would have listened and sympathized with any problem I came to him with.

It’s harder sometimes I think to be one left behind, to feel the vacuum of those empty shoes, and see that while the space may be filled it, the puzzle piece is not the original, but instead one cut to fit. And you feel the weight from the family, leaning toward the center, most unaware that there’s a space left at all.

And the countdown ticks on.

Winter Milking

2010-12-06T13:24:00.002-05:00

Milking cattle in winter is a unique experience. All the metal and steel suck the cold in until its almost colder in the barns than out, even with the canvases rolled down on the outside of the barns to keep the wind inside to a minimum. I usually milk nights, so with the darkness outside, the barn is a shining beacon in a white, or black, winter landscape.

The sand steams when you go out to bring cows into the catch pen and subsequently into the parlor. When it’s very cold, when you look back towards the parlor from the far side of the barn, all the group of cows between you and the parlor, a fog settles in from all the steam off the sand, warmed from the cows’ bodies, and their breath converges so it’s almost impossible to see the milk house. Scraping gets challenging when the ground finally freezes hard, but until then the manure is sloppy, like pushing a half-melted chocolate milkshake, or rolling chocolate chunk ice cream if its colder. When the muck hits the white snow, it slops all over and the white is spoiled.

The milk lines inside are like blood vessels. They carry white life-giving fluid through metal veins. It heats the hoses enough to keep them pliable, but barely enough to warm your hands. We wear two pairs of rubber gloves and stick our hands in the flanks of the cows to warm them, much to the cows’ chagrin. Maybe it’s our course jokes about feelin’ up udders that makes them cranky.

It’s cold enough to make your teeth and knees ache. Or maybe it’s how all the metal and cement draw the cold, suck it in, and breathe out with it. When we wash down at the end of the shift, all the heat vanishes from the milk lines. Fingers are stiff and fumble on the milkers, chilled by the metal and rubber. The cold is like an entity, burning through wet clothes and heavy boots, stealing presence of mind and hope for dawn. Teeth chattering, you walk to your car.

Book Review: The Favored Child by Philippa Gregory

2010-12-06T13:16:00.002-05:00

Picking up where Wideare left off, The Favored Child loses no momentum as is as amazing as the first installment of Philippa Gregory’s Lacey saga.

Julia Lacey, joint heir to the Wideacre estate, tells the story of her family, her aunt Beatrice who ruined Wideacre, and her and her cousin’s, Richard, attempts to revitalize the estate again. But things go horribly wrong with the tragic death of a horse and a hawk, which see what the adults should have seen all along.

Love, cruelty, unexpected family legacies, and the unique magic of Wideacre permeate the pages as the specter of the Lacey’s incest emerges from an idyllic past. Don’t miss this second installment, or the third and final book (review coming soon!), Meridon, which concludes the Wideacre series.

What I’m Reading:

2010-12-06T13:13:00.003-05:00

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Review? LOVE IT. READ IT. It’s Harry Potter meets Narnia…for adults. It has a great voice, adult themes, realistic characters with adult motivations. It’s like R version of popular YA fiction, complete with underage drinking, teenage and twenty-something angst, sex, drugs, magic, coming-of-age themes, and everything adults will love that YA fiction couldn’t provide. It’s what happened after coming back through the wardrobe and after leaving Hogwarts, with new characters and some of the best prose I’ve ever encountered. Lev Grossman’s work has gone to that level most books aspire to, to carry you away, and which few achieve, which is even cooler because that’s exactly what the main character, Quentin Coldwater, notes about literature. I’ll be waiting on pins and needles for The Magician King, the sequel, which is due out this summer.

The Wicked Wyckerly II

2010-12-06T13:02:00.004-05:00

I blogged a while ago about a book called The Wicked Wyckerly, a book that I didn’t review, but it looked pretty good from the review someone else wrote. So I ordered it through paperbackswap.com and burned through in on the elliptical in a few days. Let me just say while it was far from the worst romance I’ve ever read, it certainly didn’t set my head spinning.

Now, I’ll admit I’m biased about romance novels, read too many as a teenager I expect, so perhaps I’m not the most impartial judge here. If you like romance, awesome. This book is probably something you’ll really enjoy. It is funny, in a syrupy, rated G kind of a way. And it is sexy, in a virgin-gets-an-orgasm-in-a-minute kind of a way. It’s well-written and has a solid, somewhat implausibly modern storyline, and while it’s a good escape from the family holiday-type read, it’s a little too romantic for my tastes. But, if you like romance, check it out. It’s available on my trade list on paperbackswap.com and, as usual, from Amazon. Check out the author’s page at www.patriciarice.com.

An Apology and Explanation

2010-12-06T13:00:00.001-05:00

First off, let me apologize to you, faithful readers, for the onslaught of posts to ensue. A final project demanded blog posts and pages and this is the last rush to meet the quota in number and quality. Also, there’s work I’ve been compiling throughout the semester going up on other pages, loads of links, and various pictures unashamedly bragging on my cattle and farm along the way. Try to enjoy :)

P!nk - Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)

2010-12-04T20:54:00.000-05:00

First Snow and What's in your Book?

2010-12-02T08:01:00.000-05:00

We got our first real snow of the season last night and I saw something like six accidents driving home from school. Supposedly, according to a radio station, there were sixteen or eighteen, of course through this little patch of area where I had to drive. Something about six lanes of freeway in both directions being slowed to a crawl because of being unable to see the lines in the road is just freaking scary. But, made it home safe and sound and had a stiff drink and a nap and it’s all good this morning.

I made a list a few days ago that I thought I’d share. It’s called “Things I’ve Used As Bookmarks.” Don’t you about y’all, but sometimes you just need a bookmark and there’s nothing appropriate handy. Those fifty-odd markers that float around? The gnomes abscond with them just at the right moment, leaving you in the lurch. So these are some of the things that find themselves doing double-duty between my pages. Feel free to add your own. I have a feeling this could get good. :-)

Napkin
Corner of clean tissue
Check that needs cashed
Knitting stitch holder
$50 bills
Rubber bands
Deflated balloons
Empty condom wrappers
Earrings, bracelets, and other jewelry
Grass and other vegetation
Corner of pasta box
Cookbook. Yeah, the whole thing
Other books
Clean coffee filter
Hair rubber bands
Hair clippy things
Toy cow
Pencil or pen, crayons or markers
Fruit snacks (still in the bag of course)
Hand weights
Athletic shoes
Stapler
Cell phone
And wallet

How to Impress Typography

2010-11-30T17:48:00.000-05:00