Reading the Past

As I was leaning on the fence, looking into the pasture, I noticed that a big patch of ground that tends to stay soggy during rainy periods was covered with a leafy, low profile weed with a pretty blue and white flower.  I got a little worried that this patch had been damaged by the extensive rain of the last year and the fact that this area is high traffic and perpetually grazed on the way in and out of the barn.  I headed inside to do some internet searching. 

I am shocked, in some ways, that it only took about an hour of searching "small blue and white flower weed Hawaii wet" and extensive clicking and checking from the College of Tropical Agriculture site to find out what that weed was!  What a powerful tool the internet is. 

Turns out this weed is high protein and quite valuable, and exactly what I would plant, had I any clue that I was supposed to, on that wet, almost marshy high-traffic area!  Amazing. 

I found some wonderful old articles on forage and found out that basically everything anyone modern has told me about lots of different things that grow out here are WRONG!  Honohono grass is high protein and not water-filled garbage!  Those horrible red-stemmed persistant weeds are purslane, and you guessed, high protein forage - and apparently, the seeds do very well coming through a digestive tract, because they grow like monsters in my manured garden.  I am finding that every weed I am diligently turfing out in the veggies is a high quality forage plant for either horses or sheep or chickens.  I still don't want them in my veggies, but it is so reassuring to hear that the people of the past weren't so dependent on imported feed and that it is possible to raise grazing animals in my area.  (Horses included, provided they have good hooves - which Ohia, poor boy, never did). 

There is a wealth of information - although it takes a certain level of knowledge (which I don't necessarily have) to navigate - on the CTAHR site and I am just beyond myself with glee on having dipped just a spoonful into the forage possibilities. 

I am also very disappointed that this knowledge feels lost (or at least buried) - these articles are old and there aren't field trials with different forages anymore, it seems.  People just rely on shipping to provide alfalfa and continent grown grains.  And although the local food market is burgeoning here, it is more about restaurants or selling to a specialty market than a serious effort to feed our state.  Eighty-five percent of our food is brought in from elsewhere!  That's a serious problem if there is a natural disaster, or even a longshoreman strike. 

In the back of my mind, basically because many experienced cattlemen and horsemen have told me (all of them, like me, from other islands), I have had the idea that my area was a wasteland for raising anything but rubbish without heroic efforts.  Reading these articles from the past have given me a different view - and looking at those "weeds" in a different light. 

Sold Our First Sheep

Turned out the guy and his neighbor only wanted one (they have a few more at home), so they took Buddy.  It was a little hard to see him go - he was the one I had to supplement with formula last January when the ewe halfway rejected him - but we really are over-run with males.  That will leave two or three wethers to go, and we've decided to sell/trade Elvis for a new ram.  We'll keep Sam and the new ram lamb, but we need a new line in, as well. 

I am still not where I want to be with our flock, but weeding out some of the rams and wethers will make handling all of them a little easier. 

Another thing I need to do is order some dual purpose chicks to replace the elderly hens I have now.  In a few months, I am also going to order some turkey poults to try my hand at that. 

Between a few sheep here and a few eggs there and some turkeys next fall, the farm won't be paying for itself, but it will be a start, and you can't beat feeding your family off your own place.  Considering how expensive food costs are in Hawaii, it is more valuable than the initial bottom line looks. 

Who Should Go?

A couple of people have expressed interest in purchasing sheep for lawn-mowing purposes.  I don't really want to sell any of the ewes, and I have already promised Thing 2 (and another sheep) to a co-worker, so I guess I am looking at Buddy, Sam, Koa, or Hulu - or any two of them.  The new ram lamb and Elvis, I am keeping.

To be honest, I wouldn't mind getting rid of Elvis, but he's too dangerous to sell to anyone who has small kids (as both of my prospective buyers have).

I'd like to use the money from these sheep to buy a new ram and to put into buying materials for the ram pen.

It's surprisingly hard to sell the sheep - but that is kind of what they are for and we are certainly over-run with more males than we need.  It's hard to go from too many to hoping nothing happens to your ram and your back-up.

Nice Surprise!

Not a total surprise - I did know Niele was due soon - but came home to a lamb in the pen.  He was born out in pasture and actually made it in with the rest of the flock.  He must have been born this morning, because he's all dry and clean and lively. 

And he's HUGE.  He's bigger than Thing 2, who is coming on 7 weeks, I believe.  I was kind of hoping for a throwback to grandma, who was Dodie and looked very Barbado-ish, but he's a lovely black lamb with a white cap on his head and two white stockings on his hind legs.  Handsome, even if I do long for more variation on the baa, baa, black sheep run we've got going here. 

I love it when things go well without me worrying about them.  I took a look at her last night and thought we had several days to go.  I guess she had me fooled. 

She's a noisy mom - calling when he is standing right there next to her.  She was like that the first time, too.  She had triplets her first time out.  Maybe she things she's missing some lambs here - but he's enough lamb to cover two and a half of her last three. 

They both seem healthy and I hope it continues that way, because losing two sheep in the last month was rough. 

First Pressure Canning

Since my kids didn't like the frozen turkey soup, I decided to try my hand at canning it.  I have cooked in the pressure cooker (beans and taro - separately, not together, of course) but I haven't tried canning.  I am getting wildly different canning times, depending on which recipe I am looking at.  I don't quite know which time to pick - it ranges from 25 minutes to 75 minutes!  I guess I will go with the longer time, just in case - and hope my jars don't explode in the canner. 

Hopefully, I will also have time to pull back the black plastic and turn over the soil in the outside garden.  It's time to plant broccoli and lettuce!  Since we took down the fencing to make a pen around the taro patch, I am not sure how I am going to keep the hens from scratching up my seeds - or Melly from digging her little holes. 

I let some poha grow where my bean and cucumber supports are and it is sure taking over.  I like poha, though, and so I am more inclined to move my supports than dig it up.  We used to have lots of poha here, but it all disappeared for a few years.  Poha is a yellow-orange berry that grows in a husk like a tomatilla.  It makes a great jam, and would probably make a good substitute in a relish for cranberry, in case I do reach my all-homegrown Thanksgiving next year. 

Lepo's dressing came off, and it was probably a good thing.  She's not bearing much weight on the affected foot, but the flesh exposed by the missing claw seems to be toughening up and it is dry and not infected.  I will give her one more day of penicillin and talk to the vet down in Hilo about whether to switch her to something else for a longer time.  It's still sunny and dry, so I let her out with the flock in the big pasture - it was my husband's idea, so she'd be encouraged to eat more.  Yesterday, she lay down a lot rather than grazing. 

Because we've had a such a wet year, the basement bathroom grout needed extra treatment.  I just tried some oxyclean, since scrubbing with a normal cleaner didn't do all that I wanted.  I hope this works! 

I think I am going to be exhausted heading into the new school week, rather than rested, but it isn't restful knowing that there is so much to be done at home, either.  At least, I hope I will have conquered the powdery mildew, gotten the garden ready for my greens and broccoli, and have a bunc of soup in my pantry! 

Sunny Day - Time for Farm Inventory

One ewe has a claw injury - gave her a shot of penicillin and wrapped it well.  Put her and surviving bottle lamb in kalo patch to kind of weed around it and provide them with small safe place to be.  Quite a lot of horn missing, so not sure how that will all work out, poor thing.

Five grapefruit on previously non-productive tree!  Yay!

Lots of lemons, as usual.  Yay!  But not as exciting as new fruit varieties.

Olives are recovering well from inadvertent sheep pruning.

Sweet potatoes are flourishing.  Only one purple variety growing true - the rest have seemed to have crossbred into something new.

All cucurbits are covered in powdery mildew - sprayed them all with Neem oil solution.

Walked 6 miles, because it was a beautiful day.

Washed all the bedding, because it is both sunny and windy - so things dry faster. 

Fertilized all fruit trees after weeding underneath them - lemon, tangerine, orange, lime, guava, olive, jaboticaba, and banana. 

Got the kids to wash the cars, the dogs, and the windows for Christmas money.  Everything just feels cleaner!  

Tomorrow's tasks:  making turkey stock and putting it up and baking, probably pumpkin something or other.

Oh, and some grading.  Then it is time to head back to work. 

Looong Day!

Today was our Sophomore Biathlon at school.  The kids biked 10 miles and ran 3.  I stood at the finish and recorded 144 finishing times.  The funniest were the 3rd lappers, because we didn't reset the clock and they thought they took over two and a half hours and were sure they failed PE.  The clock was off by over an hour, so they were mostly all good. 

It made for a long day.  After that was done, I sat at my desk and graded LATE work.  There was so much of it, that I didn't get to the actually due work, which means that I will be working this weekend.  Oh well.

We lost one of the bottle lambs, which is sad.  We just couldn't get him to eat enough and he never ate the creep feed after Audrey died - he sampled it before she died, but then wasn't interested.  He did eat grass, but we were forcing him to drink milk replacer and he just wasn't getting enough.  We've done fairly well with our sheep at lambing, so I hope we can get back to the "hair sheep have so few problems with lambing" norm.  The other lamb, who was the weaker one at the outset, is eating well and spends his days out in the pasture with the flock.  We still keep him separate at night, so he won't get squished without a ewe to watch out for him.  He can see the other sheep on the other side of the wire divider and he just knows where to go at night.  It's been fairly chilly, so he sleeps in a bowl with high sides.

There isn't much else going on - we're staying home for Thanksgiving because I would like to spend some time with my older son - we only see him on Sundays for Mass and sometimes dinner after.  If we went to my brother-in-law's, he'd be off with his cousins and we wouldn't be able to talk much.  I wish my older daughter could come home, too, but she's staying with my mom.  We'll see them all at Christmas - which isn't that far away.

Next Thanksgiving, I hope that everything on the table, except the wheat for the bread stuffing, will be grown or raised on my place (we made the bread from bought flour - I guess that kind of counts).  This year, it's only the greens and the sweet potatoes that are grown here, but in March I am going to order turkey poults and I'd like to get some seed potatoes, too.  My sweet potatoes are already started.  I've only had luck with pumpkins one year, but maybe if I grow them in the greenhouse.... I would sure be proud of us, if we could grow or raise next year's feast!