Christmas

Christmas very wonderful even though Grant had to work on Christmas Day. We decorated a tree with our roommate and her friend. I made a star out of a cereal box, toilet paper roll, and foil. Grant and I made some stockings out a free blanket he got. We went snowshoeing and opened presents on Christmas Eve.

First Two Weeks in Eagle

Things are going well here. It has been warm, snowy, and clear and cold. My job is going pretty well. I am starting to get the hang of dealing with little people, some of which are completely crazy. Getting off at 12:30ish on Wednesday is nice because we can go hiking. So far we have been to Sylvan Lake State Park which was at least knee deep snow where we took all the dogs for a fun little time. The following weekend we went back to explore a cave and see an underground stream, which was great. We will definitely have to go back when Kylie comes. This weekend we did part of the Ute Trail and Hanging Lake Trail. We should go back to Hanging Lake when all the parents come. It was incredibly beautiful. It seems as though all the people in this valley are married with kids, so finding other friends is going slowly. Well I must be off to work now. Enjoy the photos.

The First Days in Eagle

We moved in on to our place on Friday.  Amazingly all of our crap fits in here.  The apartment is extremely nice.  The Eagle River is about 20 feet away.  Two dogs and two rats live here.  We found a new bank and began learning where things are located.  On Saturday we went camping with a friend on the Colorado River where there are some warm springs within hiking distance.  It was not too cold yet.  On Sunday, we relaxed, grocery shopped, and I got ready to start my new job tomorrow.

Yosemite and the trip to Eagle

We started our trip to Eagle when I flew into San Francisco where Grant was waiting.  On Saturday we drove to Yosemite.  We went for a hike in a grove of Giant Sequoias and then drove down to Tunnel Ridge for a nice view of the valley.  The next day we hiked up Vernal and Nevada Falls.  It was quite tiring.  Then we drove to Glacier Point for another nice view.  We also walked around in the Valley and went to a few exhibits.  We saw a mother and cub black bear walking around from the shuttle.  On the was out, we stopped and hiked to Soda Springs and near a lake.  We left through the Tioga Pass into Nevada.  It was very beautiful and not as scary as I thought it would be.  We went to Cedar City, UT and met some friends from RedCliff.  After two nights of hanging out with them, we left for Colorado.  We got to Eagle, but our roomate wasn't home, so we spent the night with some friends.

My Trip Home

I flew back to Austin to see the family.  The entire family came in on Sunday for a Thanksgiving/Christmas meal with everyone.  I got to ride around on Pistol several times which was very fun.  I also saw Kylie's gymnastics and choir concert.  We also went shopping for some new teaching clothes.

The Final Week at the Farm

We wrapped up our work at the farm this week.  We thought for sure that we would be picking and husking corn all week, but we ended up pickings and husking tens of thousands of tomatillos.  We got all the cars packed up before I left on the 18th.  They are extremely full. 

Crater Lake

This week Grant's parents came to visit.  We gave them a tour of the farm, historic Jacksonville, Ashland, and the best part, Crater Lake.  We went out to eat lots of delicious times and played quite a bit of hearts.  Crater Lake was amazingly blue and very beautiful with the snow all around.

The Chicken Slaughter

This week we slaughtered chickens before heading down to San Francisco for a free music festival.  The slaughtering went ok.  It was a lot of work.  Once the chicken was actually killed, it was a whole lot better.  In San Francisco, we stayed with Grant's aunt and uncle.  Some friends from Utah met us there.  It was great fun.

The Equinox

This week was pretty much the same as other weeks.  Grant balanced egg on the equinox to see if it really works.  It did.

Willy Wonka's Wonderous Seed Cleaning Machine

Hello,
We had a nice week of random activities. The first half of the week we wood-sealed some decks, the bridge, and the hen nest boxes. We started clearing some rocks from an area that had to be dug up a few months ago to fix the septic tank. We also moved the goats, sheep, chicks, and cows as usual. We also got most of our portable garden finished. They will be self-watering containers. They are made from 18 gallon Rubbermaid containers and have the water reservoir separated from the soil by the lid, which we modified. They are supposedly good for growing vegetables because since you don't have to water as much, you don't have to continuously fertilize the plants. We'll see how it works. We planted a bunch of seeds, but the kitty ended up using half the tray for a litter box. There were are couple other funny animal stories as well. So, on Friday, we were trying to get ready to go out to eat and listen to some music. We couldn't find Grant's pants anywhere. The apartment isn't that big. Finally, we decided that the most logical solution was that the puppies came in and took them somewhere. Then, today I found them by the compost pile when I was doing chores. They had taken them! Later, when moving the chickens (the ones in the portable 10'x10' pen), Saddie ended up in the pen. Grant lifts up the front to drag it, and the chickens run in and out of it as they look for the food we put in the grass. Well aparently, Saddie ran in, and when we were putting the water back in the pen, Grant noticed her in there. Silly animals.
We have pics and a movie of the Willy Wonka Seed Cleaning Machine
http://picasaweb.google.com/Lhusta/WillyWonkaAndThePortableGarden#
http://video.google.com/videouploadsuccess?docid=6646984120370159715

Radish, etc.

The weather this week was trying to be fall. It was cool, breezy, and cloudy on some days, but it still managed to get into the upper 90s. We spent most of the week processing the radish seed, and we finished! Hundreds of pounds of duff that needs to be run through a machine to winnow it. We also spent quite a bit of time putting the puppies back in the goat pen only to have them escape several minutes later. Talk about annoying. We moved the cows, sheep, and goats also. Nothing exciting is planned for this weekend because the Franklins are camping, so we're in charge again, but we're planning to take a delayed Labor Day and go down to the coast either next weekend or the one after that. No pictures this week because all the batteries are dead, so I can't get the photos off the camera. Hope everyone has a good week.

Aug. 23

The final week of being in charge of the farm went well. No major problems. The dogs and quarantine goats kept escaping but other than that, all the animals and plants are growing well. We finished harvesting the radish and began processing the seed. There are a few pictures of that. We also have been preserving the harvest by freezing squash and peaches, drying tomatoes, and making pesto. Hope everyone else is doing well.

Absess

This week was HOT!! I checked the thermometer read 107 in the shade one time when I checked on it. The heat makes it pretty tough during the day, but at least we have the creek to hop in as our natural air conditioner. We haven't really had that many calamities this week. Only about 3. First, one of the chicks lost the ability to walk. Apparently it's common with the modern meat chicken. They grow so fast that their legs (and internal organs) can't support them. Regular factory farms combat this with subtherapeutic injections of antibiotics that reduce inflammation in the joints. We put the chick in the brooder with food, water, and kelp (a mineral supplement). The key is prevention, so we put the chicks on a diet, so hopefully they won't outgrow themselves. Then Grant noticed a sheep that was scooting around on its front knees. We caught it and checked the front hooves which were really rotted, so we cleaned them. Grant and Daniel ended up catching a couple more for some emergency hoof treatment, until we can get the squeeze and trim them all. Then yesterday we noticed some bulges on two goats. They turned out to be abscesses, a common goat ailment. We had to quarantine the goats, but one escaped. One of the abscesses burst, and we had to catch the goat, squeeze out the pus, irrigate the wound with iodine, and hope it heals up. The goats are supposed to be fine with them bursting naturally, but we can lance them if we want. We hope that we can lance them, but we have to wait until Tim gets home to get the ok. It was pretty fun doing surgery on the goat, Falfy (Falfy stands for False Malfy because the goat looks like the other goat, Malfy, short for Malformed, due to the deformed horn bud and folded up ears.) We caught another raccoon, but to our knowledge, no chickens died this week. We harvested radish in the evening, and next week you should have some photos on the radish seed cleaning process.

Random Tasks

This was a pretty slow week. We are in the late summer slump when most of the crops are maturing their seed. We banded the cattle which is along the same idea of castrating. We sorted out the bull calves and ran them through the squeeze where we used a bander to put a rubber band around their testicles. The rubber band is set to a specific tension which cuts off the blood supply, so they just dry up and fall off (like an umbilical cord.) It was pretty fun. Then we were the farm cleaning and organizing brigade. We got the barns, the nursery, and the greenhouse all cleaned up. We also began to havest the radish for their seeds. We will get some pictures of the process next week. We are now in charge of the farm for 2 weeks because the Franklins are going on vacation. It's going to be fun. Hopefully we don't have any calamaties to deal with. I hope everyone is doing well and will write soon!

It is definitely cooling down here but not enough to kill off mosquitoes. This week we moved the sheep twice and the goats. We also set up the yurt only to have it fall down again. However, we may have found the problem. The rafters are all different lengths. We'll see what will be done about this, but for now, the yurt project is on hold. We also helped Daniel put up rails on a fence in the corral. They had to be replaced because they were rickety, and it is time to band the male calves. On Wednesday, Grant and I went to two farms to cut flowers and arrange bouquets for the CSA. We don't exactly know why it became our job this week, but it was fun to do something new. On Thursday, the chicks went into their tractors! On Friday, we found two legs and some other chicks were injured. Apparently, something (possibly a fox) came up to the chicken wire sides and started gnawing on the chicks as they slept pressed against the sides. We spent some time cutting boards and filling sandbags to protect the chicks at night. We transplanted the last crop, kale. It will overwinter and make seed next year. We also planted some fall crops for us to eat-carrots, lettuce, beets, peas, chard, spinach, and pok choi. On Friday, we also weeded a perennial flower bed. We left for a little backpacking trip on Friday afternoon. Expecting advice on where to go, we went to the ranger station, but instead we got a senile lady and a complete psycho who was no help. We ended up deciding on a loop around Applegate Lake. It was a very nice trip except for the mosquitoes and some horrible people at our second campsite that were yelling at each other for what seemed like hours. We saw two snakes- a milk snake (red on black friend of Jack) and something else, probably a gopher snake. There were also lots of nice ripe blackberries that we stopped multiple times to gather. It was great to hike again.

This week we worked on cleaning up the home garden which had more weeds and vegetables that had gone to seed than edible food. It took two full days, but now it looks great, and it is easy to harvest tomatoes. We got the "chicken tractors" that we are borrowing from the neighbor. These are portable 10'x10' pens that the chicks will live in for the rest of their lives. They get moved to new pasture every day, so they will have fresh food and a clean place to live. We also worked on the yurt. We finished the weather stripping and cleaned the area of overgrown weeds and blackberries. We set up the rafters four times, but they were not stable, and the whole roof kept corkscrewing and falling down. It was very annoying. We also helped Beth cut flowers for a person's wedding. We had a really nice weekend, and we camped out with some friends at another farm.

Kylie's Visit, part 2

Another week with Kylie here. We have been teaching her a few things like budget shopping, how to use a saw, and the importance of drinking enough water. Last Sunday, we went up to Dutchman's Peak where there is a fire lookout. After playing in the snow, we ate lunch at the lookout and climbed up into the cupola. Afterwards, we went for a little hike on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) which goes from Canada to Mexico. The work week went smoothly with early mornings and afternoons off to go swimming and tomato eating. We weeded the lettuce and the squash and worked on the yurt. The yurt is a huge pain in the neck. We discovered that we would not be able to get the 20' 1'' circle we needed, so we had to take the floor off and add some pieces in to make it large enough to get a 20' 8" circle. We then got the walls and cable set up. For the next step we'll need a drywall jack.We are down to 10 chickens. The raccoons have feasted. One was caught in a trap; Tim shot one, and Grant shot one. It is the only mammal he has shot. After that he became quite the hick...wearing Wranglers, talking about trucks and guns, etc. (not really). He threw it by the creek a little to close to our favorite swimming and hammock spot, and now it smells horrible. We thought something would have eaten it by now.On Thursday, we drove down to Sacramento to get Kylie to her plane on time on Friday morning. It was a good week, and now I am sick of driving.

Kylie's Visit, part 1

This week Kylie was here! We picked her up on Saturday from Sacramento and started the 5+ hour trip back home. On Sunday we went to a poultry class at another farm and afterwards went to Emigrant Lake again for climbing and swimming, which was fun and much cooler than not being in the water. During the week, we changed our schedule to starting at 6:30 and going until 12-12:30, eating lunch, and either finishing our two hours after lunch or later in the evening, so we could avoid the heat of the day which was reaching around 100. We moved the goats, cows, and sheep. We also planted seeds for fall crops of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, chard, and pok choi. We also thinned the corn and weeded most of the lettuce. We also worked on the yurt deck and helped Tim put up a swing set in time for Quinn's birthday. During the afternoons, we have a little routine of going swimming in the creek and then going on a search for ripe tomatoes in the garden and green house. We also made homemade pizza one day which was pretty fun. In chicken news, chickens are continuing to die regularly. The culprit is a family of raccoons. Now there is a trap out there for them. We also got 105 baby chicks. They will be ready to eat in 10 weeks. It's been a good week of fun with the little Kylie.

We moved the goats, sheep, chickens, and cows, and also clipped the sheep and goat hooves. We worked on the exasperating yurt platform a little. On the plant front, we hoed the tomatillos and squash and thinned the kale. We also got a raise because now we have skills! For 4th of July, we went to the goat dairy for a little while before starting the drive to Sacramento to pick up Kylie! I saw a bolt of lightning that went from Mount Shasta to another mountain, or it at least looked like it did.

We finished bucking the hay. We hoed the lettuce and started setting up drip irrigation on it, so it wouldn't get leaf drop (a deadly disease) from the overhead irrigation. We also left on Thursday for South Dakota to go to Grant's cousin's wedding. It was a really fun vacation, and we got back to Oregon on Sunday.

This week was tough! It was hay making week, and bucking hay is a lot of work. First, Tim mows the hay. Then he rakes it a few times over the next few days while it is drying. Then he bales it with this attachment he pulls behind the tractor that picks the hay up, packs it in bales, and ties the twine around them. Then for the bucking. Someone drives a truck with a trailer and the other people lift the bales onto the trailer. Then we have to unload the trailer and stack them into the barn. We hayed about 13 acres on two fields and got almost 1100 bales at 50-70 lbs each. That's twenty something tons that we lifted at least once! In between loads of hay, we weeded the radish for the last time. They are making seeds now, and we should be harvesting them relatively soon.
In other news, 10 more chickens got eaten one night when no one closed the coop. Poor chickens. Luckily Blindy and White Chicken, the only chickens we can tell apart from the others survived. One goat had two kids, but one died the next day. The goats and puppies are very cute and fun to watch. They have all been escaping though. So far the goats we have named are: Pepe, Fluffy, Blackbeard, Goat Mom, and Baby Goat.
We have been eating a lot of food from the garden- peas, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, spinach, and a little bok choi for stir fry. The cantaloupes, zucchini, and cucumbers all died of a fungus infection this week, so we will have to try to find some plants. We also planted 500 pots of kale for a seed crop.
Tomorrow we will be going to a class on breadmaking, composting, and tractor safety. Hopefully we will go climbing and swimming afterwards.

This week was really fun. The weather cleared up finally and got up to 90 by the end. Last Sunday, we had the weekly class at our farm. Then we went over to our neighbors' and learned how to milk goats. It was a lot fun, and we can't wait to go over to milk again and learn to make cheese. For a lot of the week, we weeded the onion field. The weeds were waist to chest high and really tough to get out. In addition to onions, we planted some flowers, moved the sheep after they had escaped 3 times in one day, watered the orchard, and took meat over to the CSA for people's weekly shares. A CSA is other times called subscription farming. People pay a certain amount at the beginning of the summer in exchange for a weekly box of fresh, in season veggies, fruits, dairy, eggs, meat, cut flowers, and whatever else the share includes. The shares are usually dropped off at a point that is convenient for the customers. It's a way for people to get fresh food and for them to share a little of the risk of growing food, so the farmer gets a descent return for their labor. On Friday was the major excitement. The goats came! 15 nannies including some pregnant ones and 3 month old puppies. The puppies are guard dogs and are Pyranesse and Anatolian mix. They are going to be huge. We have to play with the puppies and give them lots of attention, oh darn. The goats are cute too. One little one has already gotten a little used to us, and comes up to get pet. We named her Pepe. So, after getting their pen set up with fence, water, and minerals, they came. In between playing with the dogs, we electrified the chicken fense (2 chickens were eaten this week), baby sat the kids, and started hoeing the radishes. Today we will be going climbing and to a friend's birthday movie watching. Tomorrow, we will hopefully finish the yurt platform, go to a botany class, and hopefully milk again! I hope everyone else's week was good. I'm still waiting for other people to send pictures! There are quite a few from this week.

Denny- It's good to hear from you. Your life sounded hectic. I hope your head is feeling better. To answer your questions- The "happy mother's day" was radishes that we pulled out because we had to thin them, so the ones left have enough room. Yes, Grant is trimming the sheep hoof. They are hair sheep, so they shed their wool without having to be sheared.
Another week of rainy weather in Oregon. This week involved a lot of weeding and planing. We weeded the lettuce crop and started on the peas and carrots of the home garden. We also planted ~60 tomatoes, 200 tomatillos, 200 basils, 40 eggplants, 700 squash, and a field of corn called Black Aztec. We also had a some construction experience by finishing the bracing on the yurt deck and building a trellis for the peas. Since I smashed a finger with a hammer, and typing is not pleasant, that's all for now.

We had a really good week this week. It was rainy and drizzly for most of the week, which meant cooler temperatures but wetness of course. On Monday we finished thinning the radishes! We started work on weeding the lettuce. We stopped working a little early because of Memorial Day, but it was wasn't a blazing hot typical Texas Memorial Day, that's for sure. On Tuesday, we cleaned some catch ditches in the rain. I started coming down with whatever the kids had when we babysat them last week. Boo! On Wednesday, we turned on the gravity fed pasture irrigation and built a mineral feeder for the sheep who love to knock over their old one. When we put the newly built heavy duty feeder in their pen, they tried to kick it over immediately. Apparently, kelp meal and diatomacious earth (microscopically sharp mineral that kills parasites) tastes better when kicked around with a poopy foot. We built a compost bin for the compost toilet, cleared out the yurt space, thinned the squash, and potted up our pepper plants. On Thursday, I slept in a little to get rid of my cold while Grant weed-eated the entire farm practically. I weeded the cutting bed and organized the greenhouse later in the morning. Greenhouse update: We have tomatoes! Also the cucumbers, cantaloupes, cabasa melons, pumpkins, and zucchini are starting to come up. Then we started weeding the hedgerow (a strip of flowers in the field that provides habitat and food for beneficial insects.) All Friday we worked on the yurt platform. This is to be the housing for future interns. It is a deck with a circular framed tent-like thing. They are very popular housing here. People can even rent them at state parks instead of cabins. We had our first thunderstorm. There was lightning and thunder and some rain. A very nice end to the week, but we probably won't be able to put the tomatoes and tomatillos outside tomorrow. On Saturday, we had our inevitable cow adventure. After wondering what Saddie was barking about and the sheep were bleating about, Grant looked outside and saw the cows traipsing down the drive way, through the home garden, and some lettuce down to the creek. We ran outside with Tim and herded them back to their pasture. Our weekly adventure.

This was a really fun week for us.
The bike ride vineyard tour turned into going to one vineyard andhaving a couple samples and one of our program directors making uslunch. Then some of rode bikes to a swimming hole while others drove. Grant's pedal fell off part way through the "2-3" mile ride whichturn into 6-7s. The water was running really fast. It was pleasant.On Monday, we moved the irrigation pipes back to the radishes in orderto apply 7 million nematodes to control the cabbage worm. Then westarted trimming the sheep hooves and prepared a new pasture for them. We finished up trimming on Tuesday. We potted some pumpkins, cabasamelons, cantaloupes, cucumber, and zucchini for us to eat. We alsostarted weeding the home garden. On Wednesday, we babysat the kidswho were sick for a few hours and then started weeding the lettucecrop. We learned how to run the BCS tiller. On Thursday, we set upirrigation, moved chickens, and thinned radishes. Friday was arelaxing day. We planted tomatoes, basil, and peppers in greenhousebeds for fall harvest. We also weeded some gallon pots of Oregongrape that we are growing for a local nursery. Most of the day wasspent getting the nursery ready for summer. We rearranged the trees,weeded a little, and composted the trees that died in the heat wave.
Today we will be going to a birthday party, and tomorrow we are takingsome interns climbing.
This week there are lots of pictures and even some videos for you.http://picasaweb.google.com/Lhustahttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6883700921093340790&hl=enhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=561169902932498216&hl=enhttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7619639541492605599&hl=en

Well, this week was pretty un-exciting, except for the heat. I think it got up to 100. We're happy about the 90 degrees today!
We worked on irrigation stuff (setting up pipes and cleaning ditches). We thinned the radish field and planted 1400 squash seeds in 700 pots. On the cow front, we had a mother-calf reunion today. Grant found a new calf (2-3 days old) laying by itself near the irrigation ditch and out of the current cow field. We ended up putting it into the Gator (a golf cart type thing) and driving it down into some shade. Then we herded its mother down to see it. The mother seemed to recognize it and started licking it, but the calf didn't really respond to it. Tim (the owner) is going to check it out now. The students came out to the ranch this week to finish up their insect collections. Tomorrow is the vineyard tour bike ride. Hopefully it will be a little more bearable temperature.

We had really nice weather which was a nice change. Last Sunday Grant and I went to boulder at Ashland Boulders on a tall hill overlooking the whole valley. It was a beautiful hike, but we didn't end up doing any climbing. On Monday, we celebrated our year anniversary with a nice picnic. Most of the week we worked on backfilling this trench that got washed out during the field getting flooded. We also moved the cows down the road to new pasture and set up a new paddock for the sheep. We continued to work on planting lettuce and thinning radishes. Today we are getting our bikes fixed because there is going to be a bicycle tour of the local wineries which we will be doing with the other interns.

Hoove Clipping and Gardening

Hello friends!
This week started out rainy but warmed up by the end. It has been an unusually cold and wet spring for this area. Its' normally hot and dry (a Mediterranean climate).
Last weekend we dragged some other interns out climbing with us on a very beautiful day. Grant and I found out that we are not allergic to poison oak, thankfully. We finished up the second irrigation ditch which is being opened today. The chickens, sheep, and cows all got new grass to eat this week. The dumb sheep story of the week is: A sheep was bleating in distress so we went over to see what was wrong with it. It thought it was all alone, so it was terrified. However, the other sheep were not gone. They were simply behind the distressed sheep sitting in the shade. Very stupid, but funny. Also we weeded peas and carrots, transplanted lettuces, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, onions, and pak choi. And we started thinning the rows of radishes.
On Friday, we went to another farm and ran a soil experiments station for some middle school students. It is part of a program that the watershed council does with local schools. It was very fun.
We also went to a barn dance on Thursday for our neighbor's birthday. There was a huge bonfire.

April 26

Hello family members,
Here is your weekly update.
Last Sunday, all the interns went on a hike led by a naturalist. We learned about the native plants, animals, and cultures as well as current issues that are threatening the forest. It was a really nice hike even though it was lightly snowing for a lot of it. The week started out well with our bull escaping on Sunday night. He is kept down in a field away from the other cows because he is not breeding with them this year. He broke down the fence (he was probably just rubbing on it when it fell over. He is not a ferocious bull.) He escaped and went up to where the cows are, but he couldn't get in their field. We ended up herding the whole herd down to the corral field and isolating him in the corral and letting the other cows out. They were not happy to leave him. We set up new cow and sheep pastures and herded them into their new eating grounds. Also, the irrigation ditches are finally cleaned, and we opened up the main one yesterday. It's a pleasant little stream. On the the veggie front, we started potting tomatillos from their seedling flats. On Thursday, our neighbors had a concert at their dairy. It was very fun. Today we'll be helping to build a straw bale post and beam house, and tomorrow we will be teaching our fellow interns how to rock climb at Emigrant Lake.
Hope all is going well you guys. Not that I would know since no one emailed back with updates of their lives. Tsk tsk. What wayward family members I have.

April 19

Hello family, This week was a pretty fun week. All the interns met last Sunday, and we are going hiking tomorrow. Hopefully it won't snow. We should be able to get some to come climbing with us too. On the farm we got to prepare the mobile chicken coop for the chickens' move to the pasture and transfer them into it at night. We got a barn ready for some baby goats that might be coming. We herded sheep and cows and built a field fence and paddocks with electric fencing. Also, we helped trim a sheep's hooves. We also did a lot of tree potting, seed planting, and irrigation ditch cleaning. On Wednesday, a bunch of middle school students came out with their teachers and an entomologist, and we set up traps, took soil samples, and caught bugs with a beat and sweep. Lots of fun. Hope everyone is doing well, and hopefully other people will start to write updates as well.