Troublesome Goats

Ah, the goats...

Such lovely, well-behaved animals. Except when they get out of the field and eat the neighbor's organic soy beans. Or sneak into the barn when we are working and start snacking on the hay.

Or when they... I heard this clumping noise behind me. I turned around, and this is what we saw...

Pressing apple cider

Bryan made a grape press, and we thought it could be used to make apple cider, so one Saturday night (whoo-hoo, we know how to party down in the country, don't we now?) we came over with a couple milk crates of apples and started pressing.

The apples were cut in half and inspected and trimmed for bugs, rot, etc.. Without a traditional grinder, we used the KitchenAid appliance to slice up the fruit and then tumble the pieces into the wooden container.

As this was the first time the grape pressed had been pressed into this service, we weren't sure how much pressure it could take. And guess what? Yep, we broke it. Luckily, Bryan is handy and has his wood shop set up in the basement, and he quickly fabricated a new piece.

And just so you know, two milk crates of apples produces almost five quarts of apple cider. Joan has been canning the juice to enjoy this winter at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Happy Birthday, Amber!

Amber turned 31 today! We took over some leftover birthday cake from my cousin's birthday party last night.

Brian fired up the oxy-acetylene torch to light the single candle, and then we sang the Happy Birthday song...

Putting in winter wheat

On a recent sunny morning, with a great dealing of jingling harness and shuffling hooves, Bryan and Amber hooked up three of their horses to pull a cultipacker and wheat planter around a field near Clinton. Zack, Amy's brother, was there to provide help and a healthy dose of sarcasm.

The three horses, Socks (the young buck), Shadowfax (the old gray lady), and Belle (the retired Amish workhorse) surged against their harnesses, expecting to accelerate easily as they do when pulling a wagon or hay rake. They were brought up short by the heavy weight of the cultipacker and the planting teeth of the wheat planter.

With a sharp "Giddyap!" from Bryan and a flick of the reins, they dipped their heads and dropped their shoulders into the harness. There was a brief pause where we all held our breath, and then the machinery broke free and started moving. Off they went, huffing and puffing across the field, with Bryan perched on the planter, beaming away.

You don't see many people farming with horses anymore. This field is next a main road that heads north out of town. Cars and trucks slowed down all morning to see what was going on. A minivan even pulled into the farm lane and parked for awhile, watching the horses turn the field to corduroy.

Amber later told me about a similar incident a few days earlier when they were farming with horses. A car on the road came to a sudden stop, backed up and turned down their farm lane. The car bumped and swayed right up to where they had paused with the horses and implement. Slowly levering himself up from his seat, an elderly gentleman appeared, and with the assistance of a cane, he walked up to them.

He said, "I just about started crying when I saw horses in the field, pulling equipment. I just had to stop. I hope you don't mind..."

To paraphrase a paraphrase, he said that he had grown up on a farm near Ypsilanti before World War II, and his family has farmed with horses. And as a young farmer, he had used horses for many years before switching to tractors and machines.

After a really good conversation about farming with horses, he climbed into his car and drove off with a wave.

Throwin' Hay

One of our favorite things when it comes to helping Bryan and Amber is throwing hay. They have well over one hundred animals, and they all need many bales of hay everyday throughout the winter. So, one of the major tasks is filling the recently re-roofed barn with hay.

Once the hay is ready, it is cut down with a horse-drawn mower and left to dry on the ground. Later, the horse-drawn hay rake gathers it up and flips it over into long, snaky rows for more drying. At this point, diesel takes over because bailing and transporting wagons of hay exceed the ability and resources of Bryan and Amber's budding horse farming.

When the hay wagons arrive at the barn, it is positioned next to the open door, and the hay elevator is tucked up under the wagon doorway. Rich usually climbs up into the wagon and with a hay hook starts wresting the bales through the door and flops them onto the moving chain. The others gather on the top of vast stack of hay bales and wait for the bales to slowly and loudly clank their way up the elevator. More wrestling and dragging gets the bales into their final resting place to wait for a cold, icy winter day.

The work is hot, sweaty, and itchy. However, it is incredibly satisfying, sort of like cutting and stacking firewood. At the end of the day, you can see what you have done. There is physical and visually proof of a day's work.