The Full Expression of Pigitas

What is our job as farmers?

I fear that is a question seldom asked these days.

Here at Magdalen Farm it is a question we have dared to ask. I say dared because it is one that often seems to arouse controversy and always seems to amount to interesting looks from 'real' farmers.

What is our job as farmers? Somewhat counter-culturally, we have decided that our job isn't to simply accept the modern ways of raising animals and of growing a garden. Rather, we feel called to ask what an animal is and what a plant is and how we as stewards of creation are called to tend it.



As stewards of a pig, there is no more important question to ask than what is a pig. As Joel Salatin has it, what is a pig's pigitas or pigness? Were pigs created with a high-powered bulldozer of a nose so that they could sit in cages? Were they created with the instinct to run and play and socialize, so that we could be confined shoulder to shoulder and rump to rump?

We have honestly considered the question. It is certainly easier, cheaper and faster to raise pigs in a feedlot operation. Why do you think store-bought pork is relatively cheap? But does the feedlot do justice to the pigs lofty calling of living out its pigness? And, as farmers, does it do justice to our calling to be stewards of creation?


Our answers to these questions have led us to a revolutionary -- revolutionarily old -- method of animal raising: pasture-raised livestock. To watch a pig root around in the dirt, trot around and butt its powerful head into the sides of its peers, and find a shady spot to nap in the heat of the afternoon is to see a pig in full expression of its pigitas.

The system of pasturing our animals that we will be employing is something called rotational grazing (RG). The idea of rotational grazing is that you put larger animals on a paddock of pasture first to eat down the grass and disrupt the ecology and then you send in the chickens to eat down the bugs. All the while all of these animals are depositing a compost-able fertilizer that Monsanto could only dream of creating. Obviously, the danger is to overgraze your pasture, but with our small numbers of animals even our relatively small pasture will be plenty large for four pigs and 30 hens.

Right now the pigs are training on the electric fencing. Without electric fencing rotational grazing would still be known as nomadic swinehearding. We enjoy the stability of a fixed residence, so we went the electric fence route. Plus, the public grazing lands seem to be a bit limited in scope at the moment.


Please visit our Magdalen Farm Facebook page for more pictures and more frequent updates.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Magdalen-Farm/340167576062113

Magdalen Farm Visits the Mountains

Greetings friends of Magdalen Farm!

Sunday evening Stephanie and I returned from an epic 10 day trip to the Rocky Mountains, where we visiting Glacier National Park in Northern Montana, Banff and Jasper National Parks in Alberta and Yoho National Park in British Columbia. We travelled with 13 other young Catholics from the Dioceses of Superior, La Crosse, Duluth and St. Paul -- including our diocese's newest priest Fr. Patrick McConnell.

Given the difficulty of posting large quantities of photos on the blog, we set up a Magdalen Farm Facebook account at which I posted 65 pictures this morning. We did do a couple of Magdalen Farm videos as well during the journey which I will endeavor to post both here and at Facebook.

Apparently the 70/35 degree temps we enjoyed in the mountains were a touch cooler than those enjoyed by you all in the midwest while we were gone. The garden exploded with growth due to the heat and humidity. The corn and sunflowers rocketed sunward and are beginning to grow their fruit and all of the other warm weather crops seem to be doing marvelously as well.

An enormous thanks to Mike and Sue (Stephanie's parents) for their generosity in farm-sitting and Don and Arlene (Stephanie's grandparents) for Hildy-sitting!

We hope to have an actual farm update available for you soon!

The Real Life of the Gentleman Farmer

As if emerging from the pages of a Ralph Lauren catalogue, he stepped out of his Audi S.U.V. onto the clean, packed pea gravel of a beautiful 300 acre horse farm. The lush rolling hills encompassed by undulating white fencing, the clear blue skies and the clean air welcomed him. After the fever pitch of life in the city, a little taste of the agrarian life -- the good life -- was just what he needed.

The rich brown leather of his loafers shined brightly beneath the pressed cuff of his designer slacks and, as he pivoted and closed the car door, the gravel made a satisfactory crunch. He set off in the direction of the horse barn to look for Eduardo, his farm manager...

+   +   +

Since we decided to move to the farm two years ago, I have often been told that I was living the life of the age-old 'gentleman farmer.'

The idea of exercising the aristocratic craft of writing for a (very modest) living and spending my leisure time in raising animals, cutting and stacking wood, and tending to the garden do indeed sound vaguely like that noble, agrarian ideal -- think Thomas Jefferson -- and, believe me, my imagination often strives to see it as such, but reality is quite another story.

An instance:

Last Friday was the appointed end of the line for our meat chickens, who had reached the requisite weight and were ready for butchering.

The day began early with reveille tooting around 6 a.m.

Dressed in a grimy and torn pair of work pants and a holy (gaps in the fabric, not sanctity) t-shirt, I joined my wife out at the basketball court where the assemblage of bleeder, scalder, plucker and butchering table signified a "don't worry about breakfast" warning. By 7 a.m. we had carried a tub with our first eight conscripts up from their lush, green pasture and were ready to begin.

I'll spare you the remainder of the details from that morning, but suffice it to say that when we were finished around 11:30 a.m. (thanks in very large part to the generous nature and skilled hands of my mother-in-law), I looked and felt even less gentlemanly than I did a few hours earlier.

After a short lunch with Sue, Stephanie, and our friend Charlie, who had also come to lend a hand, I got washed up and headed into the office to spend the afternoon writing. Five hours later, having written an article about a Homebound Ministry for a parish in California and another about a devout, elderly couple in Nebraska the day was done.

By 7 p.m. we freely enjoying drinks at our favorite, lakeside restaurant and discussing the dichotomy, which some (including us) take to be symphonic harmony, between the menial and liberal arts at which I had labored throughout the day.

Two other anecdotes:

About three weeks ago we attended a benefit concert for a local charity. During the evening I happened to look at one of my loafers -- brown and leather, like those of my fictitious 'farmer' above. Noticing something underneath the arch of one of them, I wrenching my ankle slightly to see what it was. It turned out that the entire gap between heal and toe was packed with chicken droppings.

Further, during a recent weekend trip to Hillsdale, a friend mentioned that in his history classes he always encourages his students toward agrarian lifestyles, admitting that he couldn't tell any of them the first thing about raising livestock or growing crops. Rather, he knew the joy and beauty that generations have known from experience by reading Virgil and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Perhaps it is in the combining of the experience and the poetry that the elusive 'good life' might exist.

Whether the ideal of the gentleman farmer is truly at hand I'm not sure, but I do know that, regardless, I need to do a better job of keeping my loafers clean.

Death on the Farm; Or, What Happens When Baby Chicks Arrive With Hernias

To date, in writing these posts Stephanie and I have for the most part confined ourselves to the happy, even idyllic, side of life as hobby farmers in Northwest Wisconsin.

However, in the name of journalistic integrity, sometimes the reader needs to know the full story.

As I sat at my desk writing the other day -- yesterday, I believe -- Stephanie came in with a sad gait and an expression suggesting something was amiss. The last I'd seen her just a few hours earlier she was still basking in the delight that accompanies the arrival of a batch of new baby chicks. These chicks, 50 cornish cross, are perhaps the cutest of all neo-natal farm life we have yet encountered. So the delight bordered on euphoria.

You probably know where this is headed...

"I don't like death," she announced.

"Neither do I," I added, happy to have established unanimity on so elemental a human subject.

"One of our chicks -- the one with the funny butt -- is going to die. And, I don't want to find it..."

"Hmmmm. I suppose I don't want to find it either."

"In fact, I don't much like being a farmer today," she added before leaving to go back to her desk.

...On the farm, death is quite truly a part of life. I'm not talking about the sort of death that our sadistic culture is obsessed with, namely Halo and the Poltergeist. No, I'm talking about the simple and terrible fact that all creatures die.

The sickly chick with the mysterious protuberance was a tiny example of creaturely finitude and of the fact that life is not only finite, but fleeting. Our heartfelt dismay at the loss of so insignificant a creature as a three ounce baby chick displays the bird's significance and the fact that even so small a life is indeed precious.

Almost every religion and philosophy has concurred on this basic, anthropological fact: life is hard and often terrible and we all have a deep and abiding sense that it ought not be so. Indeed, the various rituals that have always accompanied death in every culture in human history point to the fact that dying is something quite unnatural.

Nevertheless, we all die.

We like to fixate on the death of the animals that provide us food, but I suppose that death constitutes a sort of photographic negative to the less often observed fact that the creature in question was alive. One of the things that I'm most grateful for in the opportunity to live at the farm is that I now understand what meat is and what it isn't. It isn't a product -- after all, it wasn't produced. It comes from a creature; a creature that was born, lived a short while, and died.

The vitality of a barnyard full of creatures provides a beautiful and lovely setting in which to live. Sadly, those creatures die; but their lives are all precious.

The sickly chick is gone, having lived a meager life of three days. But the tender care given it by my gentle wife was a unique gift not enjoyed by many animals in this world.

No Such Things As Free.... Mulch?

I give you: free mulch:

Granted, the cost of a thing is not merely calculated in dollars and cents. But, as far as dollars and cents go, apart from the gasoline -- which is admittedly expensive these days -- this mulch was free. 

Surely the rhetorical hook has been set and you are wondering, "how did our clever hobby-farming friends get such a gorgeous pile of free mulch?" 

As with most things that are 'free' in this world, you have to 'know someone'. For us, generally speaking, that someone is Grandpa Don. Stephanie's maternal grandfather, Grandpa Don has been featured in several Magdalen Farm blog posts in the past. He is a character and a half: an 80 year old that can chain saw and split heavy maple tree trunks and do snow mobile tricks all day, provided he has access to enough of Grandma Arlene's cookies and homemade jams. Grandpa Don is also a 'collector'. He has buildings full of everything you could ever want or need. In this case, he has a mulcher.

Let's backtrack for a moment: As Stephanie and I discussed ways to improve our farm over the long, snowy winter -- er, fairly short and rather mild winter -- I stated that putting mulch between our raised beds and in a few other areas would really spruce up the joint. But thinking back to my days of lawn mowing and landscaping with Gaffer's Lawn Care I remembered that one actually needs a great deal of mulch to cover any sizable section of ground and that one seldom gets a great deal on such a great deal of mulch. Amidst these bleak midwinter ponderings I recalled aloud, "doesn't Grandpa Don have a mulcher?"

"I think he might...," added Stephanie, (known to Grandpa Don as Stephers). "Does he? It's so hard to keep track of such things."

Well, in fact, Grandpa Don does have a mulcher and about a week ago he dropped it off for us.

"That's all good and well," you're probably chuckling to yourself, "but a mulcher doesn't get you mulch without some branches to feed it."

But piles of old branches, my friend, is something of which we have nary a shortage. 

Since we moved in we've done a great deal of tree trimming and have also cut down a number of scrub trees that had grown up close to buildings and had begun to wreak havoc on the foundations. These piles had made for some charming, decorative landscape ornamentation... I can't even type that with a straight face. These piles needed to be gotten rid of and we were planning on burning them all this spring, but instead we've been mulching them. So far we have made somewhere around four cubic yards of mulch.

With that bounty of free mulch on hand (and plenty more yet to be had), we've had to decide how best to employ the woody fruits of our labor. The Mulch-Use Priority Rankings (MUPR) currently stand as follows:

1. Vegetable Garden Paths
2. Flower Beds Around the House
3. Main Flower Garden Paths and Beds
4. Raspberry Beds Along the Pine Stand

The great thing about our free mulch is that the actual creating of the mulch has been a lot of fun, too. It is a wondrous process to take something that was an eyesore, run it through a loud, vibrating contraption and have it shoot out into a lovely pile of garden-beautifying goodness!

I figure in the end we'll probably create around nine yards of mulch this spring. So for those 729 cubic foot of eye-pleasing, weed-blocking goodness we extend another hearty 'thank you' to our kindly benefactors: Grandpa Don and Grandma Arlene!

Belated Chicken Post

The six weeks between March 1st and April 15 have been some of the busiest for Chris and I, and virtually none of what kept us occupied was farm related.  Thus this very belated post:

A Barred Rock, considered "dual purpose" because they are
good egg layers and large enough to be used for meat.

A Leghorn hen.  These white egg layers are the breed used in
large-scale egg factories.  In their prime they lay an egg a day.

A young Red Star - the brow egg layer
equivalent to the leghorn.

A curious Sussex 

The molting Barred Rock.  Hens go into
their first molt between 12 and 20 months.
Over the course of 2 weeks they will replace
the majority of their feathers and egg
production will almost completely stop.

Two Buff Bramas snoozing in the sun

Rats!

No seriously, rats.

Truly, a rodent of unusual size

Stephanie proudly displays her largest victim yet

Hildegard and the Skunk Tail

What are the odds...

Missing the cut on getting into the earlier post by only a few short hours, Hildy vanished for an hour or so this afternoon. We called and called for her and were getting our coats on to go look for her at the VFW -- a favorite haunt of hers when she's on the lam -- when she turned up.

Now, whenever Hildy disappears she usually returns with some sort of treasure and it's generally someone else's trash. Today was a new one for us though. As we went outside to scold her for flying the coop -- so to speak, for, she doesn't actually reside in our coop -- we realized we had something new on our hands...

Here's what we encountered: a euphoric puppy delightedly playing with her favorite new toy... a skunk tail!

Hildegard

As our regular readers are well aware, this spring we added a dog to our bourgeoning menagerie and named her Hildegard. She comes from a local breeder that has cross-bred a few different traditional European guardian dog breeds and developed a sort of "Northwoods" Guardian Breed. These dogs are big enough to fend off wolves and coyotes and gentle enough to bond with livestock.

Little 10 Week Old Pup

Hildy, as we call her, has been for the most part a very happy addition to our farmstead. It's been great fun to have a furry little ball of affection 'assisting' in our projects: from harvesting rhubarb...

... to feeding the chickens.

Her best friends were far and away the pigs. Needless to say she was sad to see them go, though she hasn't seemed to mind getting pork drippings on her kibbles when we make pork roasts!

She has grown from a shy and utterly adorable little pup to a big, sprawling, hyper and bounding bundle of long-limbed energy. According to our calculations she is now around eight months old.

Scanning the Horizon for Predators

Her primary purpose on the farm, apart from being enjoyed by us, is guarding our pigs, turkeys, chickens and future livestock. Yesterday she bravely stood at the edge of the field barking at a crow that was munching on something a few hundred yards off... what a dog!

Off to see about a potential threat: the vicious and beguiling black bird

With the frigidity of Northern Wisconsin winter beginning to creep in, we had to build her a dog house. 

Naturally she had to inspect throughout the building process

Since she hates being confined we weren't sure how she would take to it, but when it gets below freezing she seems to love it.

Early morning wake-up call

In getting Hildy to 'bond' with our animals we were supposed to more or less ignore her so she could attach to them instead of us. We more or less utterly failed in that venture, but we're not entirely sure that we care, since she is very loving and a good companion.

Asking if we think maybe she should come inside for a visit

Fall Update

Greetings Friends of Magdalen Farm!

Wow-- it's been almost five weeks since our last post... far too long, we know. Since time for an extended update isn't currently unavailable and since you all seem to like our video efforts we decided to get creative and do a short video update.

We've taken a slew of pictures during our various projects over the past month, we just haven't had (or, I suppose, 'made' would be the better word) the time to put the post together. So, here's a pictorial smattering of what we've been up to.

Fresh Milk and Cream from Farmer Steve

Huntin' for Dry Oak

Carrying Dry Oak

Potato Plants Before Harvest

Potatoes Hardening Off

'Taters emerging from their perfect soil! 

'Taters Abound!

Neatly stacked and ready for storage in the root cellar

One of our harvests of tomatoes ready for saucing

A batch of fresh salsa

Canned Tomato Sauce 

Wild grapes

Wild grapes getting cooked into jam

Straining the grape remnants

Homemade grape jam

Homemade apple cider

Pumpkins!

Pumpkin elements: seeds for toasting and flesh for cooking

Steph loves these little guys! 

Our covered bed for fall gardening, including a lettuce blend 

Lettuce close-up! 

Hildy inspecting our work, while we frame out her house

Winter Chicken Care

As any faithful reader will know, the number of animals on the farm is slowly decreasing. This past summer bustled with animal activity - feeding, watering, occasionally chasing and riding - and the barnyard was filled with their noise - contented grunts, silly gobbles, stately crows. But as the cool weather came, so the animals left. By Monday morning all that will remain is a dog, a cat and 45 chickens. With the chilly fall air and recent frosts our thoughts and tasks have turned to preparing the place for winter. Of chief concern is the health and well-being of our chickens during the long winter months. It is no small difficulty for a hen, accustomed to ranging over the barnyard and field, eating bugs, grazing and soaking in sunshine, to be shut up in a coop for several months in the cold of winter and expected to produce an abundant supply of eggs. However, with a little research and planning we are confident of keeping our flock healthy and content during the frigid months ahead.

Space: Although the existing coop is delightful (an original structure to the farm), it is not big enough to house 45 birds over the winter. Thankfully, expanding the coop will be quite simple. The coop occupies the South-west corner of a large out building. Adjacent to the coop on the North is the pig pen, and running the full length of the building to the East is the stock barn. The three pens each have their own door and are not accessible to each other. However, a small chicken door cut into the interior wall of the coop would allow chickens to access one of the other pens. Our plan is to allow the chickens access to both the coop and the stock barn during winter.

Light: As mentioned, the coop is one of the original structures on the farm, built in the 1920's. The homesteaders, Chris Christiansen and his family, certainly knew what they were doing when they laid out plans for the farm. The coop is perfectly situated on the South side of the barnyard, with big windows to capture all available sunlight. Like humans, chickens also need sunlight for vitamin D. But an added need for sunlight is that a hen's egg production is based on the amount of light she is exposed to. As days got shorter egg production decreased. Of course, once electricity came to the farm the concern with shortened days disappeared, but the health and well-being of the chickens is still well served by the big, South-facing windows. Additionally, the South exposure helps to keep the coop warm, even in the cold of winter.

Feed: A well balanced diet is perhaps the most important part of keeping chickens healthy throughout the winter. Currently our chickens have access to the entire barnyard, where they feast upon bugs, grubs, worms, frogs, toads and any vegetation that catches their fancy. They also get a steady supply of high quality organic feed, fallen apples from our tree and green beans (the beans are left over from the field behind our house, planted by the farmer that rents the land. Although they were harvested a few weeks ago, a few plants still have beans on them and we've been picking buckets full every few days for the birds). Obviously, once winter arrives the bugs, grubs, worms, frogs, toads, vegetation and green beans will disappear from their diet. What to do? Cold weather crops! Thankfully many very nutritious crops can withstand frost and, with a cold-frame, even snow. The cold-frame is currently planted with crops primarily for the chickens - a wide variety of lettuce, cabbage and turnips. We also have several mammoth kale plants in the garden, that seem quite impervious to the frost and a pile of pumpkin and squash. Of course, the garden and cold-frame can only get us so far with the severe cold of our winters. But, greens will remain on the chickens menu, by means of seedlings and sprouts, started indoors under grow lights. We have stocked up on last years seeds and will be serving trays of broccoli, cabbage, alfalfa and bean sprouts along with spinach, lettuce and various other leafy greens come this February.

Spa: The final key to maintaining healthy, happy birds during winter months is to provide them with a full-service avian spa - which consists of nothing more than a sandbox. Chickens love to take dust-baths. It soothes their skin and prevents mites from finding a home. Plus, watching a hen kick up dirt into her feathers and roll in dust like a dog is perhaps one of the most enjoyable parts of keeping chickens.

No such thing as a free lunch

One of the intrigues of jumping into hobby farming from say living in a 600 square foot, second-story condo in Irving, Texas -- just as a hypothetical point of departure -- is that even if you're getting started on a pre-existing spread, there are going to be big costs. Luckily we had some funds saved up and luckily we're good at getting by and scrounging for materials on hand.

However, as the seasons change, which they are already very much in the process of doing up here where we've had two hard frosts already, new items come over the horizon that need to be purchased. As I mentioned, we're pretty good at getting by, but there's frugal and then there's foolhardy. Last winter I thought I was being frugal by shoveling our 40 yard long driveway and parking spots not to mention all the requisite paths that go along with heating with wood and keeping animals through the winter. This winter I would consider such a strategy folly and thus we are bound and determined to get a decent snow blower before the first snow fall.

Further, the farm we're renting has a great addition off one of the sides, which serves as our rec room, music room, sports and movie room, and library; however, this room gets no heat from the wood furnace which is attached to the central heating. It does have a gas stove, but, as all of you with gas furnaces know, heating with gas is expensive, so last winter the addition hovered between 40 and 45 degrees except when we wanted to watch a football game. This year we're going to buy a wood stove and install it in the gas one's stead. Since we're already gathering a lion's share of wood for the main furnace, an extra cord or two of small pieces to heat the addition and neighboring first floor rooms will be no problem whatsoever. I figure that at the price of gas, the wood stove will pay for itself in one or two years easily.

Snowblowers and wood stoves, we're not clever enough to make from odds and ends on hand, but here are a few pictures of handy and 'free' remedies we've put to use in the past year.

Two small pallets + One large pallet = sweet wood rack! 

Old utility poles = heavy duty fence posts

Old deck boards = lumber for raised garden beds

Olds screens, deck boards, hinges,
and steel roofing = chicken tractor

Old ductwork = cones for chicken bleeder

Ductwork, deck boards and sheet metal = chicken bleeder

Huge old plastic bin = meat bird transport vehicle

Old horse trailer wall = pig-loading ramp