Good evening from the mountain. On the side of good news I am on the mend, no
thanks to Obama Care which has made it even more difficult to get in to see a
doctor; since they are now all overbooked, but living on the mountain you have
to be proactive and able to take what life throws at you. A few days of drinking a teaspoon of baking
soda in a glass of water for a few days helped to take down the swelling. I was then able to shift the bones back to
where they belonged with a loud audible pop. I am now able to walk and step down on my foot
again. I guess I knocked the bones out
of place when I feel many weeks back and with constantly being on it, I was not
able to keep the swelling down. Just to
let you know baking soda at one time was used to treat gout. What it does in the body is break down chemicals
such as uric acid; it also can take down swelling from joints.
Meanwhile, during my recovery, my husband managed to re-injure
a horse shoeing wound. Then our littlest
one got stung twice by wasp; it is has been a rough few days. Both Michael and Elisha are also doing
better. I promise that when we tell the
boys to stay away from the area because of the wasps, they will listen.
Wasps here in Arkansas are darn near as bad as the flies. We have these big red wasps; I do mean big,
and they will chase you down, they rarely give up. We try hard to keep their nesting areas away from
the main building on the farm, but this year it has been impossible with all
the repairs we are in the process of making.
There is wood everywhere, and that is what they love to live in.
When you have a farm that is often how it is, you work
through the pain as long as you can and bad things do happen. When you work with large animals, or animals,
getting hurt is always a risk you take.
Most days you may get off easy, a scratch here a bump or bruise there
and then there are those other days when you are not so lucky.
A few days ago I had
reached that point and will great sadness canceled a speaking engagement that I
was truly looking forward to. It is not often that I am invited to talk about
foraging, making do with less and our family’s hardscrabble life. Unless of course we have guests at the farm
or on here, the rest of the time no one hears from us and no one knows.
Today we will be blessed to have a very nice lady and her
husband bring us bringing our hay. We
have not been able to produce enough hay to support the larger animals, another
fine reason that it is time they become freezer meat. Hay is expensive and good healthy non GMO
feed is as well. A bale of hay is
currently running us $35.00 per round bale.
Our largest cow will eat this quickly in a week, plus a few hundred
pounds of grain. The grain we feed runs
anywhere from $8.00 a bag for a 50 pound bag of millo to nearly $13.00 per 50
pounds of wheat. The alfalfa cost us
around $15.00 per 45 pound bale of dehydrated leaves. You can see how quickly it adds up, growing
real meat is expensive, if you can buy beef cow in the store for under three
dollars a pound, you should be concerned for the quality as in the real world
it is impossible to raise meat that cheaply.
I do know that most
large beef farms are subsidized in the United States; almost all cooperate
farm, better known as factory farms, receive government money, unless they
provide produce, and then it seems for some reason the government thinks it
should get a share. I have told you in recent posts about the raisins and how the government
seizes a part of their crops every season, but there are many more crops that
the American Government takes a share of. It more commonly called a marketing order:
Marketing order authorizes volume control measures in the form of free
and reserve tonnage. Tonnage is released gradually through the season by
preliminary, interim, and final percentages. Under the order, free raisins can
be used in any market. Reserve raisins may be sold to handlers for free use;
used in diversion programs; exported to authorized countries; carried over to
the next crop year; sold to government agencies; or disposed to other outlets
noncompetitive with free raisins. All of these outlets have been used in recent
years. The order also authorizes minimum grade and size regulations, and
minimum requirements are currently in effect. Grade and size requirements
established under the order are applied to imported raisins.
He is a list from the USDA website of all the products that
they currently admit to using, “Market Orders”, for…
Back to farm news, I pulled up the first green beans I planted,
I was not paying attention and they were a new variety, I will watch better
next time. So I have replanted them and
hope to pay better attention in the future.
I really do feel stupid about the whole thing, but what can I do, what is
done is done. I planted some more pepper
plants and some more corn that I had started a few weeks ago and some garlic,
as one can never have enough garlic. I
still have plants to get in and then fall planting starts. We did get spelt to plant and I should be
able to get a 10 by 12 section to plant in very soon. I plant to plant a 10 by
12 of wheat and one of barley; I have that seed ready to go as well. An area of 10 by 12 feet will produce 30
loaves of bread or so. It puts things
into perspective as to how much we all consume and what it takes to create that
food.
Our corn Oaxacan green is about six feet tall and starting
to tassel…I cannot believe it, but it is true so it will be a future planter
for sure. The blue corn still has not
done much; I think it is a drier climate corn.
I look forward to the first years of corn and the replanting which will
go on this week, without fail. I have already
picked the site that I am going to plant in.
This corn is not found of rows and likes to crow with a few stalks together;
it also like to grow with the pumpkins and beans. Most of the beans did not come up, and I will
replant those. The first baby pumpkins are on the vine; it
takes many bees to pollinate a pumpkin, most of them are squash bees an almost
extinct bee that pollinates primarily morning flowers. Most honey bees are not out that early and squash,
and pumpkin flowers shut most often before noon. Maybe in the future there will be no pumpkins
at all…
It is all too sad, and I must stop talking about it for now
as it brings my heart to a sorrowful place.
Instead, I will say that it is dusk here on the farm, and we are having barbeque
beef that we raised, with fresh greens.
So I will go and have supper and maybe work on, “ABIGAIL” a little.
Be Blessed dear ones…
Shekhinah
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