Category Archives: Personal Stories

Patty’s Third Birth

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patty-yarrow

Here is Shaen getting Patty (Georgia) ready for milking. We just wash with fresh water and wipe her down before milking. Look at that bag! Yarrow is just a few days old.?

Patty had an unassisted birth late on September 5, 2011. The calf has a white star on her forehead, four white socks, and a white tipped tail. The calf is a beautiful pure bred Jersey heifer.

We won the lottery this year with both cows giving birth to heifers. Of course, we are not planning to increase the size of our herd and will have to think about what to do with these calves. These two heifers, with a little training, could make fabulous family cows for someone.

For the first few days, Patty’s new calf spent most of her time sleeping in the haylage. She looks in good condition and Patty’s high fat milk is making her gain weight every day. By the end of the week the little calf was running around the pasture with the other cows.

Patty’s bag is enormous this year! As usual, milking Patty has been a challenge. Presently, we are milking her twice a day. The first five milkings are considered colostrum. After that Patty’s true milk comes in.

After a week of milking, Patty’s milk fat is still yellowish orange. Even at this early stage, Patty produces more cream than Olivia. Patty appears to be letting down her milk better for us this year. She is still grumpy about milking. Her new trick this year is to wait until the milking pail is almost full and then she kicks straw, dirt and manure into the milk. Our hogs don’t mind dirty milk but her behavior is frustrating for the milkers. We are considering making up a hobble to stop this behavior.

Updated September 13, 2011: Shaen is away on a short holiday and I have been milking alone for the last few days. I had to hobble Patty to milk her. I used a piece of rope and a carabiner on one end to tie the leg she uses for kicking dirt into the milk pail. I wrapped the rope twice around Patty’s front leg and clipped the carabiner on to the rope. I then tied the other end of the rope to the fence with two half hitches. Patty didn’t like it very much but I was able to get through the milking without Patty contaminating the milk. Hopefully, when Shaen gets back Patty will stop fussing.

Learning About Garden Weeds

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herb-garden-1

This is my herb garden looking southwest. When I first planted the herb garden, I used a pick axe to make "pots" in the clay and cobble. Look at how much soil has been built up over three years of ranging chickens and turkeys.

A weed is just a weed until its use has been found.
Unknown

In the past, Shaen cared for our household garden. We always had some garden fresh foods and eggs from our backyard flock. In the last few years, Shaen’s focus has been on learning about pasture development and the care of larger animals.

The garden has never been so neglected before. This year I decided that I would take on the work. I would learn about gardening so Shean could focus on more challenging tasks. I’ve learned a number of things about myself this year. I’m not a very enthusiastic gardener. I would rather plant a permanent forest garden or work with pasturing animals. I guess I am more of a herder than a gardener.

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This is my herb garden looking northeast.

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This is my herb garden looking southeast. The total width of the garden is 15 feet and it is right outside my kitchen. Note the clothes line that is illegal in many municipalities. I don't think bylaws like that are very enlightened.

It’s not the work of gardening that I do not like. When I break the surface of the soil for cultivating annuals, I can’t help but wonder what damage I’m doing to the ecology of the soil flora. I notice that the cultivated soil loses its moisture and appears “dead” very quickly.

In Kamloops, mulching cultivated soil is a must. All of these observations have got me wondering how much of our traditional cultivated garden can I convert to permaculture or to a forest garden. If you would like to learn more about forest gardens please read Creating a Forest Garden: Working with Nature to Grow Edible Crops by Martin Crawford. My goal now is to have very small plots of cultivated soil surrounded by large areas of perennial herbs, shrubs and trees. In these small cultivated areas I grow peas, lettuce, beets, carrots, garlic, and onions.

Another area I use traditional cultivation is our hoop-houses. In the winter, the hoop-houses are used for housing the laying hens. In summer, the hens go onto pasture and the hoop-houses are converted to greenhouses. These greenhouses are filled with heavy feeding, heat loving plants like tomatoes, peppers and squash. Every year we move the hoop-houses to new locations to break the pathogen cycle.

I am also trying to make peace with our weeds. Part of this truce is learning about the medicinal and culinary uses of weeds. Some of my new green friends are chickweed, shepherd’s purse, cleaver, plantain, dandelion, and yarrow. The list continues to grow.

I research each new plant that comes into bloom, and more often than not, I find myself adding the weed to my list of friendly plants. I cannot help but marvel at these weeds. They grow where nothing else seems to grow and have an unsurpassed vitality. To the knowledgeable observer, the type of weeds growing in an area can tell us about the state of the soil.

Having animals also makes me value weeds. Animals can take plants I cannot eat and transform them into rich milk, tasty eggs, and flavorful meat. It gets me wondering how many of these “weeds” I can eat or use for my animals.

Part of making peace with weeds is accepting my garden doesn’t look like Butchart Gardens. I have given up my human desire for order and replace it with the chaos of natural system design. It means giving up on one type of esthetic and replacing it with another. This means, along with tolerating the weeds, I am also allowing the “volunteers” to grow up in my garden. Volunteers, are cultivated plants that come up spontaneously and are “naturalized” to the local environment. Sometimes they come up in awkward places. This means I have to use my creativity to work around these plants. I still haven’t given up rows, but I am working on it!

greens-garden

This is my greens garden. I planted beets, carrots and salad greens. I had a fabulous growth of chickweed, dandelion, and nasturiums which are wonderful bitter greens for salads. Way in the back is a chicken hoop house. The chickens live in the hoop house in the winter and go on pasture in the summer.

hoop-house

As you can see, hoop houses are not beautiful but they become fabulous greenhouses after a winter of chicken manure. We grow heavy feeding plants like squash and tomatoes in the hoop houses. Note the straw mulch on the potato patch behind the hoop house. We now always mulch any bare soil.

This year, we have added four standard fruit trees to our forest garden. We have transplanted over eighty feet of raspberry canes throughout the garden. I have started a program of growing trees from seed for our forest garden. I am growing walnut and black locust trees. The black locust trees have seed pods that chickens love to eat. I am looking at making cuttings of our currents and spreading these tough plants all over the property. My only rule for planting is the plants must be food for my family or food for our animals, including our wild visitors.

Finally, my herb garden has gone wild. I remember only a few years ago using a pick-axe to dig small “pots” into the rock-hard clay. Four years of compost and animal manure has enlivened a moonscape. My herb garden is the new home for some tadpoles. My daughter Erika saved the tadpoles from a drying-up mud puddle. When the tadpoles mature, we are going to use the toads for insect control in the greenhouses and forest garden.

Olivia’s Illness

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olivia

This is Olivia, our Jersey cow. This picture was taken this winter and she has a thick winter coat. She has been very healthy since her illness.

About a month after Cinnamon’s birth, Olivia had a health challenge. Shaen and I came up to milk as usual in the morning. Olivia seemed well. During the evening’s milking, Shaen noticed Olivia’s halter was tight around her face. She seemed to have a swelling under her lower jaw. The swelling seemed sore. Her rumen appeared empty which meant she wasn’t eating. Not eating is a very serious situation for a lactating cow. She wasn’t even sticking out her tongue. She normally would give us a lick. She was also drooling.

When we got home, we pulled out our cattle textbooks. We use Cure Your Own Cattle by Newman Turner and The Barn Guide to Treating Dairy Cows Naturally by Hubert Karreman. The condition Actinomycosis or Wooden Tongue sounded the most like her symptoms. This condition is caused by a puncture from rough forage, wooden splinters, or metal objects.

The next morning her swelling was even worse. Cows have body language. When they don’t feel well, their heads are down like they haven’t any energy. We milked her down. We tried to look at her teeth and she seemed to have trouble swallowing. This explained the drooling.

On June 2, 2011 we called the vet and Dr. Rob Mulligan came down to look at Olivia. He used some very useful tools to handle Olivia since we do not have a squeeze. He used a nose-pincher and a device for opening the cow’s mouth. The vet had his whole forearm down Olivia’s throat trying to find the puncture. He did not find anything inside her mouth. There was a small scar on the outside of her jaw which he probed with a needle hoping to drain an abscess. He could not find the abscess. He thought she had the more fast acting mouth infection called Cellulitis which can be fatal if located in the lower jaw. Unfortunately, antibiotics are the only course of action. The vet gave her an IV of sodium iodide which would help fight any bone infection. We also gave her the first injection of a four day course of antibiotics. By the end of the IV treatment Olivia was eating again!

The biggest mistake we made treating Olivia was not using a three day slow release antibiotic. This left Shaen and I trying to give injections to a 800 pound animal without a squeeze or any of those neat vet tools. The needle was big too. We had to get in 45cc of antibiotics through a cow’s thick hide. Olivia was seriously irritated with us by the third injection. I was really upset too because cows are like two year old children. They can’t be reasoned with and do not understand what is being done to them. They only understand the pain. I was worried we would ruin our milking relationship with Olivia.

By the third injection we had a rolling-eyed cow and only got in part of the injection. The next day, we called in the vet for a second IV of sodium iodide and the last injection of antibiotic. This time Dr. Jason McGillivray came and took a look at Olivia. He had her on the ground, completely immobilized, with a system of ropes and a nose-pincher. Shaen said it was amazing to watch someone handle such a large animal with such skill. The vet thought the infection was old and had come back.

After the second treatment, we milked twice a day but continued discarding the milk. The protocol for antibiotics is to wait 72 hours after ending treatment before using the milk. We waited 96 hours. After the treatment, Olivia seemed well. She still has a small lump on the lower jawbone and she is sore from the injections. She seems to have forgiven us for our treatment and she is milking well.

Later, Shaen called Christine Blake from Wildfire Jersey. She sold Olivia to us. Christine knows all her cows very well and Olivia never had an infection. It appears Olivia picked up an infection since she came to us. We don’t know when or how the infection started. The infection is a bit of a mystery. Dr. Will Winter a vet that hosts a yahoo group called Pastured Livestock Producers stated:

“I would suggest that you look at overall herd health. Obviously you want to get treatment for the sick animal, but I encourage you to look into overall health patterns. Certainly if it is “Wooden Tongue”, an Actinobacillus bacterial infection, then there is a holistic plan of action that will prevent further problems. Wooden Tongue, Lumpy Jaw and Blackleg are all “cousins” of the same pathogen. These pathogens are in the soil in a latent condition on every farm. When circumstances are right, they can infect animals.

You can read about this in Chuck Walters’ great book called Grass, The Forgiveness of Nature. He relates stories from the past wherein they shut down the infectious disease bugs simply by mineralizing the cattle. When all the “immune minerals” were in place there were no infections. Zero Vaccine (vaccine programs can never keep up with the evolving nature of pathogens). Even epidemics were stopped in their tracks. Be sure to check your iron levels in forages or water too, as high iron not only blocks the absorption of the other minerals but it also stimulates many bacteria, including Tuberculosis and Para-TB (Johne’s).”

The supplements we give the cattle are Fertrell minerals, kelp and sea salt. The cattle are on pasture and enjoy eating the Saskatoon Bush leaves (Amelanchier spp.). We supplement the pasture with third-cut alfalfa haylage and hay. Our water system is based off a well with a 3000 gallon old metal holding tank. Normally, we are irrigating so much that the water is clear but with all the rain this spring we haven’t been irrigating. I noticed the cows got a big load of rusty water a week or so before Olivia got sick. Rats. It’s so easy to screw up. We won’t let that happen again. Shaen is going to scrub out the tank as soon as possible. He just has to be careful. Tanks are confined spaces and rust absorbs oxygen.

About two days after Olivia finished her antibiotic treatment, we started noticing that Cinnamon had developed diarrhea. The diarrhea was very liquid and white like scour. We considered giving her a drench of probiotics. We decided to watch Cinnamon’s progress carefully. Cinnamon is a happy, energetic calf so we decided to just observe and not intervene unless necessary. This should be a lesson to all breast feeding women that have had to take a course of antibiotics for some reason.? It is very important to watch your baby’s gut health after a course of antibiotics. In the end, on June 23, 2011 we gave Cinnamon a drench of Custom Probiotics. We used four times the normal adult dose mixed with Olivia’s milk. After that one treatment her diarrhea was gone.

Olivia and Cinnamon

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cinnamon

This is Cinnamon, Olivia's new calf.

On May 3, 2011 Olivia gave birth to a heifer we have named Cinnamon. It is hard to believe it has been just over seven weeks since her birth. In the last update, we were worried that Cinnamon would develop scour, but thankfully this did not occur. We have left Olivia and Cinnamon together. This is not standard dairy procedure. Dairies normally separate the cow and calf at birth. This allows the dairy to control the cow calf relationship and the calf’s food intake. The calf is fed colostrum for the first few days of life. Without enough colostrum the calf will pick up an infection and die. Later, the diary switches over to cow’s milk, or more commonly, a milk substitute. A milk substitute is used because it is cheaper.

Leaving the calf with the cow is a controversial management style. We think it is better for the calf to have an unrestricted feeding schedule. The cow and calf work out a natural feeding cycle. The calf never gets too hungry, having unlimited access to her mother, thus conditions like scour are unlikely to occur. We think Olivia is happier too. I can’t say I know what Olivia is thinking or feeling but she seems like a content cow to me. Some people believe by leaving the nursing pair together the cow will teach the calf how to be part of the herd.

We had some problems when we first started milking Olivia. She had come from a commercial dairy and had never been hand-milked before. She was used to machines touching her, not people’s hands. We had to work on making our touch a pleasurable experience. Shaen and I have found sharing the milking chore made it easier and fun. Since few modern people have ever milked, or even seen a milking, I thought I would describe a typical milking. Of course, things don’t always go smoothly. One thing cows like is routine. When the routine goes wrong the milking can go wrong too. (If any readers of this blog would like to learn how to milk please contact us and we will make arrangements. Milking is an experiential activity.)

Before milking, we get our equipment together. In one pail, I keep 15′ rope with a carabiner on one end, two brushes, a roll of paper towels, and a jar of coconut oil. In a second pail I have clean water for washing. My third pail has the milking treats. When we are ready to milk, we tie up Olivia and give her a treat of soaked grains or peas, haylage, or green forage. I give her a brush to clean off any loose hair and dirt, while Shaen washes her udders with water and dries her off with paper towels. We use coconut oil for its anti-microbial properties and as a milking lubricant. During milking, if I find my hands getting dry, I squirt some milk and rub my hands together. Milk is a great lubricant too. When we are ready to milk, Shaen works on one side and I the other, with the pail between us. Shaen’s job is to pull the pail if Olivia starts moving around. It’s really important to agree on who is going to put the pail! We milk in a full squatting position which is easier on our backs than kneeling or a milking stool. We may be milking anywhere in the pasture so having a “mobile chair” is very convenient. A full squat is very comfortable for milking but it does take time for a modern person to find the position comfortable.

Olivia is averaging 80L of milk per week, plus feeding her calf. When a cow first starts producing milk, the percentage of cream is low. As the calf grows and needs more nourishment, the cream content increases. We are presently freezing extra milk and making yoghurt and raw cheese. Soon we will be making ice cream and raw butter. Buttermilk, the byproduct of butter making, will be going to our four hogs. We use the buttermilk instead of water to soak the grains and peas. The hogs love it!

Olivia has had her first estrous cycle. Last year we got twin male and female calves from Gort’s Gouda Cheese Farm for Patty after Patty lost her calf. In cows, when male and female calves share a uterus, the male is usually fertile and the female is sterile. The female is called a freemartin and will develop more like a steer. We did not castrate the male and he appears to be a fully functioning bull. The bull has shown interest in Olivia. In a few days we will know if she has conceived or not.

Some people might be worried about us having a dairy bull. Dairy bulls are known for their aggression. When we were at Wildfire Jersey, Christine Blake was in the pen with their pure-breed Jersey bull. She had her back to him. I was worried about her safety and she explained that they keep their Jersey bulls for two years. Her experience is that young bulls are not very dangerous. After two years of age the bulls become very aggressive. Since we have bottle fed our bull as a calf, we can handle him safely, but we know the time we can manage him is limited. We intend to use him this year to breed Olivia and his foster mother, Patty. After his task is completed he will go to slaughter.

Healthy Clothing: Do you know what’s in your clothes?

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About a year ago, I started wondering about my long term use of nylon, fleece and other synthetic materials from Mountain Equipment Coop. I started wondering if these petrochemical-based fabrics were safe for use next to my skin and for that matter if the products were environmentally safe. Ironically, MEC is all about enjoying and saving the environment. Unfortunately, their fabric choices might be convenient for a sweaty hiker but the fabrics are made from materials that are not sustainable nor environmentally friendly. Many of these synthetic fabrics are partly recycled but the question I keep asking myself is should we be making the products in the first place and how safe are the fabrics for the wearer or the greater environment? On the positive side, MEC cares about the working conditions in the factories that produce their products. MEC sells very inexpensive 100% organic cotton shirts, 100% Merino wool underwear, and some hemp blend products.

I started wondering about my personal clothing choices and what I would have to do to be more sustainable. I realized that leather, sheepskin and fur are very sustainable products and have a very long wearing life. For example, a leather or sheepskin jacket could last a lifetime. In my vegetarian days, I would have been horrified by such an observation. I guess many people feel the same way. On my Visit to the Killing Floor at Kam Lake View Meats, I learned that hides, once a valuable byproduct of the slaughtering process, are now almost a waste product. The inspector said: ?we are close to the day when the customer will have to pay extra to dispose of the hide.? The kill floor manager said: ?when I started twenty years ago, the hides were worth $50.00 each. Now they get $5.00 a hide.? This situation seems wrong to me. As a show of respect for the life given for our food we should be using every part of the animal possible. There are problems with modern leather products. Most modern tanning methods use toxic chemicals but this does not have to be the case. Leather can be produced using traditional brain tanning methods which does not negatively affect the environment. If there were enough people that cared about how a hide was tanned, we could have a resurgence of artisan tanning using traditional methods.

Wool is another wonderful material that doesn’t require the death of an animal and is completely sustainable. All you need is the sheep on pasture and the wool continues to grow year after year. Wool can be used for years, and some thick wools will have the same longevity as leather, sheepskin or fur. Again, we are seeing the loss of another traditional home industry. At one time, many sheep farms would have had a method of taking the raw wool from the sheep to a finished product. Now, this wasn’t an easy task. Women spent the winter months working at cleaning, carting, spinning, weaving and knitting. They would make many of the clothes and blankets used by the whole family. Now wool is a waste product. It isn’t even worth the cost to send it to Custom Woolen Mills located in Alberta. I talked with Susan McGillivray from Jocko Creek Ranch about her sheep’s wool. She sends enough wool to the mill for her family’s needs but the rest of the wool gets composted. Here is another missed opportunity for a revival in artisan wool production. If enough people valued high quality wool and were willing to pay for handmade knitting and weaving we could have a local cultural Renaissance.

Cotton, linen, and hemp are beautiful materials and true products of the Industrial Revolution. There may have been cottage industry of these products long ago, but few people would have the production knowledge now. Cotton’s major problem is the amount of fungicides, herbicides and pesticides used to produce the crop. Going organic with your cotton clothing would really help the environment. Linen comes from flax straw, a “waste product” of flax seed and flax oil production. Linen does not require as many chemicals for production as cotton. Hemp is a very hardy plant with its own natural pesticide. Hemp is a very strong and versatile fiber and can be used in building materials, fabrics, and rope. The official story is hemp is hard to get because the material got caught up in a silly confusion during the 1930’s drug prohibition. Some people believe this official story is a fiction to hide the true reason which is to protect the synthetic fabric industry. If we lived in a sane world we would all be wearing hemp or linen. If we bought hemp clothes we could be wearing the same clothes for a decade. We would have to give up making a fashion statement and design styles of clothing that can adjust for weight loss or gain. If we are going to continue using cotton we should use organic cotton.

killer-clothes

This is an interesting book about clothing. It will make you look and what you wear in a new way.

I just finished reading Killer Clothes: How Seemingly Innocent Clothing Choices Endanger Your Health …And How To Protect Yourself by Anna Maria Clement. I was previously unaware of the chemical contamination prevalent in clothes manufacturing. Manufacturers are now putting some very scary chemicals on your clothes. (The way to protect yourself against these chemicals is to know your producers and make it your business to understand their manufacturing processes. Sorry, no easy answers on this website.) Manufacturers are not required to list the chemicals used on the clothing’s label. These chemicals are used to make the fabric flame, stain, shrink, static, wrinkle, bacterial, microbial, and odor resistant. For example, formaldehyde is commonly used in fabrics to resist wrinkling and shrinkage. Ugh. The author is concerned that we are all “guinea pigs” in a vast experiment without our conscious consent. She is concerned that our clothes are adding to a “total toxic load” in our bodies which can led to illness in the short or long-term. She is concerned that many of these chemicals “are persistent in the environment and bio-accumulative in humans and wildlife.” She is especially worried about what this will mean for the health of our children and grandchildren.

Finally, when we are done with our natural clothing, they can be recycled as rags or made into paper. The rags, when worn, will return to the soil which in turn will service another generation of people. I cannot say that about my petrochemical-based nylon, fleece, or polyester.