Corn, the Zodiac, and Us

[Spent waaay too long this morning being annoyed by Blogger losing my password and locking me out of my blog. Idjits. Anyway, on with the post...]

Last year, when the 2013 almanacs came out, I sat down (back in Flagstaff) and proceeded to block out planting dates for 2013.  For those of you who don't plant by the zodiac, basically what I try to do is match up favorable zodiac planting signs and favorable moon planting signs within the frost-free planting season of eastern KY. I'm a fair novice at this, so it's a long job.  I make mistakes.

So I sat at a Barnes & Nobles, happy as a displaced farmer-clam could be, scribbling up the 2013 calendar, until I tried to schedule this year's corn planting.  Corn (from what I gather) needs to be planted in the sign of Pisces, or the feet.  That gives it strong roots, and helps it set good ears, instead of just producing lots of leaves.  It also needed to be planted in a waxing moon sign (but not on a new moon date) after the weather got warm enough to get the soil above 50, but with enough time to let it pollinate before the weather hit a consistent 90* (corn stops pollinating above 90* and starts filling out the ears.  If it hasn't properly pollinated, that's when you get ears with blank rows (no kernels).

There just was not a good corn planting date for 2013 that I could find.  Pisces didn't line up with the proper moon phase at all.  I finally decided it just wasn't a good year for a corn crop, and to just plant the corn when I planted other things (which turned out to be moot, since it looks like I won't have the raised beds ready to plant until it is time for the winter crops. Oh well.)

Last week, one of the news sites I follow posted a short blurb about the state of the US corn crop.  I went looking, and found this chart on agweb.com:

Corn Planted - Selected States
[These 18 States planted 92% of the 2012 corn acreage]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
                 :            Week ending            :           
                 :-----------------------------------:           
      State      :  May 12,  :  May 5,   :  May 12,  : 2008-2012 
                 :   2012    :   2013    :   2013    :  Average  
-----------------------------------------------------------------
                 :                    percent                    
                 :                                               
Colorado ........:    80          12          32          64     
Illinois ........:    94           7          17          64     
Indiana .........:    92           8          30          54     
Iowa ............:    86           8          15          79     
Kansas ..........:    88          17          31          73     
Kentucky ........:    95          32          39          66     
Michigan ........:    58           5          32          52     
Minnesota .......:    86           2          18          68     
Missouri ........:    92          22          28          65     
Nebraska ........:    89          14          43          77     
North Carolina ..:    97          89          92          97     
North Dakota ....:    79           1          18          43     
Ohio ............:    83           7          46          49     
Pennsylvania ....:    53          28          48          45     
South Dakota ....:    76           7          37          46     
Tennessee .......:    99          56          63          81     
Texas ...........:    90          70          78          88     
Wisconsin .......:    54           4          14          47     
                 :                                               
18 States .......:    85          12          28          65     
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Compared to 2012, farmers this year are way behind the curve on planting, and hot weather is already heading our way (it has been pouring rain and in the 80s here.)  Just like the zodiac showed, this is not turning out to be a good corn year. 

Danny is fascinated by the whole "planting by the zodiac" and wants to find the underlying reason it works (long-term repeating weather cycles is his current thesis.) I can't understand why/how it works, but it just does. I think we're going to start stocking up on corn for the animals (and maybe us?) before the prices start going up even further.

That just about covers the corn and the zodiac. On to news about us:

Other than watching the corn markets, things here have been busy as ever.  Arabella is coming into her ballet recital season, which translates as "hectic."  Last Saturday, she performed her part in "Peter Pan"on the courthouse steps and marched in the parade at the town's "Spring Fling."  Giselle is busily finishing up her freshman year of high school.  Danny has been working what seems like constantly.  He works 24 hr shifts, twice per week, and has been picking up extra days for missing/vacationing paramedics at the base.  Add in conferences, continuing education, teaching classes, and base meetings, and he hasn't been home very much lately, it seems.

I've been chipping away at house stuff and chasing dead ancestors at off moments.  I finally got the kitchen light up (a four fluorescent bulb fixture!), so now we have LOTS of light to cook and wash dishes by.  The kitchen had been the darkest room in the house, before.  Now I can actually see that the windows need scrubbing, and the refrigerator needs dusting, and, and,...well, maybe the old fixture had its merits.  I also got the office outlet properly wired (but ran out of electricians tape, so next paycheck I get to go back up into the attic and wrap all the wirenuts before I close the junction boxes.  Joy.)

On the dead ancestor front, I'm beginning to discover just what an interesting sense of humor God has.  To begin at the beginning:  my maiden name is Spurlock.  Growing up in CA, I was the only Spurlock I knew (besides my father, of course.)  I thought we were one of those family names well on their way to dying out.  Imagine my surprise when I move to eastern KY and find whole passels of Spurlocks.  Not just people, but creeks, churches, hills; Spurlocks were everywhere.  But from what little I knew of my family, they were all from the mid-west.  I hadn't found a connection to the Spurlocks here, so I had let the matter drop.

For our first anniversary, I had bought Danny a 6-month subscription to Ancestry.com so he could chase down his family tree. I know LOTS about my mother's side of the family, but next to nothing about my father's side (my mother didn't talk about them; I grew up thinking my grandfather had died before I was born; I found out that wasn't true when he died in the mid-90s), so one evening I sat down to try to find the name of my greatgrandparents on that side. After fighting with my GGmother's name (which changed from document to document; who names their child Mahulda, anyway!), I finally cracked the code, and the whole family line opened up.

Turns out the Spurlocks are Irish, not Scottish as I had been told.  They came over in the 1600s to VA.  One of my ancestors married the daughter of an Indian chief, Moytoy of Tellico (she's listed as "Indian Princess" which gave me giggle-fits.  No such thing, as I understand it.) Another ancestor, John Spurlock, did move in the 1790s to Floyd County, Kentucky. He established Spurlock Station, which was later renamed Prestons Station, which later still became Prestonsburg, which is the big town in the next county over from where we live. He had 8 children, all of which stayed in the area...except for the one I'm descended from.  That one was the family blacksheep and left to avoid being arrested for various reasons (bigamy and fleecing his 'flock' figured prominently in the charges.)

Almost 175 years later, God apparently decided that the remaining Spurlocks (me) had no place in the general population and when I (having failed a finding my place, and being the smart-butt I am) told him, "Well then, YOU find me a house!", out of the vastness of the entire United States of America, he brought me straight back to where the rest of the Spurlocks still live. 

Makes me wonder.

Concrete blocks...

...are God's way of saying, "Slow down, will ya!?!"

Spent yesterday afternoon wrestling concrete blocks into place for the stem wall of our future greenhouse. Not the best leisure-time activity I could have come up with. My hands are now raw and stiff, and the rest of me aches like I was worked over by a herd of gnomes wielding pickaxes and hammers.  We're attaching the greenhouse to the back (south side) of the main house, to use it as passive heating during the winter, so we're building it as an addition, with a proper concrete block foundation.  And let me tell you, concrete blocks can kick your butt quicker than anything else on earth!  Even Chuck Norris couldn't beat concrete blocks! Today I'm gonna take it easy.

I've been a bit too busy to post recently, and not just because of concrete blocks.  The weekend after my last post, there was a civil war reenactment the next county over from us.  Danny had been working or otherwise during all last year's local reenactments, so I really wanted him to get a chance to see this one.  Long story short--we jumped in with both feet and now are "official" civil war reenactors!  Danny and Giselle both were trained on black powder guns, and Arabella and I are going to be "Belles".  Danny's even growing a goatee to look more authentic! We have a reenactment this weekend, and another at the end of the month, then one in June..and then...GETTYSBURG!! This year is the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, and we get to go and reenact in it!  And hopefully, Danny's son, Sam, and Sam's girlfriend will get to join us and reenact, also.Which is way cool, not only for the obvious reasons, but also because on my and Danny's first date we went to Gettysburg. Now we get to go back there as a family and take part in the reenactment of the battle!!

(Giselle and Danny, new recruits. Danny got Giselle's camera to talk to my computer!! Yay!)

So besides the normal construction mode around here, all the planting and standard lawn-and-weeding, all the animals, homeschooling, dance and karate, Danny's work schedule, and Danny's teaching schedule, we now have about 2 weekends each month that we're going to be camping circa 1863.  I think that just about fills our calendar to bursting.  Postings here may be scarcer than normal for a while...

Phalen Nails It. UPDATED

Phalen, over at Homesteading Neophyte, put into words the low-grade discontent I've felt over the last couple of years regarding homesteading. I decided to comment here so I didn't overwhelm her comments page.  If you're a homesteader, you need to read her post, HERE.  My commentary below:

Most of the time, I feel like I'm failing in the homesteading department, which is one of the main reasons my postings have become spottier; the other reason being that writing time has gotten scarcer.  I don't have pretty pictures for my blog.  My bread doesn't always rise right. I have yet to make a reliably good cheese. My goats lose babies.  My rabbits die. My chickens don't lay eggs.  I plant the wrong plants in the wrong places and then have to scramble to fix my mistakes. I am always behind on weeding and mowing. I misjudge the woodpile and run out of wood in February. I drive an SUV, so my eco-footprint sucks.  I don't have the time or patience for crafty-crafts or knick-knacks that catch dust (books are the exception.  In my world you can never have too many books, even though they catch dust.) Our life isn't "pretty".

I know homesteading can be expensive.  Plants, livestock, buildings, fencing all cost money. I'd love to make our farm pay. My goal is to eventually produce enough to feed us and our animals, and bring in enough extra to pay the cost of homesteading. I'd like to write a book about our mishaps here, trying to set up our homestead. I suppose I could go the "glossy" route: concentrate on the externals, on how things look, instead of chronicling how things really are on a farm. But that's not who I am.

It is discouraging to me to read (the majority) of the "glossy" blogs out there--with gorgeous houses, lots of perfectly manicured acreage, cute dust-catcher crafts everywhere, where the wife is a fashion-plate, the kids are perfect, and they have more money than God. Their blogs have tons of beautiful pictures. They're featured on TV, writing bestselling books, building adorable Victorian-chic chicken tractors, dressing their animals, putting $250,000 solar systems onto their $500,000 house to reduce their carbon footprint, and generally making Martha Stewart look like a piker. 

Then I look at our farm: fixer-upper house (after almost 8 years of fixer-uppering!), fencing held together with cut saplings, animals being...animals instead of picture-perfect props, all the projects always half-done, where the wife (that's me) rarely has the time to do more than throw on barn clothes (jeans, sweatshirt, and steel-toed boots caked in...let's just agree to call it "mud", OK?), and scraping by monetarily.  (The only thing we seem to have in common with them is that our kids are pretty awesome!) We don't have the time or energy most days to write, our chicken tractor is PVC pipe (and I'm not sure we will continue using it; I think I liked them free-ranging better), we have a non-eco-friendly generator to run the well pump when the power goes out, and I'm just happy if dinner gets cooked on time and tastes good.  Martha Stewart, I'm not. (Although I do like her magazine...go figure.)

The main reason I homestead is to be able to take responsibility for me and mine, and not depend on some generic "other" to provide for us. Homesteading is not always pretty, or funny, or nice. It's not glossy or popular.  But it is real, it is true, and it's our life.  And I wouldn't trade it for anything.

UPDATE: Smallfarmgirl and Holly bring up a very important point.  Everyone seems to have a different definition of what constitutes "homesteading". I flailed around trying to put my thoughts into a rational definition for a while, then cheated and consulted the oracle (otherwise known as the www.)  The best definitions I found of what a homesteader is and isn't follows:

 

"It's not a single idea, but many ideas and attitudes, including a reverence for nature and a preference for country life; a desire for maximum personal self-reliance and creative leisure; a concern for family nurture and community cohesion; a certain hostility toward luxury; a belief that the primary reward of work should be well-being rather than money; a certain nostalgia for the supposed simplicities of the past and an anxiety about the technological and bureaucratic complexities of the present and the future; and a taste for the plain and functional."  --- JD Belanger, Countryside Magazine

"Over the last hundred years or so, the term "homesteading" has evolved to a new meaning, and there are about as many interpretations as there are homesteaders. To us, the modern homesteader is someone who strives for autonomy; to become as self-sufficient and self-confident as possible. We don't mean by this that all folks calling themselves homesteaders are automatically enrolled in some sort of worldwide self-sufficiency contest, either. Each person has to decide just how far he or she wishes to take self-sufficiency...To us, "homesteader" might be the antithesis to "consumer." Even the term "consumer" implies that one only consumes: continually buys, uses up, and buys more. A true consumer gives nothing back to the planet in return. A homesteader, on the other hand, creates, nourishes, and nurtures. A homesteader is a worthy steward to the Earth." --- Skip Thomsen and Cat Freshwater, The Modern Homestead Manual

"Homesteading has more than one meaning. It used to mean qualifying for free government land because you lived on it, built a house on it, and so on. Now it means living on the land and trying for at least some degree of home production of your needs, especially food. When people who were raised in cities try to accomplish that, I believe it can be every bit as much of a challenge for them as crossing the plains was for our pioneer ancestors. People go to all kinds of places to do their homesteading: the suburbs of their city, the mountains of Appalachia or the western United States, the northeastern United States, the Midwest, northern California, Alaska, Canada, Mexico. No matter where you are or go -- if you can grow a garden and raise some animals, you're a homesteader. And a fortunate human being!" --- Carla Emery, The Encyclopedia of Country Living

h/t Daycreek

Progressive Socialists in a Nutshell

h/t Never Yet Melted

Good news, Bad news, Sad news: Poppy

Rose had her babies last night.  That's the first good news.

The other goats had relegated Rose to the bottom of the pecking order, and wouldn't let her into the back of the barn.  I didn't know exactly when she had bred, so I didn't know she was due. Rose gave birth in the doorway of the barn, in 19 degree weather.  That's the first bad news.

Rose had triplets, two girls and a boy.  One girl and one boy froze to death.  I found them this morning when I went down to milk Wish. That's the sad news.

We brought the remaining, living girl up to the house.  She had chilled, but still had some muscle tone.  I think she was the last born, so hadn't had time to freeze completely.  We milked some colostrum out of Rose, warmed the baby goat in front of the heater, fed her, let her sleep, and she looks like she should pull through.  We decided to name her Poppy. That's the second good news.

Once Poppy had been warmed and was looking perky, we took her down to reunite her with Rose.  Rose refused to let her nurse, and walked away every time Poppy came near her.  So Poppy is now officially a rejected baby.  That's the second sad news.

But to end on a happy note, Poppy will now be raised as a bottle goat up at the house. She will eventually be our front yard goat and will probably be about as spoiled as a goat can possibly be.  She's a beautiful goat; mainly white with a perfect tan mask with a white blaze, and one little tan spot on one side.  Giselle had Poppy sleeping next to her on the sofa while she was doing her biology homework.  Danny is currently feeding her in the rocking chair.

Yup, I think this goat has got it made.

Daffodils are up...and this is what's been happening:

In the last two weeks, spring finally sprung...just in time for winter to do a classic end-run counter-offense.  The rest of the week is supposed to be below freezing at night.  So much for getting my trees planted out.  :(

OK, enough complaining. We've actually been accomplishing...well, I was going to say accomplishing alot, but truthfully, it's been more preparing-to-accomplish than actual accomplishment.

The most interesting thing we did was to attend the first meeting of the Tri-state Sustainable Homesteaders group.  As everyone out there knows, I refuse to Facebook.  So I had no clue that a bunch of farm-type people in the area were attempting to build a community.  Smallfarmgirl told me about it (she Facebooks, like all the other normal people in the world.)  So after finding their website, I decided to go to see who else was out there in homesteader-land.

There were probably 30 or so people at the meeting.  Everyone went around and introduced themselves, telling what skills they had and roughly what animals.  There were some beginners, lots of several-years-experience people, and a couple of long-term farmers.  One couple was there who knew about growing mushrooms (which I have wanted to get into, but held off for fear of infecting the house with mushrooms.  Like, in the walls.)  They were from Wisconsin, but they reminded me of the people in the Medford/Ashland area of Oregon (I lived there for a while a long time ago. Developed some of my less-mainstream ideas there. Don't ask, Long story.)  They were really into new fruit trees, so I offered them the apple seeds we collected on our trip back to Kentucky last summer from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Rocky Ridge Farm (we collected some windfalls from the antique apple trees there, to get seeds.)  I have no idea what type of apples they will grow, but I couldn't start them here because antique apples aren't immune to cedar apple rust and we have that pesky cedar growing three doors down.  So I'm kinda excited to be able to pass them on to someone who can let them grow. The next meeting is supposed to be in mid-April, but they haven't posted when on the website yet.  I'll keep you posted, just in case there are any other homesteader types in the area who are interested.  Might as well give the group a chance.

Other happenings, closer to home:

Tractor Supply ended up getting a shipment of Americaunas, which are the one chicken I really wanted to order but to do so would have ended up costing more than I was willing to pay.  They only had straight run, so I bought 6 chicks and am hoping to beat the pullet/cockerel odds.  Counting the 75 chicks I have on order, the 6 chicks I have in my dining room (the one warm, semi-quiet, out-of-the-way spot we have), and the 6 grown chickens (5 hens, one rooster) in the chicken tractor, that means I potentially will have 87 chickens by the end of May.  Somehow, that boggles my mind.  Eggs, anybody?

Speaking of animals, we re-sexed the rabbits this morning.  I'm still not confident in my ability to properly TSA the bunnies, so now that they are bigger, I thought it prudent to recheck (I am such a sick puppy  >;) )  Turns out, we did a good job; only mis-labeled one boy as a girl.  I hope it doesn't adversely affect his psychological health.

Wish is finally milking nicely.  She's not the best milker in the world, but she's finally giving us right at 3/4 of a bottle every morning, as well as feeding her bucklings.  We should get a decent amount from her once they're weaned.

We got the first 30 feet of raised planting beds built and planted with potatoes.  I no longer have any fingerling seed potatoes, so this year is all Red Norland.  If I can get the other beds built in a timely fashion, I may try to plant more potatoes, because otherwise, almost all the potatoes we harvest this year will have to be held for seed for next year's crop.

I found Carolina Allspice (at Tractor Supply, of all places!  Couldn't find it ANYWHERE on the internet or in the seed magazines.) and planted 4 plants, one of which Buttercup promptly dug up and ate for me (Bad Dog!)  I have another 2 waiting to replace the chewed one once the weather permits.  Carolina Allspice, according to what I read, has bark that can be used as a cinnamon replacement.  Cinnamon is one of those things that I know we would miss if we no longer could get it, so I'm really happy to add it to our collection-o-plants.

I got part of the baseboards up in the bathroom and some of the vertical trim pieces in, too.  The window trim is in the primer stage, but once it goes in, we will FINALLY, FINALLY be ready to install the tub and the composting toilet!!

The local lumber sale is on, so I'm going to be buying lumber like crazy for the next month.  Right now, I have enough lumber to finish building the first rabbit-run frame, and this weekend I plan on buying the lumber for the other side.  Then (barring any unforeseen bills) on next payday, I'm going to buy as much fencing lumber as I can afford.  Then I just have to get the weather to cooperate so we can start building.

Had another power outage, complete with rainstorm, last week.  The power was out for almost 24 hours. We got through it just fine.  Only thing we really needed to improve on is remembering to put batteries in the radios. This is one outage that I really can't blame on the power company; apparently some idiot deliberately set a fire that took out a couple of power poles just up the way from the local switching station. Morons.

That's about all that's happening around here.  Danny's working LOTS (one of his coworkers is out: his wife went in for surgery, and his mother is in the hospital after a home invasion.) but we're hoping that soon he'll have more time with us on the farm, enjoying the daffodils.

On and About the Farm

Today was the first semi-warm, non-rainy day in a while...so the girls and I hit the ground running. Danny was at work.  :(  

But first, the big announcement!! Wish had her babies on the 1st, two of the cutest little bucklings!  Which means we will have fresh goats' milk starting next week!  These bucklings are an interesting cross; half purebred Nigerian Dwarf, 1/4 Nubian, and 1/4 Fainting goat.  They have Nubian ears, the size of the Nigerian, but the stockiness of the Fainter.  I'm hoping Wanda or Rose (who are also pregnant by the same buck as Wish) have at least one girl--I reeeaaallly want to see how this cross milks!  [Note: I still don't have a camera that will talk with my computer, so no cuteness-overload pictures.  Sorry.]

As everyone knows, baby goats mean...Spring is on the way!!  We're busy building rabbit runs/housing so that I can get my rabbits out of the chicken coop before the chicks we ordered arrive.  We have 75 assorted chicks, heavy on the Buff Orpingtons, arriving at the end of May, so that is my building deadline.  And since the raised beds that we're building in the garden back on the rabbit runs, and since the new fruit trees we've ordered (which will be here in mid-April) will border the front of the runs, and since my potatoes STILL are not in the ground...well, all that means I have to hustle be-hind to get everything built on schedule so I know where everything goes. 

So this morning we managed to get the first wall of the first run up and braced.  Which is all we're going to be able to do this week, because winter is back on the schedule.  Yup, we have a nice snow storm headed our way.  Friday is supposed to be the next semi-clear day we have.  Friday is also the best day this month to plant potatoes by the zodiac.  So Friday, we get to build 4 raised beds, fill them with dirt and compost, and get the potatoes planted...all before 6 pm, when Arabella needs to be at a birthday party.  Pray for me; I'm gonna need it!