Tag: farming

An Update in Pictures

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

I have been very busy with the animals. Cynthia passed away last week, and both Jeremiah and I were devastated. On Halloween, we went to Petco and purchased Jeremiah a new girl, but he was very upset about it. It took me a week, but Jeremiah and the new girl (named Samhain because that’s when we got her) are now living happily. I will have to share pictures and tell her story soon because Samhain is beautiful and is the same color as Jeremiah, even though she is a fancy mouse. I thought all fancy mice were white. Samhain looks like a cross between a mouse and a teddy bear.

Also, in the fall, male ducks always get too frisky, and our male duck, Spyro, injured Anna Maria pretty badly. It has been an epic few weeks of my working daily to keep Anna Maria safe and separate and healing. I am happy to report that she has healed and is able to sleep with the flock again. As you may remember, Anna Maria hates me on a regular day, but when she’s injured, she’s just on the edge and hates me extra.

Because I have also been sick due to a terrible flare of my autoimmune struggles, I was starting to wonder if I still had it in me to care for Anna Maria. But we did it! I am now back to just having to help her stay with the flock when she loses everyone because she’s blind. Just this morning, I picked her up when she got caught up in the turkeys and carried her to the rest of the ducks.

I held her like a baby over my shoulder and said, “I know you hate me, but I will love you until the day I die.” She can’t have too much longer in this world. She is moving more slowly and getting lost all the time. There must be something I am supposed to learn from my service to her. Maybe it’s just service. I am weary though. Thankfully, she is better again now.

And despite the challenges this fall, it has been a lovely harvest season. The baby chickens are good for my soul, and I love getting to know them. Ron has harvested so much good food from the garden. I made a ton of apple butter, finally mastered the cherry pie thanks to a cheat, and learned how to make homemade English muffins. It is more than a little joyful watching that dough puff up in the skillet.

I took some pictures of the baby chickens today, so I thought I would share an update of them along with a few pictures from around here. Wait until you see one of the male turkeys. Those turkeys are magnificent creatures!

This is my favorite baby. She is a Welsummer like our dear Rooster was. She lets me hold her still. When she was little, she was the only one who would come to me. I have no name for her yet. It has to be the best name. I wish to honor Rooster in some way, but that poor boy did not have a good name. Please help with ideas!
This is Bernice. She is the tiniest of all of the Delaware chickens we have, and she is so sweet. She likes to be wild and free though and will not let me hold her very much.
This is Pingvin. She is named for the Swedish word for penguin because she had a creamy white face when she was a baby and looked like a penguin. I spent the spring learning a little bit of Swedish. The main words that stuck were the words for bread, strawberry, thank you, you’re welcome, and penguin.
And this is Pumpkin, an old girl who came to visit with me while I took baby pictures this morning. She is about 7 years old and is the hen who disappeared for weeks and returned squawking outside our bedroom window one night in the middle of the night. Oh, I wish she could tell me her stories! She is just getting over a molt, so she looks a little worse for wear right now. What a magnificent girl she is!
These are the English muffins I learned how to make. They were inconsistent in thickness but consistent in their yumminess.
And look at this cauliflower harvest last week! I told Ron that October and November must be cauliflower’s favorite months. I have never seen him grow more beautiful cauliflower.
This beautiful boy shows out like this all the time. All three boys do. I learned they will not mate unless the females submit and allow it. So far, the hens seem like they won’t be ready until next spring, so the boys just walk around showing off like 80% of the day. I keep asking them if they get tired of it. I guess they just do not. What a beautiful boy! I have to write more about the turkeys. It’s hard though because they deserve much time and effort. I’ll just share this: Their heads change colors depending upon their mood. They have red, blue, white, and colors in between!
We had a banner harvest this year. We put up more food than ever, and the onions were so gorgeous this year. We keep learning a little more each year about how to put by food. The onions have been a staple for years, but they were so beautiful I had to share a picture of them in our cold room.
And definitely not least, this is the cherry pie I made. I cheated. I used the new Bonne Maman cherry pie filling, and now I can finally make a cherry pie. It’s still not as good as my grandmother’s though. Oh, to have her recipes!

Look Out the Window

~ Crystal Sands ~ 4 Comments

Well, friends, I did it. I successfully hatched a batch of baby chicks, and they are now all in the brand new brood box Ron made for them. That brood box is a masterpiece, and I must write about it one day. However, for my story today, you just need to know that it has a large window in the front, so it literally looks like a giant chicken tv.

And, as such, my husband, son, and I have found ourselves watching the baby chickens on “television” several times a day. Last night, we all happened to be out there together watching through the window at how the baby chicks interacted with their world.

“It’s so interesting to think about how their whole world is in that box right now,” my teenager said. “They don’t even know to look out the window.” Oh, that kid has a beautiful mind!

We all talked about how they have everything a baby chick could need or want (besides a mama) right there in that little box–it’s warm, it’s spacious, there’s fresh food and water. And there are many friends to be had. I think I hatched 29 chicks.

“Every now and then the hand of ‘God’ reaches in and adds fresh food and water, and then they are go on their little ways” my son said.

And this led us to a discussion of humans.

Open window with a wooden frame looking out onto a misty green landscape.

We talked about how much there is that humans can’t see or understand, which relates to how we define “God,” though my son pointed out that there are plenty of scientists who have been trying to “look out the window” and see what all is out there. Still, most of us probably don’t even have time to stop and look up at the stars.

I just spent the last four months working non-stop to try to save money and pay off debt before things get really tough economically. Thankfully, we did not have much debt. We are lucky. But we do not own our property outright, so that’s a worry. So, pretty much, for the last several months, if my eyes were open, I was working. I was exhausted mentally and physically and could not move my right arm very well from the repetitive motions. I noticed I was getting more and more grumpy, and I don’t like myself that way.

And then, last week, my jobs were cut back, as I knew they eventually would be. I didn’t “lose” the jobs, but there is just less work–fewer students in college means fewer classes. So, last week, for first time in a long time, I felt like I could breathe a little. As scary as it all is, I was just so thankful to not have to work so much.

The other night, when I went outside to put the ducks to bed, instead of rushing them into the duck house, so I could get back to work, I just stood outside and looked up at the stars. When I did, I realized I had not looked up at the stars in months. What a tragedy that is, right? The stars make me think of our Great Pyrenees Gus, who loved to sit outside and just look up at the stars at night, or the clouds during the day, or a cool bird on the fence. But, right before he died, we sat out under the stars for a long time and just took them in together.

The stars are lovely and remind me of how small I am and how small my problems are and how small even the cruel people in charge really are. They don’t know they’re small–well, maybe on some level they do and it scares them and that’s why they behave as they do. But I guess that’s a whole other issue. Still, doesn’t the vastness of the galaxy just give you some perspective?

Looking up at the stars made me think about how I am just a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. I am a human animal, a mother doing my best to protect my children, keep them safe, ensure the survival of my species because that’s what I am programmed to do, I suppose–and, because I seem to have been born with an urge, make some human art along the way.

But I also have to remember there are so many things I don’t quite understand, how it all fits together, why things fall apart, why cruelty seems to be such a part of it all, but maybe, if I take time to look out the window, I will find some answers. Of course, the older I get, the more I realize that the answer might be that there are no answers.

In the meantime, I am watching the baby chicks. It’s been a few days, and they haven’t looked out the window yet, but give them time, they will soon. And, then, their curious minds will want to know what is outside of that brood box, and the day their feathers come in and they no longer need heat and they get go outside to touch the earth and eat bugs and play in the grass will be the best day.

photo credit: Hannah Tims, Unsplash

10 Below

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

When we woke up this morning, it was 10 below, and I was thankful Ron had decided to put the ceramic heater in the chicken coop last night. In general, chickens do not need a heat in the winter, but we have a “negative 7” rule that we just made up ourselves. If it’s below -7, we bring out some heat for the flock.

There is always a risk of fire when you add heat to your coop, but we do not use a heat lamp and use an oil-based ceramic heater. On top of this, Ron places a cage he built over the heater, and it adds some security.

I have to say the chickens were quite happy with a little extra heat, and Saint-Saens and Betty Jr., both of whom will be 7 years old this spring, happily slept on the heater’s cage last night. I imagine our old chickens have aching joints like I have. All the old girls and boys–from Rooster, who will be 9, to Saint-Saens, Vivaldi, Betty Jr., Mary Jane, and Pumpkin, who will all be 7 or 8 this spring, had a little more spring in their step this morning when I delivered food and water to the coop.

It was miserable out there in that cold, so I did not open the coop to the outdoors until much later in the day today. Poor Tuesday was out of there when I opened that door. She doesn’t mind the cold, but she surely seems to mind being stuck with people.

I was talking to a dear friend from the south last night, and she is so worried about the terrible cold that has hit the entire south this week. She was telling me all of the extra things she is having to do to get prepared and keep her chickens and rabbits warm, and it made me realize just how much we have to do all the time, every single day of our lives, during the winter months here in Maine.

It is a lot of really hard work. Busting ice is so therapeutic mentally, but it can be pretty hard on my body. And I have been fighting with a frozen poop-sickle near the back door of the chicken coop for a week. I finally had to take a hammer to it. I have hauled frozen chunks of poop out of both the chicken coop and duck house all winter, and I can’t get the wheelbarrow through when there’s deep snow, so I have all kinds of cheats for keeping things clean for the birds, most of which are pretty gross for me. And the water! We use buckets to haul water to the chickens and ducks, and the ducks have to have their tubs refilled several times a day on the super cold days–or the windy days. And, of course, how many times this winter have I shoveled the chicken coop and swept the ramps. I want them to be as comfortable as possible.

It was so interesting to me that I am just in the habit of doing all of it and didn’t think about how much extra work the animals are in the winter until I got my friend’s perspective. We concluded our conversation on winter preparedness with her asking me how cold it was here. When I told her, she asked how in the world we lived here, and that made me think more as well. I love here, and I actually like the winter. But why?

Honestly, I have no idea other than I really like having all four seasons (though, okay, spring in Maine can be pretty short and messy), and I have some Scandinavian ancestry. Maybe that makes me like winter. Or maybe it’s this–and I just thought of this–there is something about being tough enough to survive it that makes you feel alive.

If you love Maine or the north and the long cold winters, I would love your perspective. Why are you here? What makes you love it?

And, if you are in the south, please take good care. I know you are not used to this, and I hope warmer temps return very soon!

PS Today, I had to take my son to his first day of early college and was away from the house all morning. I barely saw Boudica before I left. It was just morning chores, breakfast, get the boy out the door. When I got home, I went outside to let the chickens outside for a bit (well, mainly just Tuesday), and Boudica saw me. She came running across the property, and friends, she looked so magnificent in the snow. I wish I had captured it on video. The snow was dusting up around her as she ran across the chicken yard, breaking a new trail in the cold sunlight. Her face looked so happy to see me. When she got to me, I reached down and hugged her with all my might, and she leaned right into it, extra hard. She missed me and let me know. What an honor it is to be loved by such a beautiful creature!

A Farmer’s Calendar at the End of the Year

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Today, on this last day of 2024, I took down the wall calendar and put up the new one. The wall calendar always hangs in our kitchen and is the recorder of our lives as farmers and parents of a young cellist. It tells us when we planted what, when baby chicks are born, when music camps are, and so much more.

I have saved these wall calendars since we started hatching our own baby chicks in 2016 because I wanted to have records of the babies, and these calendars have grown to mean so much to me. They are like a short-hand of everything we do, what we grow, what we harvest, and how we live our lives.

The quote at the bottom of that top calendar page reads, ““The tailor bird builds her nest in deep woods, she uses no more than one branch.The mole drinks off the river, it can only fill one belly.” The quote is from Chuang Tzu, and doesn’t that really just sum up the problem humans are having right now?

This year, I bought a lovely wall calendar with artwork from our national parks. I love our national parks and everything they stand for. I have only been to four national parks, but I was in awe of all of them.

I decided to gather all of the old calendars I could quickly find, just to see what all I could remember about our homesteading journey and our lives from previous, and it was like a trip down memory lane. I would love to take this to the next level and actually keep a farmer’s journal. I did that one year for the blog, but I lacked discipline this year–and most years. But while we are pretty good at remembering most of our lessons from year to year, we do forget some. The forgetting was worse this year with the long COVID. Yeah, I might need to keep a farmer’s journal in 2025.

But I digress…

When I looked at the calendars, I could see the year Pumpkin and Nugget had babies back to back. I could see all of my cat’s Sophie’s vet appointments as we dealt with her health issues. I miss her so much. I could see a note about Gus’s birthday. I miss him so much too. I could see that Ron has been starting seedlings indoors for at least six or seven years. It doesn’t seem that long. I could see when the dogs’ heart worm meds were due. I could see that the ducks’ first eggs of the year have been getting later, and the last eggs of the year dropped off very early this year. Those ducks will be seven years old this spring.

I saw a note about remembering to give the second treatment Rooster and Mary Jane for mites. I saw that, in 2020, baby chicks were born on my birthday! I can’t remember which chicks those are, but I am going to have to track it down because I think it might be Juliet and Bianca. Oh, how I love those girls, and oh, how sad I am that they are nearly five years old. I hate to think that I don’t have too many more years with those fantastic hens.

I saw the cello camps and music lessons and recitals. I loved seeing the year we did the farm shares and my efforts at keeping up with who was getting eggs when. Oh, and I saw records keeping track of when we bought chicken feed and how much we spent. We found a better food this year, and it has saved us so much money. I’ll have to write about that soon because, if we can dodge the bird flu, I might try again at selling eggs and seeing if we can do better.

I saw that this year the planting was so much later. Thankfully, we had a long, long summer because we needed all the time. We were so slow and tired this year. I also saw that this year was full of doctor appointments, ultrasounds, lab work. We used to barely go to the doctor. For a few years, it was just check ups and dentist appointments. I hope to get back to that point.

And, hopefully, 2025 will be a good year! I have learned so much this last year. I feel wiser. I feel like I am a better human, and that really just has to be the main goal, doesn’t it?

Friends, I hope you have a lovely New Year’s Eve and New Year tomorrow! I hope 2025 is good for you!

Here’s to kindness, love, good food, great books, beautiful music, self sufficiency, and maybe some baby chicks in the coming year. There will be challenges. There always are. But I hope we face them well and with love in our hearts.

PS If you keep a farmer’s journal, I would love to hear about it. And, if you just keep a calendar like we do, I would love to hear about that as well!

A Season of Harvest in Pictures

~ Crystal Sands ~ 4 Comments

December 2 is definitely the latest we have ever harvested anything, but last night, Ron pulled the last of the carrots from the ground. They were so delicious. We learned to always let your carrots stay in the ground until after the first few frosts. The frost does good things to the sugars in the carrots, and the taste is so sweet.

It seems like forever ago that we started this whole process, and I was so tired this summer and fall from the long COVID that I didn’t post as many pictures as I normally do. With that in mind, I decided to go through all of my photos from the summer and fall and show you what we do around here–and how we eat. There are so many more things to share, but I think this gives you a pretty good idea.

Harvest starts in May, and this year, well, it went until December. Both last night and tonight, we had carrots with dinner. They were magnificent.

It always starts with the rhubarb. I make rhubarb cakes, muffins, and jelly. I didn’t even get to share a single jar of this jelly. I made five jars, and Ron had eaten it all within two weeks. I have to make more next year, but rhubarb jelly is a bit more labor intensive–at least if you want pink. Our rhubarb is not super pink, so I have had to learn some strategies for picking and processing to get more of the pink color.
The first greens! And that’s Saint Saens in the background. That sweet girl will be seven this spring. She really loves the greens. I did share some after this photo.
The green beans did pretty well this year, and we froze a record number of quarts. I have not yet been brave enough to try to can them, but I must try next summer. Also, our neighbor gave us several old harvest baskets years ago, and we use those things all the time. I would love to get a few more.
One of my favorite meals every summer is the organic ramen. When the cabbage and onions are ready (usually we have carrots at this time too, but they were late), I boil duck eggs and warm up some organic ramen. It’s a quick, easy dinner–and it’s pretty!
These were the first raspberries of the season!
Ron planted purple cauliflower this year. I mean, just look at that!
We always have a couple of months between running out of potatoes from last year and the new potatoes of the current year coming to harvest. Every year, when we eat the potatoes, those first meals are so precious to me. I don’t buy potatoes. I just wait until the next crop is ready. It really makes you appreciate good potatoes.
When the blueberries are ripe, I am so excited to put them in oatmeal in the mornings. We all love oatmeal with blueberries around here. This year, the birds ate almost all of our blueberries, so Ron and I spent two days picking at a local farm that has really good prices for beautiful berries. We stocked up and still have gallons of frozen blueberries that we will eat all winter. This summer, on one hot and miserable day of picking (the heat makes long COVID symptoms worse), I said to Ron, “We are the ants, aren’t we?” He agreed that we are, indeed, the ants.
I just had to share this sunflower because neither Ron nor myself planted it. A bird or a squirrel planted it in a flower pot on our deck, and I treasured it. So did this awesome bumble bee.
We had melons this year! They were fantastic! When Ron first tried to grow melons about 10 years ago, it wasn’t hot enough. The Maine summers are plenty hot now.
It was a banner year for tomatoes, and we put up a record number of jars of pizza and spaghetti sauce. This is some of the pizza sauce. Each one of these jars contains enough sauce for two pizzas. We use the tomatoes, onions, peppers, and garlic from the garden to make this sauce. It is slow food that is just so good.
We eat pizzas all fall using vegetables from the garden. This one has onions, peppers, and tomatoes from the garden, and, of course, we make the sauce from the garden too.
Ron chose a hybrid corn this year, so I couldn’t seed save; it was so good it was worth it though. It was a really good year for the corn.
I love apple season. We do not grow our own apples, but we found a local apple orchard with very good prices for pick-your-own, and drops are crazy cheap–and still so good. We load up on apples every fall. We always freeze many gallons of apples, but this year, I started putting up applesauce in jars. I put up eight large jars. They are already gone. My teen son stays up late and, apparently, ate a lot of applesauce this year. I would wake up every other morning or so and find another jar had been opened. Truly, there is nothing like homemade applesauce, right?
Right around apple time is also grape time. We have our own grape vines, and Ron built a beautiful arbor for them this fall. However, we have no grapes yet. Thankfully, I have the kindest neighbor who always shares her grapes with me, and I always make grape jelly. Homemade grape jelly is nothing like the store grape jelly. It’s so tart and so yummy!
Ron plants a fall round of greens each year, so we can have greens when the tomatoes are ripe. This beautiful salad as greens, beets, carrots, peppers, and tomatoes from the garden–and walnuts and dried cranberries from the grocery store.
Our pear trees had a good year. I canned 15 large jars of pears from our trees. We planted two more pear trees this spring, but only one really started to take off. Aren’t pears so beautiful?
I love cranberry beans. A few years ago, we had a bumper crop and haven’t grown any in several years. But Ron planted some this year in his Three Sisters garden, and they are so beautiful. I was glad they were back this year.
We always plant three varieties of carrots–Yellowstone, Scarlet Nantes, and Oxhearts. These are the Oxhearts, and they are great for rocky soils like we have here in Maine.

Food System

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

Warning: This post includes a brief discussion of processing chickens for food.

This morning, we began processing our last batch of meat chickens for the year. We normally do one batch for our family and one batch for our dogs, but we did three batches this year because our Pyrenees, Bairre, has decided he really only likes to eat chicken for dinner. We can either buy meat from the food system where we know the animals are abused or humanely raise and process the chickens ourselves for our dogs to eat. We choose the latter.

And, when I say “we” process these chickens, I mean mostly Ron. I am just the assistant. Ron humanely culls, cleans most of the feathers, and then cleans the insides. It is my job to then get the chicken looking like one from the grocery store, so, when cooked with vegetables from our garden, our family just sees a beautiful chicken dinner as the end result.

I get the final feathers and hairs, clean the chicken super thoroughly, and process the internal organs for the dogs. We try to avoid waste. After all, a life was given for that food. Waste seems sacrilegious.

Even with my assistant job, I get so worn. I am up and down our stairs a lot, as we keep the chickens in the basement, and I spent a lot of hours leaned over our deep sink. It feels worth it though when I think about the alternative. The “humanely raised” is really important to me, but food safety is becoming more and more an issue.

Recently, it feels more and more important that we choose to live this way.. I have known for a long time that our American food system is in some trouble, but the recent listeria and E. coli outbreaks remind me of how important it is to build our own food system–at least as much as we can. The FDA and the USDA both regulate our food systems here in the United States, but they apparently do not communicate well and are also quite backed up and overworked. On top of these issues, apparently, some states, specifically I read about Texas, have simply quit complying with some required testing from the USDA. This was related to the bird flu, but who knows what else states or companies will decide to not comply with. It’s already quit a bit. Self regulation is not a great plan, at least if experience has taught us anything.

We also have a lot of inexperience and arrogance heading into our government, and in my other life working as an academic administrator who worked with federal agencies to secure grants, inexperience and arrogance are not a great combination when it comes to dealing with the giant bureaucracy that is government.

Yeah, I have some worries. I think we had better start working hard to get our food from a more local system.

I know it’s not possible for everyone who reads this to start raising meat chickens, but it seems important to start trying to remove ourselves from a broken food system in whatever ways we can. Maybe we get chickens for eggs and compost their poop to fertilize our organic vegetable garden. Maybe we connect with local farmers and join a CSA. Maybe we support any local markets that keep their supply chains local. I don’t know how common those are in other states, but we have a lot of them here in Maine. Maybe we work harder to create low-ingredient homes, cutting down on or eliminating processed foods (more on that later).

Pay attention. Wash your food well. Organic carrots were a recent culprit for E. coli. Cook your meats thoroughly. Make sure they reach the proper temps.

I wish I had more answers, but I do think we are on our own more than I feel comfortable with. I’ll always share what I learn to help us get through it all, and I hope you will as well.

photo credit: Anna Jakutajc-Wojtalik, Unsplash

Where do we go from here?

~ Crystal Sands ~ 6 Comments

I think we have to keep doing what we have been doing–only extra.

It has taken me a bit to get to where I felt I had something to say. I have been worried about the 2024 presidential election for some time, and well, it didn’t go as I had hoped. It’s not like I think Democrats have all of the answers; in fact, they disappoint me most of the time, but I have gradually learned that my standards for what a government should and should not do are different than most Americans’ standards. I have been coming to terms with that lesson in the most profound way the last couple of weeks.

Most importantly, I think, I have been coming to terms what we can do in order to get by during tough times. If you are a person who thinks the economy is going to be great under the upcoming President’s policies, then this blog is not for you, and I will just say you have no idea how much I hope you are right. But if you are a reader who listens to the economists and who understands who works in the American agricultural system, you might be pretty worried about what the future holds economically, not to mention socially. Please read on.

I am gravely concerned.

I deeply understand that Americans were frustrated and worn from high prices for groceries and other goods, (Interestingly, we did not feel the inflation on groceries as much as others because we grow so much of our own food and live by a buy-it-once system that I will talk about later.) but two things that will absolutely make things worse is deporting our agricultural work force and tariffs. Every economist I know or have read says so. Obviously, there is no point arguing that I think this is a mistake. The deed is done. America has spoken. We have to accept that these things are likely to happen–and we have to prepare.

I think we are going to be looking at some very high prices for groceries, even more so than we are experiencing now. Things may get better for a time, but the economist I spoke to said it won’t last long, if at all.

And climate change isn’t going anywhere. Natural disasters are going to continue to destroy crops at alarming rates. If deportations happen, losing 40% of our agricultural work force is going to do a number on grocery prices. On top of this, I worry about bird flu. We have already seen outbreaks in the U.S. impact the prices of food. These outbreaks are not going to magically go away. In fact, according to scientists, bird flu outbreaks are likely to get more common because of climate change, and we are starting to see cases of it jumping to humans.

In the coming weeks and months, I plan to start sharing more–and more specifically–about what we already do to be self sufficient on our homestead–and what I am learning as well. I have much to learn, and I will share what I find out. In the immediate, it is also important to look to your community. What resources can you share? How can you work together? We are going to need each other.

I watched a video made by a woman who lives in an area of North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene. They had no running water, no electricity, no internet, no cell phone service, and no roads. She said, when the outside influences were gone, people came together. She said everyone organized, shared food and generators, and helped the elderly and children. She said MAGA people were working side by side with people on the far left. When the outside world was no longer influencing people, they came together. This is in us. I hope we can all find it.

I think it is also important to start assessing. What skills do you have? What skills do you want to develop? What resources can you share with others? What do you need to buy before tariffs are implemented?

And, of course, hopefully, I am wrong about all of this, and things are going to be okay. If that’s the case, in the coming weeks and months, the things I share with you will help us all save more money, make our households more inflation-proof, take greater advantage of the resources we have, and avoid processed foods, which are just terrible for us and our children.

I am going to make a promise to write every day for the next year. The journal is also coming back in the Spring with a focus on education more than ever. This is how I am going to keep my hope alive. Please share with me what you are doing to be prepared and remain hopeful.

photo credit: Elaine Casap, Unsplash

Late Fall

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

I realize it is not really “late” fall. But I am looking out the window this morning at my maple tree friend, and all of her leaves are gone. Only the oaks still have their leaves. The yard is full of leaves, and the chickens are so happy. The love digging through the leaves.

It has been a strange fall in many ways. The weather has been quite hot by Mainer standards most of the time, with a swing into the chilly every now and again. Today, it is chilly. I think this one might stick. Ron has the basement full of wood and wood stacked near the garage for this coming winter. He is now on a mission to find wood for the coming years, and it seems like his work in that area never ends. We have had our wood stove since 2020, and so far, a storm brings down some tree some where every year in order to provide enough wood for the following year. It could be, however, that the strong winds have cleared out all they are going to clear out, so Ron is wondering if maybe we will have to buy wood to heat our home next year. We’ll see though. Who knows what the winter storms might do.

The chickens have mostly stopped laying. We are getting just three to five eggs per day, and we have feathers everywhere from the molt. I got this picture of Ruby the other day because she looks so cute. She’s still being her Ruby self. She’s very busy and still very vocal. The ducks had completely stopped laying last week, at least I thought. This morning, there was a single egg in the duck house. I was so happy because duck eggs are my favorite. Our plan is that we will not get ducks again after our flock passes away over time, but it will be tough to never have duck eggs again. We talked about how we could just buy some, but I have not seen anyone in our area who raises organic duck eggs.

I have been really busy wrapping up fall classes and processing more food from the garden. The long summer meant an epic tomato crop. I think I have made enough sauce for two years. I was gifted some organic grapes and made grape jelly. Ron planted a fall crop of greens, so today, I will be gathering spinach and lettuce and bagging it up to have it for just a little longer. A big freeze is coming tomorrow night. We have had a couple of light frosts, but the greens can handle that. Ron says they may not handle this one though, at least not the varieties he has planted. I guess it really is late fall.

Mostly, things are going well here on the homestead. Boudica and Bairre, our Pyrenees are busy and healthy. It’s cool enough that we can take them for walks every evening now. In fact, if Bairre doesn’t get a walk, he pouts and refuses to eat, so we are sure to walk. The evenings are just gorgeous, and the walks are good for my soul.

The only bad news is that after over a year with no rats, they are back. I just saw one last night, as I was getting the chicken food to put up for the night. Just a few weeks ago, I was feeling a little smug, thinking that being so neat and careful with the chicken feed has really worked to keep the rats away, but then I remembered that there is a garden full of food, our neighbor’s compost exists, and we had owls living right by the house last fall. I thought it was probably really just a matter of luck that we had no rats. I guess that was right. I am so bummed. They are beautiful, intelligent creatures, but they are so, so destructive. My teenage son loves the owls, and last fall, they hung out with him in the evenings. I told him I needed him to summon his owl friends. He looked at me like I was a crazy witch lady. I get that from him fairly regularly.

I guess that’s all the news for this morning. Stay cozy, friends, and stay sane. It’s a tough time for our culture. There’s a lot of instability. I am just trying to remind myself that, no matter what happens, it’s a good idea to keep learning to be self sufficient. In so many ways, it feels like we are on our own. In so many ways, it seems like we need to stick together.

top photo credit: Ronan Sands

Starting Over with a Little Sparkle

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

“It just seems wrong to pull up the strawberry plants,” I said to Ron.

“Sometimes, you just have to start over,” he said.

Strawberry plants only produce strawberries for three to five years. Our beds of Sparkle strawberries managed to make it five years, though the berries were definitely smaller this year. We probably should have pulled them last year, but it seems so wrong to pull plants (just thinning in the garden breaks my heart). Still, this year, there was no avoiding it.

I read that you can plant new strawberries in the late summer and early fall and get strawberries the next spring. In the past, we have planted in the spring and would have to go a season without berries, as you have to pull the flowers and give the plants time to get established before you let them make berries. I hope this fall-planting plan works because going a year without strawberries just feels impossible to me at this point. I mean, just look at this picture of our berries from 2022. How can I go a year without this?

It was a sad thing to do though–ripping out the plants. Because we just let the weeds go after strawberry season, when we were clearing out the beds last week, there were also about a million weeds. And, within those weeds and strawberry plants, a whole world of wildlife was living. There were worms and spiders and so many magnificent frogs. As we stripped each bed of its habitat, I felt most worried about the frogs. I met five frogs in total that day, and as each one hopped away, Ron distracted the ducks. One time, I saw what ducks will do to a frog, and I never want to see that again.

When I looked at the empty beds, there was a great deal of sadness, but I really wanted more strawberries next summer, I tried to think about the good things that would be coming from starting over.

I had a hard time finding strawberry plants so late in the summer. I could find some but not the kind I wanted–Sparkle.

When I found out the places in Maine and Vermont where we had bought plants in previous years didn’t have Sparkle, I figured I would have to settle for a different variety of berries, but as I read about all the other varieties available, none of them seemed as good as the Sparkle variety. Sparkle strawberries are sturdy for Maine but are also known for fantastic flavor and shape. How could I settle for anything less when I’ve already had Sparkle?

Thankfully, I found Sparkle berries at an Etsy shop. After we cleared the beds, Ron replenished the soil with compost, and then I spent the next two days planting. The plants were beautiful, and only a few looked a little “iffy” in terms of making it. The kind seller sent extra plants, and I managed to squeeze in every last one, even the few that looked a little rough. I hoped for the best.

I am happy to report that every single one of those plants seems to be making it, and we are getting to start over with 127 beautiful Sparkle strawberry plants!

The starting over with the strawberries feels so symbolic to me right now. After a summer of long COVID, our whole family is making progress. Our crashes are rarer and less intense. We are able to get more things done and enjoy life more, and that’s just the best. I haven’t had to crawl up the stairs in over a month, and I haven’t slurred my words in at least two weeks. And my son is gradually returning to his cello, and my heart is joyful.

Interestingly, his teacher is teaching him the Hadyn Cello Concerto No. 1, and I swear, it’s so joyful–and sparkly. It has been so uplifting listening to him work through the first part of that concerto every evening.

And with all of this hopefulness in the air, I have good news to share. I am planning to bring back Farmer-ish journal next year. In fact, in the coming weeks, the website is going to either go down or look very wonky, as I work to update the site. Hopefully, taking the lessons I have learned and starting over will lead to a little sparkle there too.

In the meantime, I’m watching those strawberry plants and listening to Haydn on the cello every day because, sometimes, you just gotta start over.