Happy New Year's Eve!

Hello everyone! Right now I'm enjoying some off time in Florida. Its nice here and been extremely relaxing. I've been getting lots of sleep but I think it's mostly because I've been fairly sick.

I'm missing my farm, but know soon enough that I'll be diving back into it wishing I had time to myself again. I am missing my morning walk to check on the animals as the sun comes up.  Soon enough!

New Years has always been my favorite holiday. There's something so refreshing, light, a new energy with people's excitement of starting new in the coming year.  Obvious I know, but it's what I like about it.  I hope people know though, that they can pick any day to make a fresh start, and it doesn't always have to be January 1st.

Like most people, I have an idea of what I'd like to focus on in 2013.  The most obvious having work be a little more controlled. Yes it's farming and things come up.  But I felt like I couldn't get ahead.  Time management will be key! And going home at a reasonable hour,  and making sure I get my two days off a week until Spring.  It was getting ridiculous!

And the same as everyone else - exercise, staying in better touch with people especially my family.  Practicing meditation, and making a home in NY.  These are all things that I know I did when I made the decision to move from MA and leave a whole life behind.  2012 was a year for finding self worth and self esteem. 2013 is too continue my practice of self worth and self esteem, and too also fine balance.

Here's our Christmas baby!  Happy New Year Everyone!!

Vacation

I'm officially on vacation.  Woo woo!  I actually started on Wednesday, with a frantic adventure of changing my flight, driving in the snow storm to NJ, barely making my flight, and landing in Georgia Wednesday night.  It gave me a whole extra day with my sister!

And though I'm away from work, I can't seem to really let go of it.  But it's fine.  I am A-OK managing from a distance, because I get to sleep in (sort of...) and just do what I want.  It's great!  And today we are heading to warm Florida! Woo woo! 70 degrees and sun!  Tomorrow they are calling for rain, but I'll survive.

Christmas was wonderful.  My mom and Dad came down to spend Christmas with me, it was the best present ever.  

Nothing to exciting to report in this blog, except that I'm on VACATIONNNN!!!
 

Merry Christmas Eve! (and Moi Cuisine Numero quatro)

Merry Christmas Eve Everyone!

I'm having a wonderful evening.  I got out of work early today, I had a great workout, laundry was completed (for the most part) and my parents are coming tomorrow for Christmas.  I'm really excited.  

Tonight I cooked up some pasta with Alfredo sauce, roasted broccoli with Parmesan cheese, and venison baked in the oven.  I'm so proud of this meal!  Delicious.  I may have ate all the venison steak...

During my evening, I've had a lot of time to think.  I am alone on Christmas Eve, but I'm not lonely.  It feels good!  Exactly one year ago, I was feeling pretty miserable.  On this Christmas Eve, I'm feeling pretty happy.  I went through a lot last year with boys and work.  And it makes me excited for the next year - what's going to come!?  I know it's not New Years, but it's as good as time as any to reflect.  

Here's my dinner tonight!  Yum!!

Amazing Articllllleeeeeee

Just browsing through NPR and came across this sweet article!  I need to get some salt blocks... And I could get some extra cash :) 

The Joy Of Salt Licking: Contest Turns Farm Animals Into Fine Artists

by Taki Telonidis

 Whit Deschner stands in the middle of a pasture outside of Baker, Ore., probably 30 or 40 feet away from a black cow licking a white salt block.

To most of us, this may look like a bucolic scene from ranch country, a smattering of black cattle on a vast field that spreads toward distant mountains. But, for Deshner, it's art in the making.

Deschner is probably the world's foremost connoisseur of salt block art. These sculptures start out as 50-pound cubes of salt, about a foot long on each side. Ranchers give them to their livestock as nutritional supplements. Six years ago, Deschner was visiting a buddy who had put a block out in front of his cabin. It caught their eye.

"We'd had a couple of beers, and it just started looking more and more like art to us," Deschner says. "Could be outside a federal building."

What the deer left behind looked like a swirling sculpture of grooves, pinnacles and even a small porthole. To Deschner, there was only one thing to do.

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"Why not have a salt lick art contest?" he says.

Licking For A Cause
"Oh, we all thought he was crazy," says Martin Aritola of Oregon Trail Livestock Supply, "but it turns out we were the crazy ones." Aritola's is one of many businesses who were dubious at first, but now support the Great Salt Lick Contest.

It's just a couple days before this year's event, and this is one of several locations where ranchers are dropping off sculptures for the contest.

Kim Jacobs has just come off the range with two sculptures to enter in the contest. Her licks join about 20 others on a long table in the center of the store, each with paperwork that includes the title and species of artist. Some animals lick sculptures that look like vertebrae from prehistoric creatures, others like windswept sandstone formations you might see in canyon country.

"I think my cows do an OK job, but I really feel my sheep have brought it home for me," Jacobs says.

Despite all the tongue-in-cheek humor, there is a serious side to the Great Salt Lick: It's an auction and fundraiser to support Parkinson's disease research. Deschner himself has Parkinson's. He walks with a stoop and trembles. He says living with the disease has taught him that "you have to follow your folly."

"To tie the Parkinson's into the salt licks, into the auction, maybe was a foolish idea. But what the heck," he says.

And over the years, Deschner's folly has raised more than $30,000.

Bringing Community Together
Putting on the Great Salt Lick is a community effort, and on the night of the auction, the mayor and his band kick things off with some cowboy tunes. It's not long before the hall is packed with the most unusual collection of people.

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"Cowboys with cow manure clear to their knees and beat-up old hats, and wine sippin' hippies, and some of the more elite, high-dollar people around town, you know," says Mib Daley, a local rancher, and the official auctioneer for the Great Salt Lick. "They don't normally get along that well, you know. And when they get in a situation like this with the salt lick auction, they just all get along. It's weird!"

One by one, the salt licks are brought to the stage and Daley takes off with the bidding. Blocks sell for about $5 at the feed store, but here most sell for $200 or $300. And a few of the more unusual pieces hit $1,000.

In the end, the auction raises well over $12,000, shattering last year's record. Everybody leaves the hall with smiles on their faces, including Beth and Fred Phillips, who raise Angus cattle and entered four salt licks in the contest.

"We'd like to think our cows are more artistic than they used to be, but, to be honest, they probably aren't," Beth says.

"They're definitely more artistic than our neighbors,' " Fred says.

So how do they nurture their artists?

"We breed for it now," Fred says.

 

Success

I think I'm just going to work weekends all the time, and not work during the week.  I can't believe how much work we got done today, and how much better I felt.  Granted, it seems like I always could have done more at work - I still have to get a grip on the reality of farming and how much time things actually take in the day.  

But today we moved 70 sheep to better shelter, created a space for the other 22 ewes undercover, bred a cow, got the cows acquainted to the squeeze chute (because they HATE it), researched about mites and lice in chickens, and did some treatment for mites/lice in the chicken coop.  Personally, I organized Christmas presents (which are definitely very late right now), cooked a nice dinner, and worked out.  Awesomely, successful day.

We also came in this morning to a beautiful calf that was born last night.  I've been waiting for this cow (Devon 71) to calve all week.  Actually for a month - she was so big we couldn't get her through the squeeze chute last month (unsqueezed)!  She's gorgeous.  And I am so happy she was born in the warmth of the barn.

TGIF

How Am I Trusting?

This week I'm trusting that I can get through this pile of work I'm in.  I'm not saying I'm drowning, but I have ssooo much work to try to get through.  And this past week I haven't really been able to get through it very well.  But I think the next couple days I'll be able to grasp something.  All my bosses are gone, and it's only Chatty and Peru.  So, I trust that I'll be able to get through it, especially before I go away on Thursday.

How Am I Grateful?

I am grateful for my cat.  He has spent his first week at the apartment and has adjusted amazingly well.  It's nice to have someone else around the house.  I know, he's just a cat.  But it's great.

How Am I Inspired?

I am inspired by the work that I do.  I know I have a ton of it, and every day something else gets added to the list.  I'm just learning so much and there's so much more to learn.  Not only with farming practices, but just management practices - creating systems, dealing with people.  This week I feel like it's going to take a long, long time.  And this week I wonder if I can do it.  My motivation is inspiring to me.  

 How Am I Practicing Faith?

How am I practicing my faith this week?  This week has been a little rough.  And for the first time being here I felt pretty stressed for most of it.  It wasn't the type of stress I felt back in MA - I'm not holding it in my stomach, I'm letting it go when I get home at night.  I  suppose that's how I'm practicing.  Letting go.

A Little Lonely

I'm feeling a little lonely tonight.  Probably because my sista from another mista, the Monster Librarian, is going back to our old farm.  I miss Monster Librarian so very much we haven't seen each other since last June.  bbbooooo.

It's also Christmas time and everyone at work is going away.  I always work Christmas, and I kind of forget every year that I tend to feel a little lonely when I decide to be nice to everyone else and work over Christmas.  But my parents are coming down Christmas day and the day after, so I won't be alone!  (If the weather holds out.  PLEASE weather, HOLD OUT.)

Work is busy, managing people is difficult, and I'm so freakin' excited to leave next Thursday and spend a week with my sister!  We are going to Florida for New Years.  It can't get here fast enough.

 

Bravo!

A nice weekend back in MA brought some closure and comfort.  It's funny how one 10 minute conversation can really change how you feel.  It wasn't an intentional one - it was one that was being avoided.  But it was a necessary one and now I feel great.  

AND, guess who came home with me!  

That's right!  Bravo! (You may have gotten that idea from the title of the post too...)  This cat is so wonderful.  He can adjust to ANYTHING you throw at him.  He barely batted an eyelash.  The car ride down was a little funny.  I gave him some drugs to make him sleep.  Totally didn't work.  But his meowing for 2.5 hours was wonderful.  Really!  I hadn't heard it in so long, I was just so happy to have my cat.  (PS: technically I haven't moved yet...ssshhh)

It is a little weird, adjusting to another presence around.  I know, he's just a cat.  But he's definitely a presences, and I love it.

$85 Six Pack Anyone?

From Belgium To Piggly Wiggly: U.S. Beer Fans Snatch Up Elusive Ale

by Bill Chappell

December 12, 2012 5:53 PM

 

To many beer fans, the arrival of the Westvleteren 12 Trappist ale in American shops today is a chance to try a beer they've only read about on beer-geek blogs and sites — where it's often given a "world class" rating of 100.

But finding the beer can be tricky — it's not available in all states, and some stores sold out of their allotment within hours of opening Wednesday.

As NPR's Teri Schultz reported on Morning Edition today, the beer is being imported by Massachusetts-based Shelton Brothers. And although a relatively large shipment hit U.S. shores, the beer made by Belgium's St. Sixtus Abbey is still not widely available.

Only 15,000 six-packs, priced at $85 each, were sent to the American market. To help would-be customers find out where to buy the beer, the distributor has listed all U.S. retail outlets online. And despite a price that seems stratospheric, the cost is well below what the special release's "brick" gift pack of six beers and two glasses is fetching on eBay, where bids routinely top $200.

A Shelton Brothers representative told Schultz that the company was chosen to handle the U.S. release based on its previous work with another small Trappist brewer, Achel. Consider that Belgian breweries such as Chimay produce about 40 times the amount of beer that Achel or Westvleteren make in a normal year.
And the monks of the St. Sixtus Abbey, whose order requires vows of poverty, set restrictions to make this release very unusual.

For instance, stores have been asked not to reserve the beer or accept orders by phone, and customers are to be limited to a sole six-pack — policies that were in place in at least two beer stores The Salt visited early Wednesday.

The abbey's goal seems to have been to release the beer in a way that offers beer fans a chance to buy Westvleteren — and to limit the secondary market for the beer. The monks have stressed that the special release is meant only to pay for their abbey's recent renovations.

"There also isn't much profit involved here," Shelton Brothers said in a statement posted online, "as most everybody working on this has agreed to either donate back or forgo profits to help maximize the money going to the Abbey. No store that gets this beer is cashing in on it; at least we hope they aren't."

Bolstering that idea, both the bottles and the goblet-shaped glasses that come in the U.S. six-packs of Westvleteren 12 bear a gilded message in Latin: "Ad aedificandam abbatiam adiuvi" — roughly, "I helped to build the abbey."

The approach to the one-time U.S. release echoes the abbey's rules in Belgium, where customers can only use the same phone to place a beer order once in a set period (often, 60 days). When they pick the beer up, they must be in a car that hasn't been used to pick up beer in the same time frame.

To control distribution in the U.S., the Westvleteren beer is being made available mostly through large retail chains to guarantee a single price — shops in Hawaii reportedly received a special dispensation for a higher price to allow for the recovery of shipping charges.

Despite the hefty price tag, demand for the beer seems to be strong. The Total Wine shop in Laurel, Md., sold out of the beers "nearly in the first hour," said a manager. He added that some customers had camped out at the store's strip-mall location ahead of its 8 a.m. opening time. And in Chicago, customers reportedly got in line at 4 a.m.

Still, not everyone is enthusiastic about the new Trappist on the block. Some folks seem to miss the veil of exclusivity that had separated beer connoisseurs from mere dilettantes. And the abbey's requirement of a single sales price means that most of the rare ale went to mainstream retailers, rather than the more fractured market of boutique and specialty stores.

For instance, on Twitter, Bruisin' Ales cited "More Westy nonsense... in Alabama, Westvleteren is being sold by PIGGLY WIGGLY. Good lord. This beer belongs in specialty shops. Period."

Others, including several who commented on Schultz's story this morning, are outraged by the $85 sales price. They say that just because the monks took a vow of poverty, that doesn't mean the rest of us should join them, after buying their beer. Save your money, they say, and grab the venerable Abt 12 made by St. Bernardus.

There are also some beer fanatics who are eager to buy the Westvleteren 12, but they can't find it anywhere near them. Texas, for instance, isn't included in the release, reportedly owing to its laws governing beer imports. For anyone in that situation, the Beer Advocate site has a list of possible substitutes, in its ratings of top quadrupel beers.

 

Lady Time

It's lady time for our little Dorper ram.  We put a marker on him and set him free among 70 ewes.  It's his first time, but he seems to be catching on well ;)

The ladies were so excited!  Here they are, surrounding the ram.  I hope they aren't too intimidating...

 There he is with his little black face!

Good luck little ram!  Hopefully we'll see lots of black faced babies in May! 

TGIF

Another nutty week.  And the end doesn't really seem in sight unfortunately...
 
How Am I Trusting?

I am trusting exercise this week.  I haven't been great at doing it for the past week, but today I left work pretty stressed, and I knew the only thing I could do was go home and work out.  I was suppose to start Phase 2 of P90X yesterday but was away for work.  I was pumped to come home and jump into it because I knew it was the only thing that would make me feel relaxed.

How Am I Grateful?

I am so grateful for my health.  I love being fit, and I love being able to exercise to relieve stress.  Exercise is more than just being fit to me, it's a form of meditation, and I'm so grateful for that.

How Am I Inspired?

I'm inspired by Hawthorne Valley.  I just spent the last 2 days there and it was wonderful.  I went up there with Boss and French (because he's from France.  I need to get better with these nick names) to talk about setting up a dairy.  1) I love dairy cows and 2) it's amazing up there.  Part of me just wants to leave here and start working there!  If I was a newby in the field, I'd totally apprentice there.  But alas, I am not, but I'm so inspired by what they do, and who I get to work with from there.

How Am I Practicing My Faith

It looks like I lost another weekend.  But the last two weekends I've had to work have been literally out of my control.  I was the only one who could breed cows last week, and this week Lakes is deathly ill from a scary stomach bug that's going around.  It's annoying, I do want a break, but getting stressed about is just going to make it worse.  So faith is running pretty high right now.

Baby (2)!

The dairy farmer a couple towns over finally had a couple bull calves this weekend.  So I went on over and picked up a Jersey/Holstein cross.  What a cutie!  He's pretty spunky.  Both the farmer and his wife were so sweet.  The farmer had a great way to get the cow to get attached to the calf.  Usually it's a bit of a fight, but he said to put milk replacer (what usual dairies feed their calves because they take them away from their mother) on his back.  She'll smell it and want to lick it because it smells so sweet.  And it does!  It smells like cake batter.  I went a head and did that, but with Gert I don't think it made that much of a difference.  Her calf though (who we desperately need to name!) was just staring at the new calf.  It reminded me of a picture of my brother and two nephews, when Little E was born.  My bro was in the middle, holding the newborn Little E in one arm and Little G in the other.  Little G had this look on his face, "What the F&!% is that!?"

They have adjusted well, and I got the new calf to nurse off Gert today.  It took a little bit, but he caught on.  He's so sweet, I have to think of a good name for him.

                                 












 Milk Replacer Baby!!

 This is my, "What the F&%$!" Picture

Ma Cusine Numéro Trois

I don't have pictures of this yet, because I can't get a good one.  But this weekend I made Spiced Lentil Tacos.  Delicious!

It's super easy to make - cut up some onion and garlic and saute it, add the lentils (after a good washing) with the taco seasoning and let it cook for about a minute.  Then add some vegetable broth, bring to a boil then let simmer for 30 minutes until the lentils are tender.  Voila! Lentil tacos.

Everyone knows lentils are super good for you.  But why?  It has 16 grams of fiber per cup.  The University of Colorado said that because it's high starch content one can cook 23% more fat over one day.  They are pretty packed with protein - 18 grams - and iron - 7mg.  (The Drop 10 Diet)  

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not studying The Drop 10 Diet to lose 10 pounds, but it's a good reference to understanding what you're eating.  

Lentil Tacos are pretty delish.  I highly recommend.  And I'll post a pic when I can make it pretty.  In the meantime, enjoy some pretty sheep!