Very busy week on the farm!

We started this past week by going out to a fruit orchard that still had sour cherries to pick. For anyone who may not be aware of it, all cherry pies are made with sour cherries. You can make pie with regular cherries but it won't be any good. Take my word on this one, we've done it and it was a colossal waste of ingredients. We are on the tail end of the sour cherry season, so this was our last chance to get some and I really wanted them because in my opinion the canned sour cherries in the store are all syrup and not nearly enough cherries. This way I can control the cherry to syrup ratio in my pies. All the kids helped (and it was a great way to wean them off of the wii and the tv). We got 55 lbs of sour cherries. The whole process took about 4 hours. By about hour 3 the kids were sick of climbing trees one by one they drifted over to the strawberry field and started picking there. Even though strawberry season is officially over, there were still a few good ones to be had and we ended up with about 6 lbs of strawberries.

We tried canning for the first time and oh what a task. The first thing we did was make jam out of the strawberries and I now have 12 6oz. jars of strawberry jam. This first part went off without a hitch and we thought, "wow that was easy." Next, we tried to pack the cherries is water (which the canning book claims you can do) none of them sealed properly and we have no idea why, so in to the fridge they went for immediate use. On the next batch we actually cooked the cherries before packing them, this worked much better and we now have 6 1qt jars of canned cherries. Today we are pitting and stemming the last 20 lbs of cherries and we are making jam out of them.

The other excitement of this week is that we finally found a Jersey cow. She is a baby, but she is just what we wanted. Following long-standing Danda tradition (the Dandas are Grandmom Jean's family) we named the cow Josephine, and we call her Josie. (Technically if we had followed Danda tradition to the letter, she would have been called Tina, but needless to say that was out of the question. The tradition is to name the first cow after the wife. That was not happening, so we named her after the Danda family cow. Yes, my husband's grandmother was named Josephine.) She was delivered to us last night, and we put her in the stall and attempted to calm her down and it didn't work out so well, she was anxious and scared and she was freaked out by the chickens. This morning she was still pretty mad at us for disrupting her life, but when we took her out in the field for the first time she settled right down and started eating and playing. She is a baby so she still likes to run and play, which can be frightening when the "baby" weighs 300 lbs. We were told that she needs to gradually incorporate the fresh grass into her diet, so the idea is that we don't want her gorging her self on fresh grass when she is used to a diet of dried hay. She can develop bloat if she eats too much green grass to soon. So we limited her to a short time outside earlier today and in a short while we'll take her out again and let her eat some more greens and play some more. Next time she is outside we'll clean up her stall for her too. It won't be long before she is out all day and that will make life with her so much easier.

So there are the doings at Cipolla Farm for this week. We are intending to buy a dog in two weeks. Once we actually have him I will tell you all about him and his incredibly interesting story. So there, dear reader, is something for you to look forward to in about two weeks. Other than that, no other major items are actually on the agenda.

Livestock headcount today:

• 6 mean old hens (although they seem to have calmed down a bit)


• 9 guinea hens who have moved themselves outside permanently, they now roost in the tree at night instead of coming inside which is a big developmental leap for them.


• 4 hens approaching puberty


• 1 rooster who is quite the handsome ladies man, but he still has some growing to do if want to boss around the old ladies--they are still not taking any of his shit


• 6 rapidly growing baby chicks. We are certain that there is at least one rooster in this batch, which is perfect, because that way the we can have the Ameracauna chicks breed us new chicks. These are the ones that lay pale green eggs and I like the yolks on these eggs better as well.


• 6 ducks who are messy and loud, but this includes our one handicapped duck who is doing amazingly well for what he has to deal with. He has one leg that did not develop properly and he has great difficulty walking but he somehow manages. Instead of being mean to him, the other ducks rallied around the little guy, they never scared him off the food, and when it was cold they let him get in the middle of the duck pile to keep warm.


• 1 7 month old Jersey heifer

Indoor animals:

We still have our beloved Pounce and Echo. In a shocking turn of events, Echo has managed to not get into any death defying situations in quite some time. When I first walked in to this house I was sure he wouldn't last a week. I sometimes think that cat lays around thinking up ways he can hurt himself. But as I said, shockingly, he is alive and well and still keeping Pounce company, and keeping Joseph's feet warm.

Animals we still want:

• The number one item on the agenda is the dog because we found one we want. We are picking him up not this week, but next I hope.


• We would like a cow that is "in milk." That might have to wait a bit though. We had wanted a Dexter cow and we found out from the woman that sold us Josie that Dexter calves go for $3,000. We are priced out of that market for now.


• We'd love a heritage breed hog, a tamworth or a large black maybe. We want one that will still forage. This may also have to wait a bit though.