Halloween at Driftwood Farm

All I can really do is add a bunch of photos! Neely's account of the Halloween festivities pretty much says it all... read it and see her pictures here. We were so happy to have friends from out of town make it to the party! (Ok, well, maybe that's why we had the party...)




Laura and her vampire girl-o-lantern bare their grins for the camera.
Pumpkin carving is serious business for Don!



Creating the pumpkin-head-man:



Unfortunately, most of the pictures taken indoors ended up blurry... including those of the happy baker, Neely, creating something like 70 delicious, spookily decorated gingerbread cookies.

Oh, and Don came to the rescue with a few more pictures...

Andrew looking very scary...

Matt in full pirate regalia standing out in the drizzle.

And the gang admiring the newly-carved jack-o-lanterns.

Every last bit

I love being able to use up the entirety of something - from "disposable" products, to electronics (my ancient cell phone just will not die!) to things we've grown. Since I'm down to working part-time for the fall and winter, I've been making myself useful around home when I'm here.

Yesterday I chose two 5.5 lb pumpkins as my trial run. I cleaned and baked them, mashing and freezing most of the pulp for later use (without having to start from scratch). We ate a couple of chunks with dinner, and the rest was incorporated into a loaf of pumpkin-banana bread (hey, that overripe banana came from South America somewhere and I wasn't about to toss it in the compost!) The seeds, of course, I cleaned and roasted with a little olive oil, salt, cayenne, and paprika.

The chickens absolutely LOVED the fibrous stuff from inside the pumpkins, and surprisingly, the skins as well (which had been cooked). Much to my glee, not one scrap of those pumpkins even made it to the compost pile.

Pumpkin harvest

The official count is in: 28! The three largest pumpkins came from one Howden vine; the remainder are Sugar Pie, from 6 plants.

Matt can hardly wait to get started carving some of them, but the rest will be for eating (and storing, for later eating!) I'm envisioning pastas, tarts, pancakes, pies, and the best recipes the internet has to offer.

Out of this world

Matt and I saw the most bizarre thing this morning, on our way to work. It was a little before 7:00 am. Heading south outside of Fort Bragg on Hwy 1, to the east we saw what we can only describe as an extremely bright, blue and orange shooting star. It was so low that our first thought was a plane on fire - but it was moving far too fast, and gone in a flash. My pretty extensive internet search leaves me no choice but to believe it was a meteoroid. It's nerve-wracking just how low it was. We were glad we were both saw it, or it would have been too unbelievable.

Of course the photo above is not one we took, but it's just like what we saw! Except that it was nearly light outside.

Funny stuff

The culprit:

Looks innocent enough. We picked this thing up at the feed store a couple of months ago for grooming the goats. They were happy to be brushed, but if they caught a whiff of the brush, they would bolt. We figure it's probably made of boar bristles or something. I left it outside, then in the barn, to try to air it out.

Last Sunday, I took it up again to find that of the goats, only Redwood isn't mortally afraid of the brush, although he will run from it when the others do. I left it on the ground, figuring that if they got used to it, it wouldn't be a big deal. It only took moments to find that the chickens are also afraid of it, and not for love, money, or cracked corn would they pass by where it lay. There was a chicken traffic jam.


A little disgusted, I took the thing out of the pen. But as the animals now clamored after me, rushing the gate like raptors on Jurassic Park, I had an idea:


Voila!

It was working like a charm, although Matt said he saw Redwood brushing himself on it yesterday...

Changing seasons - the bad news first

Last month's warm, late-summer rainstorm and subsequent muggy conditions appareared to cause the tomato - AND the previously-flourishing potato crop - to collapse and die. What actually killed them looks to my novice eyes to be late blight. Aargh. So many tomatoes wasted, just as they were ripening! And that was the last chance this year for a potato crop for us; risking planting them now would be folly since frost, too much rain, or residual blight could make all the necessary work of preparing more rows a collossal waste of time. (So we bought a big "harvest special" sack of taters from our CSA!) And luckily, most of the pumpkins were near mature before powdery mildew felled the mass of vines. We've left them there for now, to absorb what little nutrients the plants can still give before bringing the 25+ pumpkins in for storage.

The greenhouse is also undergoing its seasonal change. The bell peppers are done; the cherry tomato vines are looking tired (although still alive and producing a little, so they get to stay a bit longer). I took many of the randomly propagated perennial flower plants out of the greenhouse, and planted them in place of the fading annuals in the flower garden. I've divided some jasmine to make more for the yard, and started sugar snap pea, lavender, kale, celery, and cilantro seeds. I'm experimenting with planting a few other things "out of season," just to see what happens (e.g., some borage seeds I collected from this year's plants; cuttings from the carnations). I also rooted a dozen strawberry runners, even though I'm not sure if I'll be able to chill them properly to allow them to produce next year. But at least they are making a good hideaway for a fall-camouflaged frog!

The New Farm Name!

We knew from the start that Furlough Farm wouldn't be the permanent name. Before starting the blog, we spent a lot of time trying to come up with something. We looked all over for inspiration, but still hadn't settled on a name that we liked, that didn't sound pretentious, presumptuous, or cheesy. It had to be relevant, but not too bland (named after the town, for instance). And though some of the names sounded good in a tree-hugging sort of way, I knew that if I was embarrased saying the name out loud to Matt, it wouldn't stick.

A couple of weeks ago - after having spent time off-and-on using word-association websites, brainstorming all kinds of things, even the help of a business-name generation guide - I blurted out an ultimatum to Matt: We have to name the farm in the next week. He said, "Oh, OK." Opened the curtain. Looked outside. After 30 seconds, said, "Driftwood Farm."

All my agonizing hours of minute dissection of the meanings of words (e.g., "'green' is good, but so hackneyed now"), the long lists of associations and ideas... Matt just looks out the window at his massive collection artistically displayed around the yard, and bam! Farm name.

The plan for now is to keep this blog; if at some point I get the market business going (it's in the works!), we'll create a new page.

Taking pictures of the driftwood amongst the fence posts and tall grass wasn't as lovely as we hoped; so the photos here are from a little day-trip we took to the south part of the county (Point Arena and surrounding area).

So, everybody... how do you like our new name?

The goats' corner

I know it's not nice to boast, but I just have to brag about Matt's skills. He's been rebuilding practically everything around here. Even though we know how much time and effort goes into this stuff, having pictures along the way always makes it that much more amazing.

When he started on the corner of the barn that would soon be the goat pen, the siding was rotting away, there was no foundation, and gophers were undermining what little support there was. The great thing is that the ancient wood shingles had already been replaced with corrugated metal roofing (on this portion). Matt used a jack and a post to raise the slumping corner, removed the decaying wall, poured a concrete footing, replaced the wood at the bottom...









...framed it in (including a door and window), put in tar paper (and even put some salvaged rigid insulation in the wall)...




...replaced the siding, then built a door (also using some of the old siding), and a mesh window.


He built a wall inside to separate their sleeping quarters from an area where they'll be able to stay dry during inclement weather, then separated that from the interior of the barn with another wall, and a door with some of his signature ironic humor.

Rain hangout

Sleeping/eating quarters

Welcome to goat jail

I'm so proud! And the goats (and chickens) love hanging out there.

Fur and feathers

Good thing we really like our critters, because most of our daily chores revolve around them!




The goats are getting practice mowing Sammy's yard. Even though it's mostly dry grass right now, there is enough live mustard, dandelions, sheep sorrel and other weeds to keep them occupied for hours. (Yes, invasive species police, I know the plant above is Crocosmia, but Matt likes it and it's contained in a planter...)
Last week we managed to make it through their first hoof trimming. They're not too patient about it, but at least they are tame - and small.


Luckily, Sammy's pretty calm during haircuts and nail trimming.

We've joked that it would be fun to "shear" him and make a sweater to sell to someone (as really soft wool), who would smell wet dog when they wore it in the rain. :)


Chicken whispering.

Before and after

On Saturday, Matt and I bottled the beer that he brewed with Bill a couple of weeks ago (while Bill and Vanessa were visiting - documented on their blog!)

Our awesome friend Amber - inspired by Matt's memories of his stepdad, Bob, who passed away earlier this year - designed and reproduced labels for the bottles. Matt and I named the first batch (made in January) "Bob's Bad Ass Brew," which seemed like a fitting name to honor Bob - and Amber took the name and ran with it.

Raise a toast to Bob tonight...