Letters from Missouri

"Dear Mom,
The transmission went out on the truck about 60 miles from our destination. We've been going 30 mph on the interstate for 3 hours. We plan to limp the rig into the national forest. I think if we cover the truck and trailer with leaves and twigs, we'll be pretty well camouflaged from the authorities. I'm sure we can live comfortably until we can earn enough money to fix the truck. Sarah thinks she can start a fire by rubbing some sticks together. I'm thinking we'll be home about spring. Please feed the animals until we get there..."

"Stop it!" Brian laughed. "You'll make me drive off the road!" Sarah, my neice, couldn't stop giggling in the back seat.

Ok. So it's not a real letter home, but the transmission did go out in the truck on our way to get the pigs in Missouri and we really were going 20 mph down the interstatein the middle of the night. We did manage to limp her into a little mom and pop hotel for the night. In the morning, we limped her on down to Bud Nickol's farm and dropped the trailer. Bud helped us find a garage that had a computer to check out the truck... another 20 mph ride. So they hooked her up to the computer ... and told us they new what was wrong... and they couldn't fix it.

Another 20mph ride to the dealership. Along the way we passed an abandoned farm...

"Honey, look there's our new house! We can squat there until we can get the truck fixed!"

"Cut that out!" Brian laughed.

You know if you can't laugh at yourselves who can you laugh at?

At the dealership, they said, we can fix it, but it will take 4-5 days.

Time for plan C. We were supposed to be in Jacksonville TX the next day and I was supposed to be at work on Saturday. Enter the "Enterprise" rent a car. ( They really will pick you up!)
Safely ensconced in a rental car we were off to TX. The next morning we called the gentleman we were to interview and found to our dismay that he had been ill and would not be available....
On to plan D: We consulted our Red Wattle Hog raisers list and called the closest ones. So we didn't get our interview but we did manage to visit a couple of TX Red Wattle hog farmers. We met some real nice folks. That was a good thing. And on the way back up to Missouri, my niece managed to pick some mistletoe to take back to her boyfriend. Brian tossed her up into the tree and she climbed up the rest of the way. She managed to get down with only minor scrapes. Another good thing. Oh and on the way back north we got an unexpected phone call.... the garage had our truck done on Thursday.

WHOOPEE!! Who says god doesn't answer prayers.

So $2100 dollars poorer we pulled out of the dealership. The truck runs GREAT!
Now all we needed to do was pick up the "Great Hogs" and get our butts back to Indiana.
More about hogs loading coming up next. ;)

Of road trips and giant pigs

Well, it looks like we are off to Missouri again! This will be our fourth trip this year. We are going to pick up Sampson and his girlfriend at Bud Nichol's farm. Bud and his wife have decided to scale down their hog herd. This is going to be a whirlwind trip. Down and back on my days off. Brian's still in a cast so he won't be driving. Luckily, our neice Sarah has agreed to go along and share the driving with me.

Sampson is a very large, well proven Red Wattle boar. He shows many of the qualities of the original Red Wattles (Waddles) bred by the Wenglar's of Texas. We are excited about keeping him in the gene pool. He will be one of 2 boars we carry on our farm. The sow we are picking up with him is bred to farrow in late February. This will complete our Red Wattle herd for now.

The hogs will move to a new rotational pasture set up in the spring. This new arrangement will allow for a central "wallow" and mutiple pastures so that the hogs can graze more new pasture than on a standard hog pasture situation.

I'll post pics of the new hogs as soon as we get home.

Stay warm,

Dot

And suddenly winter!!

Yesterday afternoon I went to work in my scrubs with just a thin raincoat over. This morning when I pulled out of the parking garage it was snowing. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to jolt me out of fall and right into winter. I do this every year. I just want fall - one of my favorite times of year to go on and on. I guess the weather had lulled me into perpetual fall thinking. Afterall, we still have lettuce and radishes in the garden. It's not really been cold enough for me to go rumaging in the cedar chest for winter coats. We've barely had a killing frost.
But with the snow I can't ignore winter anymore. Time to get everything sealed up for winter. Time to fill the basement with firewood and get out the gloves, mittens, hats and scarves. Time to settle the hens in the high tunnel greenhouse for the winter. Time to start feeding hay to the sheep, cows, pigs and horses. Time to flush and store the auto-waterers for the animals and put out troughs and heaters. Time to clean off the porch and put the flower pots away. Better clean the gutters too - my job this year. Brian's in a leg cast. Hmmmm I know there's something I forgot..... Oh yeah time to buy a sled. :)

If you're happy and you know it....

If you are happy with our farm products, please, let others know.

Go to: localharvest.org

Search for: Kiss My Grass Farm

Click on the stars next to our farm name.

Click on "Post a Review"

Leave your comments.

As always we appreciate everyone who supports the farm.


Thank you,


Dot & Brian

Small Farm Conference

Brian and I just returned from the National Small Farm Conference in Columbia, MO.

What a great event!! Even though folks told us it wasn't as big as in years past, it was a cornacopia of nifty tools, yummy treats, rare livestock and informative speakers. It was almost overwhelming. I can't imagine what it would be like if it was much bigger. We walked the whole show about a dozen times and I think we still missed some things.

The exhibition hall was full of vendors: books, tools, chicken pluckers, honey icecream, seeds, SARE information, Missouri Fruit Research Station publications, handmade soaps, rabbit meat, wood furnaces, Llama products, wool products, herbal animal products, flax seed, wooden utensils, and sorghum molasses to name a few. Around the arena were booths for stock trailers, fencing, BCS tillers and tools, more books, minitature carriages to be pulled by miniature horses and portable small farm buildings.

Inside the arena was my favorite place. One end had the herd dog demonstrations. The rest of the arena had rare livestock and poultry. We met folks who raised Highland cattle, Red Poll cattle, Dexter cattle, Fjord horses and Caspian horses. There were Katahdin and St Croix sheep. Guinea, Tamworth and Red Wattle hogs. And there were chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, guinea fowl and pigeons of more shapes and sizes than I have room to mention.

This was our first year to attend. We'd volunteered to create and work the Red Wattle Hog Association booth for the conference. It was a wonderful experience. Brian spent most of his time educating about our wonderful Red Wattle Hogs. More than once I heard someone say, " Go talk to the bald guy if you want to know about Red Wattle hogs." lol It was really nice to meet so many of the folks in the RW Association in person. On Saturday, I went to the RW Association meeting while Brian went to a class. He is now the VP and I am the Sec/tres of the RWA.

Some of the new tools we brought home included a really slick hand weeder blade, a brush cutter with a replaceable blade for my son, a sheperd's crook and we got anothe Rogue hoe. We have 2 rogue hoes already. They have become our favorite gardening tool. We had to get another one because Brian and I argue over the one we like the best. You just can't beat them for close precision weeding in our wide beds and they really stay sharp. That's the new hoe in the picture.

There were herd dog demonstrations, farmer forums, seminars and classes. We attended topics like adding honey bees to your farm, alternative feeds, elderberry propagation and marketing, intensive grazing of sheep, Marketing a CSA, but our favorite was Joel Salatin's intensive grazing class. Hearing Joel Salatin talk is like going to a tent revival for farming!

We're looking forward to hearing Joel Salatin speak again in January when he's here in Indiana at the Heart of America Conference in Columbus.

We're also looking into trying to start a Small Farm Conference here in Indiana. If you are interested in seeing an event like this here, please email me at: thefarmers@kissmygrassfarm.net

The more we can show support for creating the event the more organizations will be willing to support the event.

Thanks for reading!!

Take good care,

Dot

It's cold but the garden is still producing

Even after several frosts and two freezing nights we still have veggies!!

Here's the menu:

Kale 3 kinds

Mustard 5 kinds

Lettuce 6+ kinds

Spinach

Beet greens

Turnip greens

Radishes in a rainbow of colors

Parsley

Swish Chard

If you'd like to share in the bounty: greens are $3 a pound ( it takes quite a bit to make a pound) and radishes 50 cents a bunch.

Just give Brian a call at:812*521*1063 and we'll pick fresh as long as it lasts.

Smiles,

Dot

PS. We've got eggs!

Something old and Something new

About two miles down the road from our house there is a little country grocery store owned by the McDonalds. It's been there longer than I've been alive and the McDonald's have owned it that whole time. Which in and of itself is pretty amazing.
Just inside the door on your left there is a bulletin board. It has also been there longer than I can remember. People post special events and puppies and kittens, cars, firewood and other things for sale there. I've been checking it for years. You never know when you'll find a treasure.
Well Friday we ran in to get something to drink on the way to town. As is my habit, I stopped to give the bulletin board a quick once over. THERE IT WAS.... something I've been missing for all of my adult life.....
A woodburning cookstove. Specifically an Elmira Stoveworks Sweetheart woodburning cookstove.
Now before you start wondering if I've completely gone off the deep end, let me explain. When I was much, much younger my grandparents bought an old house with all it's contents. One of the things in the house was a woodburning cookstove. They gave that cookstove to my parents for our kitchen.
Of course we had a regular stove too. However, the wood stove gave extra warmth on winter days, simmered great soups when the electricity went out and made a great place to finish boiling down maple sap into syrup. The oven also made a good place to dry out your sneakers on rainy days...as long as you didn't close the even door! More than once I put my socks on the warming shelf above the cooking lids before I went to bed so that I could have warm socks to put on in the morning when the house was chill from the night.
So as you can see woodburning cookstoves hold a special place in my heart full of warm memories.. pardon the pun.
So there was this stove all black cast iron and shiny chrome. I pulled off one of the phone number slips. I then proceeded to hem and haw about calling. Brian finally called. It turned out the owners lived just a little way down the road from us, so we went off to take a look.
It was just a wonderful up close as it looked in the picture! The lady even had the original owners manual and a cookstove cookbook. I really wanted it but didn't think we could swing the $500 asking price.
I told them we'd need to think about it and we'd call back in the morning. Well we didn't think very long. Brian called back that same night and asked what their bottom dollar was. The nice little old lady, who had owned the stove, told him she had been talking with her husband and he said since we wanted it so bad he would let it go for $400.
Brian, Kate and Dillon went after it on Saturday morning while I cooked buttermilk pancakes for breakfast. Now it's in our garage, waiting for the new chimney in the sunroom to be built.
I can hardly wait!!