Avian drama

The other day, I heard a commotion by some birds up in the air. I looked out the window and saw some magpies harassing a red-tailed hawk. This is nothing unusual; birds of prey are often harassed by smaller birds – including passerines – whenever the predators get too close to nests. The red-tailed hawk landed on a tall pine tree down the valley and that, I thought, was that.

A few minutes later, I heard the magpies again. Thinking the red-tailed hawk must have left its perch, I glanced out ... but this time I saw the magpies were harassing a bald eagle. Even more interesting, the bald eagle had something good-sized in its talons, possibly a squirrel. It was at this point I grabbed my camera and went outside to watch.

Much of what took place was in the valley across from us, obscured by trees, so I wasn't able to capture the full drama of what followed, but essentially what happened is the bald eagle was then attacked ... by the red-tailed hawk! In the mêlée, the bald eagle dropped its prey and it landed on the valley floor.

The hawk flew off at this point, but the bald eagle landed on the ground, presumably on its prey. All I could see was its white head through the brush as it guarded its food.

But the eagle had no peace even here. The magpies were back, perching on various bushes nearby and screeching at the eagle. The eagle stayed on the ground a long time, maybe ten minutes, but it wasn't eating its prey. It was just standing there, enduring the abuse of the magpies.

Finally it gripped its food and took off. It took a long time to gain height, ascending in wide circles to climb into the sky. Sorry for the fuzziness of the photos (it's not easy focusing on a soaring bird), but you can see the prey dangling.

Avian drama. It's not easy being an apex predator.

Growing strawberries

Recently a reader posted a question as follows: "I need some help please. If you would. I live in N. Idaho and for the love of me, I cannot grow strawberries. Yours seem to flourish with great wonder. Could you please post about how you plant, fertilize and water your berries so that they produce so well. I've put in new plants. Used berry fertilizer and sometimes manure. Mulched and watered regularly and still nothing. I very much would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions. Thank you."

Oof. That's a tough one because, I'm sorry to say, I don't do anything special for the strawberries once they're established (except to protect them from the deer, of course). I don't mean to sound flippant, but I've just never had any problems with them (except for the deer, of course).

That said, here's how we prepare strawberry beds and strawberry plants.

In both our previous home and our current one, our native dirt is heavy with clay – sticky mud in the spring and rock-hard in the summer. That's one of the reasons we gave up trying to grow anything in the ground and switched to raised beds. To these raised beds, we add a 3-2-1 mixture of native dirt, compost, and sand (three parts dirt, two parts compost, one part sand), plus any enhancements we have on hand (leaves, composted sawdust, etc.). The sand is a permanent way to keep the clay broken up; the compost obviously adds nutrients; and the native dirt is the most economical medium since we already have it. Now that we have livestock, future compost will come from our own animals.

When building our gardens, since we're working on a large scale, we'll often bring in sand and compost by the dump-truck load from landscaping companies. Sometimes we'll even bring in topsoil (which, for the record, is often no better than the native dirt; we've been known to dub it "top clay").

With these elements mounded up, Don will use the tractor to mix. He'll scoop the 3-2-1 ratio of elements into a pile with the tractor bucket, then use the tractor rototiller to mix thoroughly. Once this is prepped, he'll bucket it up and scoop it into the raised beds.

Since strawberries are a permanent plant, and since soil settles over time, we tend to overfill the strawberry beds to allow for that. Then it's a matter of planting the strawberries.

If you buy bareroot strawberry plants, begin by soaking the bundle of plants in water for a couple of hours to rehydrate the roots and break dormancy. After this, trim a couple inches off the bottom of the roots. Trimming not only allows plants to be planted more easily, but it allows the roots to be fanned out properly for best results (less crowding). It also stimulates root growth. Here are two plants: Top with untrimmed roots, bottom with trimmed roots.

When planting, scoop out a hole and fan out the roots. Don't bury the crown of the plants. Pat firm and voilà.

I used to mulch strawberries, but I don't any longer. Mulching seems to prevent runners from taking roots; and the more runners that take root, the quicker the plants will create a thick canopy and shade the soil from getting too dry. In essence, left alone, strawberries become self-mulching.

I never fertilize my strawberries. It's not that I'm opposed to it; it's just that I never think about it, and they seem to produce well despite that. The most I'll do is add compost in the spring; and even then, often I don't.

The big debate in the strawberry world is June-bearing vs. everbearing. I prefer everbearing because I like getting fruit the whole summer. However I've come to prefer everbearing for another reason, and this is purely anecdotal.

In our last garden, we had both everbearing and June-bearing varieties. The everbearing strawberries, once they were established, produced loads and loads of berries, year after year after year. The June-bearing beds produced heavily for the first three years, and then sorta gave up. The plants were perfectly healthy, but they produced no fruit. As in, zero. After three years of no fruit, it got to the point where I just ripped them up and used the beds for something else. I don't know if I did something wrong with those strawberries, or if June bearers tend to do that anyway, but I've come to prefer everbearing. Just my two cents.

In summer weather, I water the strawberries often – every day if the weather is hot, and every couple of days if the temps are moderate.

Right now I have two varieties of strawberries: My beloved Fort Laramies, and some Ozark Beauties I'm experimenting with (and so far am very pleased by).

I don't know if this information will be helpful to the reader, but I hope so.

The sound of summer

At our last home, we had western meadowlarks everywhere. They were difficult birds to photograph. Because their voice carried a long distance, invariably they were so far away that a photograph showed, at best, a tiny dot. But I loved them. To me, their sweet song was the sound of summer. (How's that for alliteration?) In fact, I consider the song of a meadowlark one of the prettiest bird calls in nature.

Meadowlarks are birds of the grasslands. Apparently this preference is because trees harbor potential predators (hawks), whereas the open fields are safer because birds of prey are easier to spot. At any rate, I absolutely stinkin' love meadowlarks.

So it was with much disappointment to discover, for whatever reason, that meadowlarks don't reside in our current area. It doesn't make much sense, since we have plenty of grassland. Why weren't they here? No idea.

Last summer, once or twice, I heard a meadowlark call, but nothing with the frequency to indicate the bird I heard was anything but an outlier.

But this year ... this year we have meadowlarks! All over the place. Their call is now almost as frequent as at our last home. Once again it's the sound of summer.

A few days ago, a bird's song was so loud that I knew it was close by. I stepped out on our back deck and saw a male perched at the very top of a pine tree, singing his heart out.

I sincerely hope these birds are here to stay.

The argument for buying ahead

Don and I have been engaged in several heavy-duty projects lately. Of course you know about the milking stall and calf pen:

Now we're consumed with getting the garden properly fenced against deer. We've foregone making the remaining garden beds in favor of getting the entire garden area covered with weed cloth, rocked in with gravel, braced by extravagantly tall poles, and netted in deer netting. (Don't worry, I'll put up a full blog post on the project when it's complete.)

But here's the thing: We're hardly spending any money during the process of working on these projects. Since my job loss in mid-February, we've cut back our discretionary spending by well over 90% and now purchase very little beyond groceries and our regular monthly bills. This is nothing unusual; over the 35 years of our marriage, frugality has been the norm, not the exception, so tightening our belts is second nature.

However during the last four years since moving to our current home, we were in a unique position with no debt and a modest-but-steady income. During those four years, we bought things.

Lots of things.

We bought things we knew we would need for future projects with the goal of transitioning our property into a homestead. Field fencing, horse panels, hardware cloth, drip irrigation supplies, hog panels, T-posts, cinder blocks, lumber, plywood, wire (various gauges), weed cloth, gravel, sand, rope, fasteners (screws, nails, bolts, hog rings, etc.), tools, deer netting, sheet metal, the 1500-gallon water tank ... the list goes on and on and on and on and on.

During those heady days, even the merest passing fancy could become reality. Don mentioned one day last year that a tool he'd love to have but didn't want to spend the money on was a T-post puller; I bought it for him for Christmas.

Well, those days are over and our spending is done. But you know what? Now we have the tools and supplies we need to bring endless projects to fruition with very little additional outlay. With our current project, for example (the garden), the only thing we've had to purchase was some hardware (hose clamps, notably) and an extra dump-truck load of gravel.

The peace of mind that comes from having all those things poised and ready to use – especially now, with our severely down-turned income – is hard to describe. We're not handicapped by a lack of money in accomplishing our homesteading goals and striding toward self-sufficiency.

Some might argue that we should have spent those four years saving our money or putting it into intelligent investments. Well, we did put some money in savings; and literally everything else was invested. It's just that our form of investment isn't what Wall Street has in mind for high yields.

Now those investments are paying big-time dividends.

Nightmare for allergies

This is the season of grass. We have a remarkable variety of grasses here in our little valley.

And right now, they're all blooming.

(Notice the flies as pollinators.)

A close-up reveals some interesting structures. What are those little white feathery things? No idea. (Grass biology isn't my specialty.)

All these blooming grasses are beautiful...

...for those without allergies. For everyone else, it's a nightmare.

Product Review Monday

For this week's book review, I'd like to highlight an excellent reference book for history buffs and homeschoolers entitled "The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events."

This is a VERY thick book (our 3rd Edition copy has 724 pages) that is – literally – nothing but a year-by-year summary of events from about 4,500 B.C. to the present day across seven categories:

• History/politics
• Literature/theater
• Religion/philosophy/learning
• Visual arts
• Music
• Science/technology/growth
• Daily life

It's not a book you read from cover to cover. Rather, it's one of those references you can dip into and realize just how much was going on in centuries and millennia past.

We have the 3rd Edition  (published in 1992), but there's a revised 4th Edition (from 2005 available). Either version is highly recommended.

____________

Don's recommendation:

I'm a guy who's on his knees a lot. Some of you may think that's because I have a lot to answer for to the Almighty and there certainly is something to that.

But what I'm referring to is the nearly daily need to do hard work in low places. I'm fortunate that my knees aren't the problem (an issue so many friends of a similar age suffer from); but even so, an hour or so working on something while on your knees can really hurt. So I have had a longstanding interest in knee pads.

I've tried a lot of different styles. I began with the padded elastic tube types years ago. But the elastic alway failed and since those styles of pads are more attached to the pants rather than the knees, every bend folowed by standing meant adjustments ... and if you tried to knee-walk, you always left the pads further and further down your legs.

I tried Velco strap pads, but the Velco eventually failed. My second-to-last pair of knee pads were articlualated monstosities that made movement hard and still wouldn't stay in place.

Finally, I found the CLC Work Gear Professional Kneepads. They are a joy. Great padding, flexible, totally adjustable, tough, and honestly inexpensive (read: cheap) at $30.

I highly recommend them; and if you get a pair, you (and your knees) will thank me.

(Obligatory disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Affiliate, if you purchase through those links, we earn a small commission.)

More on milking Maggie

In the last post on training Maggie to milk, a reader asked for more details on how I hobble her back leg to avoid getting kicked. This morning I took the camera with me to the barn and got some general pix of the milking process.

I have a permanent loop on the hobble rope. This way I can slip the rope through the loop, then around Maggie's leg. This means the hobble stays loose enough on her leg not to be uncomfortable, but if she pulls at it, it tightens.

I thread the other end of the rope through the eye-bolt on the post and make a slip knot. That way, if I have to release her leg quickly, I just yank the tail of the rope and the knot comes out.

It's normal for cows to shift position while in the milking stall. The slip makes it easy to readjust how "hobbled" Maggie is as the milking progresses. You don't want to make a hobble so short that the cow is immobilized, because she'll panic. It should only be short enough to keep her from kicking over the milk bucket, or kicking the milker (me!).

The very first thing to do before starting to milk (after hobbling, of course) is to wash the udder. For obvious reasons, this is very important. It's not always this bad, but this morning was a doozy.

I use two buckets for milking. I milk directly into the smaller one...

...and then, when I've accumulated an inch of milk or so of milk, I pour it into the larger bucket behind me.

This system serves two purposes. One, if the cow kicks the bucket over, I haven't lost all the milk. And two, the larger bucket is far enough away that if Maggie urinates, nothing splashes into the milk.

When I'm done milking, I cap the clean milk with a bowl cover before I release the animals.

Then it's time for Stormy to get her own breakfast. By the way, to forestall any questions, once-a-day milking means the cow adjusts her output for two "calves" (I'm the other "calf"), so Stormy is not deprived of any of the food or nutrients she needs.

After I come back to the house with the milk, I strain it through a double layer of thin cotton cloth and chill the milk. (I boil the cloth each day to sanitize it.) Then I scrub and sanitize the buckets and upend them to air-dry until the next day.

And that's all there is to it! Ta da!

Milking Maggie

This is a long post, so grab a cup of tea and follow our adventures as we train Maggie to be a milk cow.

Ever since little Stormy's unexpectedly early birth, Don has been slamming to build the calf pen and milking stall.

In the photo below, you can see the milking stall on the left, with the adjustable head-gate at the end. In the back-right is the calf pen, and in the front-right is the ... I dunno what to call it, the outer pen? ... where I'll sit on a crate and milk.

After this initial set-up was complete, we spent about a week training Maggie to come into the milking stall and put her head through the head-gate for grain. We also encouraged Stormy to go into the calf pen, but didn't close the gate. In other words, we just let the animals get used to things without pressure.

Here's Maggie's grain bucket in the little alcove on the other side of the head-gate.

Meanwhile, since we had removed the barn mats while building the infrastructure, we cut the mats to fit the new pens so Stormy wouldn't be on concrete while confined. We didn't put a mat in the milking stall, though, so it has a concrete floor for easier cleaning.

The one issue we hadn't resolved what what to do when Maggie urinated or defecated while in the milking stall. This may sound trivial or silly, but in fact it's a serious consideration for both sanitation (for the milk) and comfort (for me). In previous milking situations, we always had gravel or dirt floors, which meant most of the time it was no big deal. This is the first time I would be milking on concrete, and I knew things were likely to splash.

We tossed around a number of ideas: An elevated platform with a grate and a "litter box" underneath? A tub partly filled with sawdust placed right behind Maggie's legs?

Neither seemed ideal, but we couldn't think of anything else.

With that issue unresolved, the evening finally came when we planned to confine the calf for the first time so I could milk Maggie the following morning. I was a jittery bundle of nerves because first times are always stressful for bovines and humans alike.

At first we thought we would confine both the calf (to the pen) and Maggie (inside the barn) each night, similar to what we did just after Stormy was born and the weather was so rainy. After a great deal of effort, we got the calf in the pen...

...and Maggie in the barn with the doors shut.

To say this first attempt was a failure is to engage in the drollest understatement. Maggie had full access to the milking stall, and the calf desperately tried to climb through the head-gate of the stall to get to her mama. It was impossibly unsafe to leave them in the barn for the night. So, literally thirty seconds after everyone was confined, we released them again.

Back to Square One. Well, Square Two. Don got busy making extra security. He made a solid gate inside the calf pen to block off the little alcove where the grain bucket was (the little spot in the upper-left corner of the diagram below).

This gate could be closed and latched, so we still have access to the space but the calf doesn't.

Then he made a solid gate (on the left) to block off access to the milking stall. He also reinforced the strength of the outer pen gate (right).

Okay. Phew. A few days later, with all these reinforcements in place, we tried once again to tuck the calf away for the night, though this time we didn't try to confine Maggie to the barn.

We started the process, as usual, by giving Maggie her grain. (Notice the heavy-duty crossbeam separating the milking stall from the outer pen. That comes into the story later on.)

While Maggie was engaged with the grain, we were able to scoot Stormy into the calf pen. And then the fun began!

Maggie was mooing in distress at being separated from her calf. Mignon and Romeo came in to offer moral support.

It quickly became apparent that the milking stall gate was too low. Obviously the calf couldn't reach it, but Maggie was leaning over it, and I was afraid she would hurt herself trying to reach her baby. So I asked Don to hastily screw in a board blocking the upper portion for extra security.

I lingered in the barn for about half an hour, just to make sure nothing went amiss. Fortunately the increased security of the infrastructure held, and eventually everyone calmed down. The calf laid down in her pen and Maggie wandered off to graze. Once full darkness fell, there wasn't even very much bellowing from either Maggie or Stormy through the night.

Both Don and I were up verrrry early the next morning. He planned to assist me during the first couple days of milking. I deliberately didn't bring my camera since I knew I would be far too stressed and busy to take photos.

Armed with buckets, we went into the barn, got Maggie into the milking stall with some grain, and I sat down to milk.

Immediately we knew additional changes would have to be made. The hobble rope we used to secure Maggie's back leg to the post was insufficient, and she kicked it off with one attempt. (Hobbling a back leg is necessary to prevent the milker from being kicked in the head, either accidentally or deliberately. Ask me how I know.) We placed a tub with sawdust behind her in case she urinated, but she promptly kicked it away.

I started milking, and Maggie didn't know what to think of this. Remember, all this was absolutely new to her. She may have been feeling relief, as her udder was full; but she was restless and nervous, and I was overly cautious and tense.

At one point Maggie made a sudden move, and I jumped up from the milking crate and CRACKED my head against that crossbeam above me. I staggered around for a few moments in agony and had an impressive lump for a day or so. Whee, what fun!

Anyway, even with all the chaos, I managed to get three-quarters of a gallon of milk before calling it quits. We released Maggie, released the calf, and Don and I stumbled into the house where we collapsed in chairs, drinking the tea/coffee we hadn't had a chance to have earlier.

After we calmed down, we assessed what went right and what went wrong. We determined the reason I cracked my head was because I was underneath the crossbeam rather than on the other side of it; and the reason I was underneath it was because Maggie was too far over in the stall. In other words, the milking stall was too wide. We would have to insert a spacer to push her closer to me, so I could milk her without being directly under the crossbeam.

We reworked a number of issues. Don installed a permanent higher board across the milking-stall gate.

I got a stouter rope and used a simple slip-knot around Maggie's back leg.

The rope is slipped through an eye-bolt for security, although I use a quick-release knot just in case.

The whole urination/defecation thing was easy-peasy to solve. On the second morning of milking, Don spontaneously shoveled a small pile of sawdust behind Maggie's back feet ... and it worked! This is the same sawdust I had been using for months to sprinkle on the barn floor to absorb urine, after which it could be easily raked up and put on the compost pile. Why we tried to overly complicate this issue is anyone's guess.

Don came out with me on the second morning to assist if necessary, but since milking is my task, I asked him just to be on standby in case I needed help.

The second morning went 100% more smoothly. Maggie stayed calm. Stormy stayed calm. I was very careful not to crack my head on the crossbeam, especially since we hadn't yet installed a spacer to push her body closer to me. In fact, Don left halfway through the milking because I didn't need him for any assistance. I milked out 1.5 gallons, released Maggie's hobble tie, opened the head-gate, let Stormy out of her pen, and voilà. Absolutely night and day from the first challenging milking.

It should be noted that start-up chaos like this is perfectly normal, especially for a cow's first time. I knew both Maggie and Stormy would soon settle into a routine and learn what was expected of them.

And so it proved. I've been milking for several days now, getting about 1.5 gallons each day, and everything has gone so smoothly that Don doesn't need to accompany me to the barn.

We still had some improvements to make, however, notably installing a spacer in the milking stall. We had an oversized pallet that was the perfect size, so we secured it in place.

Because we felt the edge of the pallet was too sharp, Don trimmed and installed a piece of foam pipe insulation to the corner.

And, because there was a length of insulation left over, I slipped it over the crossbeam. Y'know, just in case.

The spacer worked. I'm able to milk much more comfortably without having to crouch my way under the crossbeam to reach Maggie's udder.

So that's been our adventures over the past couple of weeks. Maggie is now trained to milk, and we're starting to work with Stormy to lead-train her. Now I have to get back into dairy mode since we're swimming in milk.