Spreading the benefits

Don and I, as often happens, underestimated the amount of hay we needed to get the livestock through the winter. I don't know why, but we do that a lot. So, late last November, we started looking for more hay to purchase.

But hay tends to sell quickly and can be hard to find off-season. We inquired of our usual sources and learned everything had already sold. Finally, through various means, we connected with a fellow who had oat hay available in 100-lb. bales.

Oat hay. Hmmm. We'd never fed oat hay to our livestock before, but the seller assured us his own cows loved the stuff. So, since the price was decent and (more importantly) he had some available, we ordered four tons.

Now here's the thing: By every metric we were familiar with, 100-lb. bales of hay should be fairly large, but these bales of oat hay were pretty much standard size. But, groan, they were very heavy, to the point where Don and I simply couldn't lift them. At all. The best we could do was push and shove and tip them to move them around, and we had to use the tractor to stack them with any semblance of neatness.We got about half the bales in the barn, and the rest we stacked in the driveway on a series of pallets, which we later tarped.

What made the bales so heavy? In a word, oats. This wasn't oat straw, it was oat hay, harvested with the seed intact. Whenever we moved a bale, a festive layer of oats was left behind.

Okay fine, but would the cows like it?

Oh. My. Yes. The cows stinkin' adore it. They attack it greedily, and prefer it over anything else we've ever fed them. Interestingly, it's boosted Maggie's milk output, too. Due to the natural decline of milk production with an older calf (and the fact that she's pregnant), I had been getting about half a gallon a day, even though I give her some grain every morning in the milking stall. But with the extra boost of nutrition from this oat hay, her output has ramped up to a gallon a day with ease. (I plan to dry her off, i.e. stop milking, in early March. Her calf is due in late June.)

With an eye toward having some hay put aside for next year, we called the seller and asked if he had any more for sale. Sadly, no, he'd sold it all. So we told him to put us on his list for this summer's crop.

Meanwhile, the oat hay is "spreading the benefits" as other animals have discovered it.

The Oregon juncoes, sparrows, and black-capped chickadees descend on the oat hay debris, whether outside in the driveway or inside the barn.

But the biggest beneficiary of this largess are the turkeys.

Turkeys, as I've mentioned before, are nature's Roombas. They wander the landscape, finding everything even remotely edible, and clean it up. They tend to aggregate in enormous flocks during the winter, sometimes in groups as large as fifty or sixty or more birds. Groups of about one to two dozen are most common. Now, it seems, one or more of those groups have found their way into the corral.

On any day of the week, I can creep into the barn, peer through the slats of the feed box, and catch a dozen turkeys inside the barn. They scratch through the cow poop and gobble up any oat seeds they find.

Sometimes they'll scratch around in the mud of the corral, breaking up cow patties and finding the edible bits inside.

Most, however, can be found on the barn waste pile. Turkeys love barn waste any time, but especially now that it's rich in oat seeds. Bonanza!

Such prehistoric-looking creatures, aren't they?

Turkeys perform a highly valuable service for us, since their activities aid in decomposition for the barn waste on its journey to becoming compost.

Eventually, either sated with seeds or spooked by my presence, the turkeys will leave the barn and aggregate in the lower pasture.

Then, with powerful beats of their wings, they'll become airborne long enough to clear fences and land downhill from any perceived danger.

So yes, the oat hay is spreading the benefits. The passerine birds as well as the turkeys get some meals. The cows are getting extra nutrition. I'm getting plenty of milk for making cheese. Not a bad deal.

Predicting the weather

This cartoon was created by the talented writer and artist Wren Everett and appeared in the Jan/Feb/Mar 2026 issue of Backwoods Home Magazine (and is reprinted with permission). I thought it was incredibly apropos, considering the storm that hit the eastern two-thirds of America this past weekend.

(Click to enlarge)

There's a lot to be said for a prepared lifestyle. Stay warm and safe, everyone!

Winter weather

For the last few days, we're been hearing dire weather reports about the massive storm and bitter cold bearing down on two-thirds of the U.S.

Apparently this is the worst storm system in something like 40 years and is NOT something to ignore or take lightly. Officials have been urging people to batten down the hatches and prepare accordingly.

Needless to say, lots of store shelves are being stripped bare.

Meanwhile, the western U.S. is under a high-pressure system that is preventing any moisture from hitting the ground. We've been cloudy, below freezing, and bone-dry for weeks. There isn't a drop of rain or snow anywhere in the forecast, and the locals are getting worried about a severe fire season this summer.

I guess it's a weird winter for everyone.

Stay safe and warm, dear readers, and if you're in the path of this storm, report in as you can how you're faring.

The final shipment

Dear readers, thank you for your forbearance as Don and I coped with finishing up a massive production run of tankards after Older Daughter's shop accident on New Year's Eve.

Here's some of the things we've been doing over the last three weeks. The production run was split into two parts: A huge first part of about 270 pieces, and a smaller second part of about 75.

We had tankards everywhere in the house, on virtually every flat surface.

I'm not exaggerating when I say this was one of the biggest production runs we've done over the span of the last 33 years.

Here we're testing tankards, where we fill them with water to see if any leak. We had to do this in stages, since there were so many.

The house was in absolute flippin' chaos during this time. Tankards in various stages of completion, boxes for packing, bubble wrap, newspapers, guarantee cards ... what a mess.

In the photo below, for example, Older Daughter and I are working at the kitchen table getting tankards ready to pack, while Don is in the background gluing up the next batch on a card table. Chaos chaos chaos.

Here's the newspaper station. I'm spreading out full sheets of newspaper from the pile on the right, while discarding half-sheets on the floor to the left (we'll use them for fire starters). We need full-size sheets of newspapers for wrapping tankards for packing.

Here we're prepping boxes. BIG boxes.

Packing boxes. Three boxes are stacked to the left, two to the right, and the one we just finished filling is in the center. We roll each tankard in newspaper before packing.

Six huge boxes ready to ship. I'm fairly certain this is the largest number of boxes we've ever shipped at one time. Even the UPS guy said it could have made its own stand-alone pickup.

With the bulk of the production run out the door, we were able to concentrate on the smaller 75-piece portion. Here's we're coating the insides of the tankards.

And here are the final two boxes, packed and ready to tape shut and address.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the final shipment.

No, really, I mean it. This is the final shipment of tankards. After 33 years in business, 29 by Don and myself and the last four years by Older Daughter, we're closing down. Older Daughter has already notified her wholesale customers.

It's bittersweet, of course, but the painful reality is it's no longer cost-effective for making a living. Sure it was insane hours, erratic income, and  the occasional injury, but over the three decades Don and I ran it, we were able to support a family, pay a mortgage, raise our children, and always be home with them.

But things have changed. Prices for all the components (wood, glue, varnish, sanding belts, saw blades, spray guns, bubble wrap, boxes, shipping) have skyrocketed, but the tankard prices couldn't be raised enough to compensate and provide a livable wage. In other words, it was becoming less and less profitable. While Older Daughter's injury was the deciding factor, there's no doubt the increasing cost of doing business convinced her it was better to let it go.

However Older Daughter has some exciting new plans for her future. I'm not at liberty to discuss what they are at the moment, but she has some wonderful opportunities opening up.

While this final shipment is officially the end of an era, Don and I know better than to claim we'll never make another tankard. As the saying goes, never say never. Economic reality might necessitate a change of plans. We're thoroughly enjoying our new careers as full-time freelance writers, but it's good to know we have a backup source of income should we need it.

But for now ... this is the final shipment.

Sorry for the silence!

A few readers have expressed concern about the blog silence. My apologies! We're all doing fine except we're still slammed with getting this massive tankard order out the door. We hope to ship off the last pieces this upcoming Thursday, at which point we will heave an enormous sigh of relief.

To top things off, my writing schedule suddenly multiplied. I sent off a proposal (synopsis + three chapters) to my Harlequin editor Thursday morning, and did a podcast interview for Mother Earth News on Thursday afternoon, and now I'm working on a Countryside article which is due Tuesday. I also have at least two articles I need to submit to Backwoods Home Magazine as soon as possible, and two more articles due early next month for Backyard Poultry Magazine. This is, of course, on top of the usual morning milking and afternoon barn-cleaning schedule.

Older Daughter's finger is still painful, but it's healing well. There's a ligament or tendon in there that catches her with a snap of pain when she stretches out her hand too fast, but the finger itself isn't causing any direct pain and there was no infection thanks to the emergency room physician who did a good job cleaning it, and Older Daughter's diligent after-care of the wound.

Thank you for understanding about the dearth of blog posts. More later!

The elk are back

Every winter in our area, the elk move from the high country to lower elevations. This means we suddenly start seeing them all over the place.

Interestingly, we've had an extraordinarily mild winter so far (a state of affairs that, frankly, is starting to worry us; will this correlate to a summer of wildfires?), so the elk have plenty of browse.

Coincidentally, we've also started noticing damage to our fencing.

Elk are massive animals – you don't really appreciate just how huge they are until you're up close to one – so it's no surprise that our modest fences get damaged by them.

It's one of those give-and-takes of country living. Elk are beautiful animals. Damaged fences is one of the prices we pay for enjoying their presence.

An illiterate generation?

Two related news stories caught my attention this week. One was entitled "They Can't Read: [Hoover Institution Senior Fellow} Victor Davis Hanson Shares Horror Stories That Drove Him Out Of University." The other piece is called "Gen Z are arriving to college unable to even read a sentence – professors warn it could lead to a generation of anxious and lonely graduates."

As the titles imply, there are entire cohorts of young people emerging from public education functionally illiterate. The latter article begins: "As Gen Z ditch books at record levels, students are arriving to classrooms unable to complete assigned reading on par with previous expectations. It's leaving colleges no choice but to lower their expectations. One shocked professor has described young adults showing up to class, unable to read a single sentence."

The crisis of literacy goes back decades, arguably generations. "Why Johnny Can't Read" was first published in 1955 and drew national attention to the failures of the "look-say" method of teaching (as opposed to phonics) that signaled the beginning of the end for literacy.

We are so obsessed with books in our family that this hits home ... hard.

We've also had lively discussions in our household about the issue. Is reading even "necessary" in our modern society? Clearly illiteracy isn't an insuperable handicap for everyone. History is rife with brilliant people who succeeded despite their inability to read. Today's younger generations are clearly succeeding even though reading is no longer a priority.

I guess what I find distressing is our modern culture seems to actively cultivate functional illiteracy. Children are surrounded by screens instead of books. They're encouraged to watch videos about something rather than reading about it. Parents don't model reading; they model viewing. Artificial intelligence is poised to take the need to read away from us. Children no longer grow up with the expectation that reading is not only educational, but fun. University professors are reaping the rewards of this change in attitude and ability.

Recently a reader related a frustrating experience with an AI bot and asked rhetorically, "You'll do better finding your answers in a book somewhere. What will we do when books are gone?"

An excellent question. We're on a personal mission in our family not to let that happen. Let's hope future generations are able to overcome their illiteracy.

Where's a 'Cheese AI' when I need it?

I made a batch of cheese today. I was busy doing other things as well, but I used my faithful kitchen timers to keep me on track for all the steps necessary to make cheddar.

Everything was going fine UNTIL I neglected to turn the (low) heat off the double-boiler pots at one particular step, warming the water in the outer pot well beyond the necessary 100F. I immediately removed the inner pot to let the curds cool and added cool water to the outer pot to bring the temperature back down to 100F. Well, oops. After that, the cheesemaking proceeded without incident.

But Don and I laughed about how delicate cheesemaking sometimes seems. Slight alterations in temperature, length of time the curds cook, and how long it's pressed and under which weights can often make a completely different cheese.

"What we need," he said, "is a 'Cheese AI' where we can ask it this kind of question. 'I left the heat on too long at this particular step and the curds got a bit warmer than 100F. What kind of cheese will this make?' Then the AI can respond with something like, 'Why, that will make Stanford-on-Rye cheese, first made by Goodwife Delma Osgood in 1706...'"

This batch of cheddar (hopefully it's still cheddar) has to age for at least two months, so I have no idea what, if any, my temporary lapse of attention will do to the final product.

If only there was a "cheese AI" I could query...

Calibrated to cities

Don, as you may recall, suffers from a malady we dubbed "Poliphobia" – namely, a "fear" of cities.

This is not a real phobia (an irrational fear), of course, but rather an intense dislike bordering on hatred of urban areas. "I didn't used to be this way," he says. Like me, he's spent many years living in – and even enjoying – urban environments; but the older he gets, the less tolerance he has for such settings.

For those not afflicted, this aversion is difficult to understand. But from the Eaton Rapids Joe blog comes this gem:

One of the reasons I dislike visiting cities is that I am no longer calibrated to them. I don't have a solid baseline of what is normal and what is not-normal.

YES!!! He gets it! It's not just us!

Drowning in tankards

Sorry for the silence, dear readers. Don and I have been drowning in tankards for the last few days.

To update our disastrous New Year's Eve and New Year's Day incidents: My mother continues to remain stable after rallying from what we all thought were her final moments. She's back at the nursing home, though she's in isolation (doubtless because of the pneumonia) and my dad is required to suit up in PPE before visiting her. The consensus is if her bouts of abrupt pneumonia continue, the family will turn to hospice.

Older Daughter's finger is on the mend, but she's severely limited in what she can do ... and that includes completing a massive 350+ piece order of tankards that must reach their destination within two weeks. Therefore Don and I have taken over the production run.

Don has been spending hours in the shop on the power tools. At various stages in the assembly process, he brings batches to the house, where I take over assembly. Right now the house is overrun with mugs.

Nearly every surface is covered in various style tankards in various stages of completion.

As an example, yesterday evening Older Daughter and I sat at the kitchen table to work on the smallest-size tankards in the repertoire, the coffee-sized mugs. These have solid, rather than multi-colored, sides. Older Daughter assembled the side pieces into groups of six, which I then taped and stacked for gluing.

These are the groups of six sides which will get taped.

Stacks of taped tankards. Altogether there were about 90 tankards to glue in this particular batch.

While I glued, Older Daughter sat opposite and entertained me by reading out loud various dramas posted on Reddit.

By the time of evening chores, I had worked my way through a bit over half of the three stacks.

The freshly glued tankards were left to dry for several hours (overnight, in this case).

Today Don will be working on another batch of the production run in the shop, which he'll then bring into the house for me to glue up.

Older Daughter is antsy and bored and apologetic for the need for us to finish the production run, but such is life. We're just very grateful her injury wasn't worse.

Anyway, that accounts for my blog silence over the last few days. Our deepest thanks for all of your prayers during our difficulties.