Goat update

It's been awhile since i posted about the goats, and that's really a shame. They're remarkable creatures, and they deserve a shoutout every now and again for the hard work they do.

We've been down to milking once a day for quite a while now, and some days we don't milk at all. Breeding season is over, but after contact with the bucks the ladies are smelling quite funky, and as a result the milk is a bit more...well...pungent, shall we say. I haven't really been bothered by it. I just pour it on the cereal and don't smell it. I think it's easy to psych yourself out about things like that, and i have a certain antipathy to finickiness, so i just don't allow myself to think about it too much. I couldn't tell a difference in the flavor, but when you're eating honey nut cheerios you don't really taste the milk so much as the honey nut goodness.

In any case, end-of-season milk has a much higher fat content, mostly because they're eating much less grass now and much more hay, alfalfa, and grain. Thus, less watery, succulent matter and more dry matter. This does affect the cheese, and although you might think it would be positive it's actually a pain in the ass. The high fat content promotes geotrichum growth. Geotrichum is the white mold that makes camemberts and bries so tasty. As the mold develops on the cheese it works its way into the curd and creates that amazing creamy layer between the rind and the harder curd. Unfortunately, right now the mold growth is so fast (and we have some wild geotrichum growing on the cheese too--uninvited guests) that the rinds on our lovely little bloomy cheeses are slipping off, creating an awful mess. I've been trying to wrap the cheeses before they get runny, but sometimes it happens so fast that it's all you can do to peel them off the drying mats and hope the rinds don't break off. Needless to say, we're selling the cheeses cheaper. They taste just as fabulous, but they're hardly beauties. I actually prefer a rustic looking cheese, but i have been known to love homely, even ugly things. This summer i had a passion for this monstrous looking reishi mushroom, which i thought was just the coolest thing ever.

Unfortunately, today was my last day in the cheese kitchen before i go to France for the spring semester. It was very sad. I didn't even mind tubbing chevre, which happens to be the most tedious job i can think of. To think that i still love my job after all the blood, sweat, and tears (i'm pretty certain all three were involved at some point this past summer) is really amazing. I never thought that would happen to be honest. I thought i'd end up resigning myself to a tolerable job. But no, i really love what i do, and i don't see that changing.

I've been battling a lot recently about what to do with myself. My life. I should remind you that i'm a French major. I chose this because i like it. The end. I feel i should have a degree for multiple reasons, only one of which is a backup plan. I mostly feel i should get a degree because i want to learn as much as i can while i can. I believe learning is something to be done every day, all your life. But i do know that i will not be able to do as much learning, by the book learning, that is, when i start working full-time. Hence, i am a student bearing my academic cross for now. I've been thinking maybe i should get a teaching licensure even though the thought of teaching children, tweens, or teens appals me. But then, with the advice of a former teacher i decided that would be an unfortunate mistake. If i'm not cut out to be a teacher, i shouldn't be one. Students should have teachers who are passionate about what they do. There are already too many nonchalant teachers. Besides, i'm having more and more trouble withholding what i think, and i am told that tact is important for things like teaching.

So, i've decided to forge ahead with my plans to farm. Someone needs to do it, and it might as well be me. It won't be easy, and i'll probably be poor all my life, but that's fine. I really don't think i'll mind so long as i have bread and butter (and maybe some sorghum molasses--this has been my fix of late) and goats.

Back to the farm. We recently had a buck die. You'll never guess why. It's actually funny. You have to develop an odd sense of humor when you work on a farm. See, during breeding season the bucks are "in rut," which essentially means that they are horny, in a way that only goats are horny. They give off this musk that is augmented by their own urine, as they piss on themselves and on the other bucks (if you'll believe this, they piss on their own faces--a sight to behold, really). They fight amongst themselves, hump each other, and mostly stop eating. That's right, they get so horny they stop eating. This is why bucks don't live as long as does. The stress of rut is pretty hard on their bodies. So this year our new buck, Savoy, was going through rut, and he completely stopped eating and died. I think to think of it as dying of horniness, which is essentially true. The humor in this lies in the fact that the animal died of the characteristic that goats are known for--their virility. It's like a pig dying of overeating (which also happened fairly recently--but that's really, really disgusting, and i won't describe it) or a hen literally pecking another to death or something. Again, odd sense of humor.

I plan to return to the farm when i get back from France. I'm very attached to the place. I really can't imagine coming back to anything else. So there will be more posts about the farm, just not for a while. I have contacted a farming family in France that i hope to visit and work with for at least a week or two, so that could make for some interesting future posts. I plan to have a seperate blog dedicated to my escapades in France, but i haven't created it yet. I'll be sure to let you all know when that's up and running. It is possible that i won't post much or at all during the christmas season simply because i will be very preoccupied with travel prep and just the hubbub of the season in general, so whether my next post is tomorrow or sometime in january, when i'm in France, cheerio!

My grandparents visited the farm just to hassle me--how was your friday?

So my grandparents called me Friday morning to tell me that they were thinking about visiting me. I've been telling them all summer that they should visit, but I didn't expect them to come. I was more or less just being open to the possibility of their coming, and politeness factors in there somewhere as well. Needless to say, I would have liked more warning, a.) because they don't know that my boyfriend and I are living together, and it's hard to cover up that fact, and b.) because I work full-time, and getting off work at the last minute isn't easy, especially on market-prep day. I went to work as usual, and they showed up at around 5:30. I could immediately tell that my grandmother was a fish out of water, or rather, a suburbanite out of the burbs. She managed to look very uncomfortable, and she viewed the goats with disdain, if not disgust. This is not a surprise to me, as she tends to be dramatic, and has spent the last twenty years, at least, making sure that not a speck of dust is safe in her house. A farm is not a place where you fret about dust. It's there, it's thick, and it's not going to go away just because you show up with a feather duster. Not to mention goat shit, mud, and various other farm residues. I guess I've become pretty used to it all. I don't much notice the smells anymore, and when I step in something squishy I don't think too much about it. I pet goats all the time, let them chew on my fingers, and I've been peed on a few times. My grandmother came from a farming family, but I think she washed her hands of that pretty quickly. She and my grandfather have a small family garden, but I get the feeling she goes along with it simply because that's what she's always done--canning and preserving. She's an incredibly sweet woman when she wants to be, and I know that she loves me so much that she does not want me to work on a farm. She essentially visited me to try to dissuade me from doing what I am doing, and what I love to do.

Ok, let's examine this further. Farming was viewed, in the past few decades, as something to get away from. You gew up on a farm, moved to the city, and found a nice office job. Our pop culture has fed upon this modern archetype for years--that of the country girl moving to the city and making it big. Country kids with inbred, pedophilic parents getting away, leaving the country for something better. Inbred, pedophilic parents aside, the country really isn't a bad thing. Farming really isn't a bad thing. I mean, we all have to eat, don't we? And someone has to grow the food, don't they? And people care more and more about where their food comes from and where it was grown and how it was grown, don't they? This is true. I am greatly encouraged by the recent interest in small-scale, local, organic food production whether it be veggies, cheeses, preserves, or baked goods. The interest in farmers' markets and "buying local" in spite of the worsening economy is simply amazing. And people are educating themselves. They ask lots of questions about (in my case) how the cheese was produced, where it was made, how the goats are treated and what they're fed, etc. This is all great. But I think people still assume that farming is the basic grunt-work of society requiring little brain and a great tolerance for sweat, blood, and tears. People love to stop and chat with their small farmer at the market, but if their child expressed an interest in farming, they'd nip that one in the bud.

Somehow, being a doctor or a lawyer or an architect is better than being a farmer. Granted, the failure rate is huge, the learning curve is pretty scary, and there's good reason for parents to worry about their child's possible failure. I worry about my own possible failure. If I am able to secure a piece of land and withstand the precarious nature of starting a small farm, I'll consider myself fortunate. That leads me to think about what is considered valuable in this country. If our current government considered small-scale agriculture to be important (which it is), there would be enough small farms in any given area to support the local economy. Instead, we have a few corporate giants who grow most of the food produced in this country, and thus control the market. If our government considered organic, sustainable agriculture to be important (which it is), there would be government-sponsored training in organic farming, making it easier for small farmers to learn valuable techniques even if they decided not to go completely organic. I think we all realize (I say "we all" because I know that about 4 people read this blog and we are all of the same opinion in this matter) that small-scale, organic (or, as is the case with raising animals, conscientious), local food production is healthier for the body, the community, and the environment. But my grandmother was simply expressing a concern that reflects, I believe, a widespread notion in this society--that farming is somehow less cerebral and therefore less honorable than professions that require two or more degrees.

Perhaps I am mistaken. I would like to think so. Maybe it's simply my grandmother's age and generation that make her think the way she does. In any case, shifting the public's appetite seems to be easier than shifting their beliefs.

What is Safe?

Every day I read about something new that I should not eat. I have no problem rejecting the traditional culinary battery of foods such as meat, since that's sort of a no-brainer among the environmental crowd. But then there came corn--the holy of holies for Mexican food, and a personal summer favorite. I am fortunate in that my grandparents are still able to grow their own, so I can indulge in the occasional corn cob without destroying the Midwestern grasslands. But there's also soybeans (currently taking over the Amazonian rainforest), which have come to be central to my diet, as commercially produced milk is full of hormones (and where am I going to get cheap organic milk until I start working on the goat farm again?) and so I rely on soymilk and sometimes soy yogurt. Not to mention the fact that many processed goods contain soy (just because soybeans have been hippie food does not make them sustainable to grow), corn syrup (is there anything that doesn't have corn syrup in it? I bought some cranberry juice the other day that, lo and behold, had corn syrup in it), hydrogenated oils, palm oil, etc. Then there's the banana issue, which is particularly painful to me since bananas happen to be my favorite everyday fruit only surpassed by local berries and peaches when they're in season.

So what is the answer to this? It isn't enough for people to buy local or in season anymore. I believe that in order to have a truly healthy relationship with the earth and thus our food, we must know exactly where and how our food came to be. Did that head of lettuce come from a huge field of lettuce plants or was it part of a polyculture? Were pesticides or herbicides used in any part of the growing process? Is the field this farmer cultivates used responsibly? We need to get behind the crop and learn about it. We need to know the growing seasons and harvests. We need to be a part of the harvests. We need to plant tomatoes and squash in our windowboxes instead of petunias so we can have some sense of where our food comes from.

I am fortunate in that I have grown up with farming. I have smelled barnyard smells and heard cows lowing and had the sticky residue of the tomato plant all over my hands and I have been up to my neck in yellow squash fresh from the garden. The act of growing something, harvesting it, and consuming it is probably one of the more satisfactory deeds I have done. Unfortunately, this intimacy with food is completely lost to most of our society. All the average American can say about vegetables is that they grew in the ground somewhere. This knowledge is not enough. If only we as a society were as hungry for the details of our food as we are for the food itself...

Ah, but then this revolution of sorts must start with me. Vive la revolution!