“It’s been awhile, Jen! Where ya been!?” Good question, All Who Ask! A good question indeed! After our sudden displacement from Montana (perhaps a good, long story for a podcast someday?), the Farm resided in Washington State for a bit (definitely worth a second season to afore mentioned podcast…!). Here in WA, my life, and the future of Desert Rose, started to take shape in a whole new way. A spectacular excursion to Norway in…
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“Big Adventures in 2022”
Summer 2021 brought a radical and unexpected life change, leading me from remote reaches of Montana to the wet and warm West coast of Washington. Â Through many tribulations, the farm persisted and prevailed, and life continued much as usual. Â This winter concluded with the year’s trajectory looking quite predictable; goats, gardening, and foraging. Â A full plate of the familiar. Â I was a hair’s breadth from embarking on my falconry apprenticeship (a dream and goal 19…
“Goat Kids in 2022!”
Well,  a month after kids hit the ground, I’ve finally made time to sit down and  post about it! Twas a warm and sunny March 18th.  I let Tisl and Ruma graze  the meadow freely to their hearts’ content.  Tisl bred 4 days before Ruma, and theoretically today was her due date.  The girls hadn’t been out of the barn long before I heard Ruma nickering with concern.  She wandered around the barnyard and towards…
“Today, Life is Good”
Yet another sunny, warm, perfect day idled by today. As I have been prone to doing lately, I took the goats on a pastoral hike in the cedar grove this morning. The boys wore their saddles and packs. The girls wore their ever-growing pregnant bellies. We meandered in a new direction today. I brought the saddle bags along in anticipation of a good foraging trip. If nothing else, I would fill the pack with swathes…
“Tattling on the Freedom Goat”
It was after dark. I was sitting down to dinner in my tiny house. Toli the Dog was on guard duty outside, the barnyard had been put to bed, and as far as I was concerned, my day outside had come to a close. But then I heard a turkey hen chirp. It wasn’t a red-flag alarm. She called out in singular chirps. “PIP!” ….. “PIP!” …… “PIP!” Something she didn’t like was entering her…
“Turkeys as Flock Protectors”
If you’ve kept turkeys, you likely have a strong opinion about them one way or another.  Depending on the kind and quality of turkeys you kept, you may have read this post title and laughed out loud. It’s true  that turkeys come in a wide array of dispositions.  From “too dumb to keep itself alive” to “too smart to corner or catch”, turkeys can be inexplicably stupid, inappropriately violent, unreasonably skittish, or valuable beyond measure.…
“Musings about Lichen”
It’s January, the sun is shining, the grass is green and growing, and the air is warm and still.  Though I miss the snow of Montana, the sight of my goats browsing the meadow’s treeline fills the void nicely.  Rüma and Tisl are now less than 60 days from kidding.  The fresh forest browse is excellent for their health.  I’m beginning to see kid bulges on their petite frames.  I tame my excitement for kids…
“A Post About Today, January 11th”
After a very white Christmas, the weather has turned again to rain and the earth to mud. Â Strong green blades of grass are erupting all around me. Â It’s surreal! Â In between bouts of rain I get to stake the goaters out for a refreshing munch of fresh green grass. Â In January, no less! The first blades of green grass are coloring the meadow I bet they’re grateful not to be weathering another 6-month winter with…
“Website Updates, January 2022”
I’m excited to announce that almost 1 year after switching to the new Wordpress site, I’ve finally figured out how to fine-tune all the stubborn elements around the website that have been woefully out of sorts for too long. If you saw the cart, checkout, and account pages previously, you know what I meant. Hard-to-read text, forms running off the page… not to mention that obnoxious mobile menu! I was pulling my hair out trying…
“Goats and Calcium Stones”
A lot of farmers are aware that many ungulates are prone to urinary calculi. Â These are stones, kidney and bladder stones, that can potentially clog the urinary tract. Â The risk is greater in male animals due to their more petite urinary tract, compared to the females’. Â It’s said that intact males fair better than males castrated young, as they are able to develop larger tracts, but it seems like most of the horror stories I’ve…
“A Farm Update – New Beginnings”
Hello, friends. It’s been awhile since I made a blog post! While the reasons are many, and I may discuss them in depth as time progresses, I have moved my farm. Again. It’s been a difficult transition (moving a farm is never easy under the best of circumstances!), but with a new normality on the horizon, I am opening my shop back up. Folks can expect some new lower prices, but unfortunately I will not…
“The Upper Greenhouse Through July, 2021”
Through the busy heat of this unprecedentedly hot summer, the gardens have flourished amazingly. The tomatoes are loaded with pounds of thick green tomato clusters. The string beans are cranking out a few pounds of beans every 3 days- by far the best year for beans yet. The zucchinis are keeping us rich in their fruits at all times, as they are prone to doing. I’ve taken to pickling baby zucchinis now, hopefully it’s a…
“The Upper Greenhouse through June, 2021”
A garden gallery for this June’s progress in the new, monstrous greenhouse we affectionately refer to as the Upper Greenhouse (or UGH)! Early June: A view down the UGH from the porch End of June: The tomatoes near the top are coming along nicely! This portion of the UGH was the origina grow space of the first greenhouse. This year it’s tomatillos, tomatoes, squash, peppers, beans, and culinary herbs. As well as a few young…
“Tips on Choosing a Goat Breed”
Nigerian Dwarf Newborn I’ve had a lot of people ask me about which goat they should get. That’s something I certainly can’t answer for anyone else! But I can lay a few things out that might help someone in selecting a breed they will adore What do you want from a goat? Milk, meat, fiber, labor, companionship, or just a warm body out in the pasture? Before all else, it’s important the remember…
“An Experiment in Natural Tanning, Part 1”
Foreword:  My tanning videos were put on hold due to the move this year, but perhaps by next summer I’ll have them ready 🙂 One of my goals for 2021 was to start making my own clothing.  This will probably start with making shoes and expand to leg and torso coverings.  So back in March I began playing around with natural tanning methods.  I am only tanning small hides at the moment; rabbit, squirrel, guinea…
“Foraging in June 2021”
It’s the start of foraging season here on the mountain! Horsetail and Arnica are cropping in nicely, with many others not far away from prime picking time. We’ve harvested and dried one large batch of horsetail already. It’s important to harvest horsetail early in the season when it’s most medicinally active! Not to mention tender and fragrant! We had so many folks asking for horsetail by the pound last year that we hope to…
“A Post About Today, June 15th 2021”
With sunshine and warm weather abound now, it’s hard to find time and motivation to sit at the computer and write! As the wild world finally bursts forth with green, our first round of leafy greens in the greenhouses are already going to seed. So thinning the greens beds, drying greens, and replanting are high on the priority list. Now that the threat of frost has (theoretically) passed, i’s also time to plant squash and…
“Spring of the Broken Broodies”
Throughout the years, I’ve enjoyed dubbing the seasons with the names of events that were memorable. This spring definitely merits the title “Spring of the Broken Broodies”. I’ve hatched and raised thousands of chickens now, and even this year I’m seeing firsts. The first spring broody of this year did something quite strange. I kept her on golf balls for a few weeks, until a batch of chicks was hatched out in an incubator,…
“Another Indecisive Spring”
April and May spent their time swinging between near-freezing temperatures, and warm summer temperatures in the 70’s. With each cold snap we wagered we were done with the cold and moving on towards summer. However, the two-week cycle of extremes has continued. Last week, in an unseasonable turn of events, we got dumped with over 20″ of snow. At best, only about a foot of it accumulated. We were plunged back into the throws of…
“Spring 2021 is Officially Here!”
After a warm, summer-like day, the mountain got dumped with snow again! It’s been hard to tell whether spring has really sprung or not up here. One minute the sun is shining and it’s 50 or 60º, the next snow is dumping and everything is frozen again. Three days ago it was over 70º up here, then two days later it was frigid and snowing again. So what makes it official? The bears, of course!…
“A Post About Today: May 5th, 2021”
The thawing pond resembles a tiny glacial lake. It’s May now, and the days and nights are growing ever warmer. Sure, we’ll likely get a few more inches of snow before summer hits, but it won’t stick around for long! The roads are thawing and drying out. With such a rapid melt right now, water mitigation on the roads is vital to avoiding mushy, gooey roads and erosion. So every 2 or 3 days trenches…
“Website Updates”
If you’ve been one of the many people who visited this site this week and encountered curious visual site errors or visual changes from one page to the next as you explored, you have my apologies! It’s taken me almost 100 days since switching to WordPress, but I think I’ve got this thing almost where I want it! The new WP site began with lightly colored text atop a solid black background. Not much color…
“A Post About Today: April 16th, 2021”
It’s been a quiet and productive spring thus far. 2 of the 4 greenhouses are fully seeded/planted for the year. The upper greenhouse is about 1/3 planted, and only limited to that because we’ve only managed to create grow beds in 1/3 of the whole structure! Little sprouts are cropping everywhere. The currants are flowering, and the new kiwis are just putting out leaves. In another month or 2, the greenhouses will be stuffed full…
“A Simple Gift from Nova”
It was a restless night, in-part due to one of the cats yowling in the greenhouse all night. This morning the yowling picked up again. It was Nova, and her incessant calling is a classic indication that she made kill. This sweet little cat loves to “feed” me. Once Upon A Time she used to hunt fruit for me form the orchard. She’d bring apples and apricots into the house, yowling and calling for me,…
“Raising the Barn, Part 2: Floors & Roof”
With the posts secured upright and our beams braced in place, it was time to add girders and joists so we could work towards having a solid floor on each level of the barn. Each joist was chainsaw milled with 1 flat side, and the ends were notched so they all rested at the same precise height (regardless of how big/wide the log was) on the girders. Andy painstakingly measured out the placement of each…
“A Goat Update: Kids, Milk, & Cheese”
We are now 2 weeks from Ruma’s traumatic birthing experience and she is doing wonderfully. At no point did she threaten me with uterine infection or complications. PHEW! She’s stayin’ plump and lookin’ beautiful as ever. Never did I envision myself someday following a female goat around, carefully sniffing her vulva and noting how it smelled each day… We have each doe down to 1 kid each and are milking the ladies twice a…
“Baby Goats Have Arrived!”
BABY GOATS! After 5 months of eager anticipation (the last 2 months of which were even more eager once we stopped milking in late January and instantly began missing fresh cheese), we have beautiful baby goaters! Tisl birthed first, 48 hours later than her technical due date. She was stealth-preggers, barely showing any baby bulge right up to birthing. I expected only 1 kid out of her. But she produced 2 beautiful kids. I had…
“A Post About Today: March 12th 2021”
Bulbs and leafy greens and peas everywhere! As the warm days continue and the ground thaws, we’ve finally begun putting seeds in the ground. Over the last 3 years I’ve been taking notes on the growing seasons, how much we’ve grown and harvested, and how much we eat. This year the gardening goals are: 100 sq ft or 100lbs of carrots 200 sq ft of beets or 200lbs of beets 100 tomato plants…
“A Post About Today: March 9th, 2021”
March is well underway and spring is in the air! With daytime highs in the 40’s, the Upper Greenhouse (the new massive one) has gotten well into the 70’s in full sunshine. The snow is melting rapidly, and considering we’ve had unusually little snow this year, I’m sure it will be gone before we know it. I highly doubt there will be snow in the draws in June this year. So with the advent of…
“Sometimes Roadkill’s a Drag”
One fine summer morning I took a drive to the post office. It was a beautiful day and I felt fantastic. As usual, I kept my eyes peeled for roadkill deer along the way- however as I turned onto the highway and began my journey, I realized I had no blade in the car with me. I laughed to myself- “Watch me find one of the biggest deer I’ve ever seen and have no way…
“Raising the Barn, Part 1: Logging, Footings, & Posts”
It’s time I wrote out our adventure in building our barn! I will make a video about it at some point, but for now, it shall be a series of blog posts. We spent spring 2019 logging dead and dying trees out of our draws to use for constructing our barn. The telehandler is a fantastic friend for logging. We can telescope the boom out to its furthest reach and run multiple lengths of stout…
“A Post About Today: February 23rd, 2021”
The upper greenhouse just before the big melt and shed. Here Andy is movings some snow around below it whilst I standby listening for any indication that the snow may break loose and come down. With daytime high’s in the upper 30’s and 40’s, brisk winds, and bright sunshine, it’s hard to deny spring is here. Yesterday the upper greenhouse was 51º! Our 20 inches of fluffy white powder has melted into a semi-crusty…
“Elk X-ing: a short animated comic”
I made this little comic because this particular story is a funny, expressive tale I enjoy telling, but it just doesn’t quite fit into text. Text alone can’t capture the emotions of the event. To some the humor in this story may seem a bit morbid, but it all depends on your perspective. We take it lightheartedly- thus is life living in an area loaded with wildlife. And no, we didn’t go back to look,…
“Home-Made Liquid Detergent Soap”
I thought I would share a recipe I’ve been using for some time now to make our home-made 4-ingredient grease-cutting dish and laundry soap. Really, it’s our everything soap. But some folks prefer to have a different soap for each application. So for those folks, consider this a dish and/or laundry soap. I initially made the recipe out of desperation. We had just butchered Bill, the 1,000 pound boar, and we rendered hundreds of pounds…
“Broken Chicken Feet”
If you live on a farm with chickens and any other livestock over 200lbs, chances are sooner or later you’ll see a limping chicken with a munched foot. Pigs, mules, horses, and even very large goats can easily crush a chicken’s foot with one step. Most of the time they are oblivious to the chicken’s thrashing screams and might not lift their foot right away. When the large livestock is being grained, and thus the…
“A Post About Today: February 6th, 2021”
I’m going to make my first attempt at adding some fun photos to the blog post. Does that make it a… plog?! :B Edit/update: since it seems to have worked and looks nice, I’ll work on adding photos to more of my previous posts. We recently got about 12″ of snow, and there’s still plenty more on the forecast. At last, the snow has come! We’ve hardly had 3 feet of cumulative snow up…
“A Post About Today: February 1st, 2021”
It’s a bright, sunny Monday morning. My orders are in the post and I’m now hiding in front of the computer. The thermometer says it’s 38ºF in the greenhouse. The top of our greenhouse today will likely reach 50ºF, whilst the draw below the cabin is likely in the teens or single-digits. It’s a comfy 70ºF inside after a busy morning of frying up sausage, pancakes, and onions. Why am I indoors in front of…
“The New Website”
If you’re reading this, Hello! Welcome to the fancy new website! Are you enjoying the shiny new blog feature? I hope so. I’m still trying to figure out what a blog is, so bear with me… This is my formal acknowledgement of the changes. I did it! I finally did it. I surrendered to the almighty website building technology! I must admit, the last time I tried to use a website builder was probably…
“Counting the 2020 Harvest”
There’s something very magical about producing your own food. I’m not the best at keeping records, but I do try. So here’s a peek at what we managed to produce in the 2020 season. Granted, the ‘season’ is not yet over. We’re still contending with foodstuffs grown last year. Our food and farming season will not begin anew until the spring! Canned Fruits: 79 gallons of apple, pear, huckleberry, aronia berry, and elderberry syrups, juices,…
“Herbal Guide: Coral Root”
I wanted to talk a little bit about the medicinal herb Coral Root. Members of the Corallorhiza family are many, and most of them are endangered. In our forest we’re lucky to have a variety of coral root that is not state or nationally endangered. Coral root is an orchid. It’s entirely parasitic. It produces no leaves and contains no chlorophyl. It survives by leeching nutrients from the roots of the plants around it, as…
“How Herbal Healing Became and Interest”
People: “How did you get into herbal medicine?” Me: “I cut my achilles tendon open.” Yeah, it was horrible. I hate that it happened. But it did. I should say, actually, “someone’s bicycle cut my achilles tendon open.”… So I had this cut into the back of my foot, parallel with the bottom of my foot, making a 1” flap of my heel, cut straight through, that could open up like a mouth. I was…
“The Goat Ripped Her Teat Open”
I put Ruma on the stanchion one morning, as per usual, and knelt down to milk. “Wait- blood? Fresh blood? Where is it- oh wow… Ew.” She had somehow snagged her teat on something and tore it clean open, nearly 2 inches long. A very unsettling mixture of blood and milk was weeping out of the gash. Gross. Super gross. So I milked out her good side, trying not to look at the wound too…
“Aspen’s Story: Broken Turkey Legs”
Aspen was a black Spanish turkey I purchased. She was an adult and had grown up semi-wild. She had very little trust in me. As turkey hens do, Aspen went broody in her first spring with me. She chose a large wooden cupboard for her nest. And as turkey toms do, Pip the tom started to get restless after all of the hens disappeared to sit nests. To my dismay, he found Aspen in her…
“I Put a Bone in My Foot…”
Yep. I was on a steep slope, unfolding a large sheet of greenhouse plastic, and I stepped on what looked like plain dirt only to hear a grotesque juicy crunch and a surge of pain in the arch of my foot. I sat/fell down and proceeded to uproot a small -something- sticking up out of the dirt. It was the tip of a buried jagged, gnarly chunk of dog-chewed deer vertebrae with old black gristle…
“Stitches the Chicken”
Before moving to an area with frigidly cold winters and an extended cold season, I kept turkens. Turkens are a breed of chicken that lack feathering on their head and necks. I love turkens, they’re fantastic, and I wish I could raise them here on the mountain but that would be cruel to the half-naked birds. So one day I head out into my bird yard to put the birds up for the night and…
