Tag Archives: Liberty Hyde Bailey

Lambing Season on a Small Farm (with a recipe)

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I could see her in the darkness at the far end of the outer corral, 50 yards from the barn. She was vigorously licking a small white something wriggling at her feet. It was 22 degrees that morning as I approached to inspect the newly born lamb, which even as I covered the distance stood up. The mother nudged her baby back to the business end, and it immediately began to nurse. The ewe clearly still had more lambs to come (and hopefully just one more) before I could coax her to the barn and into a lambing pen. I flashed my light across the other ewes in the heavily pregnant flock. None showed any signs of labor, so I headed back to the house for a first cup of coffee.

An hour later, around 6 a.m., I found the ewe still at the far edge of the outer corral, with two healthy ram lambs on their feet and nursing. I picked them both up and began the backward-crouch-and-walk familiar to all who have raised sheep. Both were covered in ice crystals in the cold predawn. I continued to hold the lambs in view of their mother, and she followed ever so slowly, chuckling to her babies softly, afraid she was leaving one or both behind. Eventually I made it to the barn door, managed to get it open with one hand while holding the two 8-pounders in the other, and ushered all three inside.

Already in the barn were 10 ewes and their 21 lambs. (All ewes so far this year have twinned, except one mother who had triplets.) The last few steps to the lambing pen were especially chaotic. If a ewe has trouble out in the open keeping track of her newborns, then a barn full of lambs running about, each calling loudly for its mom, is nothing if not sheer cacophonous confusion. With a little wrangling, though, the four of us managed the short trek and I closed the gate to the 24-hour maternity ward. A bucket of water, a block of fresh hay, and a small scoop of feed left with her, I returned to the house for my second coffee and the start of the day.

In the afternoon, Cindy headed the hour-plus to the processor’s to pick up packages of lamb. The previous week I had delivered 13 yearlings to be butchered. Four customers were coming to the farm for their meat, and one lamb was earmarked for our own freezer.

When she returned, I pulled a small shoulder roast from our packages and set it in the fridge to thaw for dinner the next night. I then checked on the sheep once again — a multiple-times-per-day activity in lambing season — making sure they had water and feed and that the lambs were doing well, before moving onto other tasks.

Late in the day, Cindy and I sat on a windy hill, enjoying the last of the sunshine and our newborn charges cavorting on the grass.

Those of you who farm or are longtime readers of this journal will see no contradiction in the joy we experience in raising lambs and the meals we create from the harvest. There is a beginning and there is an end to everything. What always matters, what only matters, is how we treat those in our care while they live … and after.

Braised Lamb Shoulder in Citrus

In a Dutch oven (ceramic-coated or stainless steel pot), sweat 3-4 carrots and celery and an onion in a bit of butter or olive oil until soft.

Braised lamb in citrus (first steps).

Add a cup of canned tomatoes, minus most of the juice, the zest and juice from a lemon, 4-5 cloves of minced garlic, some dried oregano, a cup of stock (I use beef), and half a bottle of white wine or dry mead. Bring to a boil, and reduce to simmer.

Meanwhile, salt and pepper the lamb shoulder. Then, in a cast iron skillet, brown both sides in a little oil on medium high heat. Nestle the lamb in the broth mixture and cover.

Place the pot in the oven for 2.5 hours at 250°. Salt and pepper to taste along the way. Shred the tender meat in a separate dish. Ladle the juice and veggies over mashed potatoes, rice, or couscous, and top with the shredded lamb.

Enjoy.

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Reading this weekend: The Holy Earth (Liberty Hyde Bailey). This is a reread of the short classic.

Farm Postcard: March 27th

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Our New Holland manure spreader

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Manure Spreader: As long as our race has farmed we have struggled to return fertility to the land. Knowing our own part in that long history, we had our old manure spreader out of the equipment shed yesterday in an effort to regenerate a small field. Loaded multiple times from our carefully built manure pile, the spreader flung a large rooster-tail of rich compost out onto the land.  A pile that often attracts a sinful and covetous eye from knowledgeable visitors to the farm. But only the ignorant, the morally corrupt or the brave of that crowd ask if they can have a truck load.

For it was born on this land and will be spread on this land.

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Reading this weekend: Perusing my newly acquired, 3600 page, three volume set of The Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by Liberty Hyde Bailey.

Woodlot Management in the Anthropocene: Part Three

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“A constructive and careful handling of the resources of the earth is impossible except on the basis of large co-operation and of association for mutual welfare.”

— Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Holy Earth

 

Winged Elm Farm has approximately 40 acres of hardwoods, and last year I posted a couple of pieces on our woodlot management plan, here and here. In them and here, I use the term “Anthropocene,” the period in Earth’s history when the impact of human existence shapes the natural world and climate. I chose that term to distinguish the plan we’ve embarked upon as being a more old-fashioned management approach.

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A large “wolf” tulip poplar in a new growth woods on our farm.

As we began the process of managing our woodlots, our biggest hurdles were knowledge and the preconceptions of being moderns. Our mindset was geared toward extraction, the basis of our current economy. Our innate resistance to extractive processes like clearcutting was primarily why we had avoided managing the woods at all.

But a Wendell Berry piece three years ago spurred our interest in sustainable management, and a casual review of the 19th century literature based on the knowledge of small farms past showed us a clear path for applying the same model. How markedly different was the approach of those manuals and handbooks — managing woodlands for the benefit of farm and watersheds for future generations — from the “modern” practices of that century and the 20th of the extractive industries.

Last week, as we prepared to take hogs to market and dreamed of the variety of dishes and cuts we were to enjoy, the phrase “nose to tail eating” came to mind. The term is used to describe the process that takes advantage of every bit of the animal. It’s a way to honor the animal’s life and sacrifice.

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One of our Haflinger drafts hauling a small log out of the woods.

The slightly modified term “nose to tail logging” aptly describes a good woodlot management program, the constructive use of every bit of the harvested tree: for our benefit, for the soil’s benefit, for the watershed, for the wildlife, and, most important, for the woodlands’ benefit.

There are innumerable old texts on managing a woodlot, books that describe how to select harvest, reseed, preserve soil, amend and improve the soil. So far, the approach as applied to our farm seems to be working — from selection to lumber, chipping to removal, sowing mushrooms and providing firewood, leaving wildlife habitat to conservation. Future generations will need to be the final judge.

A couple of newish books, too, have helped us flesh out the specific and the larger challenges to sustainable woodlot management.

Paul Stamets’ work, especially his book Mycelium Running, helped reshape the way I viewed the soil and its structure in the forests, a soil as in need of care and replenishment as that in our pastures. And, of course, it opened my eyes to the use of fungi to facilitate those ends.

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Poplar lumber newly cut on our Norwood mill.

But the mindset of extraction lingers as the world’s dominant invasive species. Azby Brown’s recent book, Just Enough: lessons in living green from traditional Japan, helped me correct some of that dominant outlook. A study of the Edo period (early 1600s to mid-1800s), his chapters on farming, and particularly the one titled “Guardians of the forest,” were revelatory. The care and thorough use of all woodland products, the steps to endlessly recycle natural products through multiple generations of use, the care of water sources, waterways, and riparian buffers — all were woven in that period into an overall societal commitment to what we would now call planetary care.

The practices of the traditional Japanese and of our own small-farm woodlot ultimately rely on a larger cultural awareness of the need for such intensive conservation of both the woodland and the products derived from it. The evidence of stress on our Eastern hardwoods from escalating climate change is before us. To be successful in both harvest and preservation will require some old-fashioned individual commitment and a multi-generational commitment by our culture.

Our farm can commit to the first. It remains to be seen if there is the will for the second. And that is the real challenge.