So here's the skinny of what we've done over the winter:
We went wine tasting, a lot. We went to several farmers markets to see what they have for winter, which is actually pretty much what you see during the growing season minus some vegetables. We also tried out Spud.com. Spud offers locally produced foods and goods delivered to your home. We've used Full Circle Farms in the past and Spud is WAY better. We'll be ending our Spud membership in a few weeks as our own garden begins producing.
We've lost a couple more chickens, one recently due to age, the other we're not sure the cause. I blame attrition. And one more just after Christmas because she had a crook beak and I euthanized her. So we're down to 11 ladies. We'll be fattening the flock up and harvesting a few in the coming months and getting new chicks to replace the old ladies. Hopefully we'll be getting up to about 10 eggs per day. We've had so much success selling them to coworkers, neighbors, and at our driveway farmer's markets that we need all the eggs we can get to even come close to the demand.
Last week we spent a few days at the Monteillet (pronounced Moan Tee A) Fromagerie. The
Monteillets are a couple that have a working farm and cheese business about 25 miles outside Walla Walla in a town called Dayton, WA. We had a great time getting to help with some farm chores and taking a Cheese Making class with Pierre-Louis. Normally classes are $200/person per day. We signed up for the hard cheese class - a one-day class (or rather, half of a two-day class). They ended up teaching us both halves in one day. it made for a long day, but was WELL WORTH IT. In the end we ended up getting the full two day course for the price of one day.
They have a little cottage they rent out. Visitors pay $200/night for the whole cottage w/ one bedroom. If you need to spread out, there are two more rooms in the cottage that can be had for an extra $100/night each. So, if you took up all three rooms the lodging would cost $400/night. They fill the fridge with farm fresh milk, eggs, butter, cheese and some meat for breakfasts.
Trisa usually takes the pictures, hence you won't see her in very many. But here's me making cheese, wearing a lovely hair net. We made Chevre, Feta, some French hard cheeses, and more. I don't know all the names, but in the picture you can see some large molds to my left - those are for Feta, some tall mold in front of me called logs in French,
the medium mold I'm working, and there's 48 medium/small molds past the large Feta molds. Out of the picture are about 6 large muslin bags for the fresh cheese to my right. The Fresh cheeses are the Chevres and one other I can't remember t
he name of.
The countryside in Eastern WA is so beautiful. The farm is in a great setting right next to the Touchet River (think tushie, as in your bum). I prefer to call it the touch it river, but I never did
because it is running so high and fast right now. Plus is was super cold outside all of the days we were there. Trisa calls this next picture my family photo. Who knows? Maybe it'll go on our Christmas cards this year...
On our way home, we stopped at the Palouse Falls. It's an amazing waterfall in the middle of the plains. FREAKING AMAZING. There's an old legend that a beaver tricked a coyote and threw him into the hole that the falls now enter. The coyote was stuck for eons and dug the pit and tried to claw his way out. The result was the canyon the river runs through, the pit the falls enter, and the appearance of scratch marks on the pit and canyon walls. If you look closely, you can still see where the coyote tried to claw his way out.
This year we are again offering some boxes in our front side yard for rent. We've already rented out two of them and we haven't even posted on craigslist yet. We've also created some more flower beds in our front yard and we have some plans to make a couple of long skinny beds at the bottom of out lawn and practice what we read about last year - SPIN farming.
Over the winter we tried to extend the growing season by installing hoops and covers on three of the boxes, but the 14 days of subfreezing temperatures we had over Thanksgiving and into December wasted our efforts. We ended up planting a few areas of Dutch Field Peas - they are Nitrogen fixers that have been adding N2 to our soil for a couple of months and some Rye Grass that we turned over this weekend that will break down and add some Carbon to the soil. This season we're adding some Blood and Bone Meals, but just a little, and some Chicken manure. In another season or two we'll be at a level where we're adding almost nothing to our soil that doesn't come from the "farm."
I'll take some pics of the farm this week and post them so you can track our progress and the plants and the weather with us.
That's all for now.
Mike
