Postcards from Little Seed - 9.20.12

Always many treasures to be found in the "red barn" (aka dilapidated shack).
Yesterday was sunny with a high of 70F - the goats loved it! Cooler temps mean happy goats out in the sun chomping on pasture all day.

So many of the plants on our farm suffered and almost died in the drought. The hydrangeas had started to bloom right before the 110F days hit... They fried and turned into sad little wispy brown crisps and I was sure they were done for... But they came back! I love how they look as if they could be made from porcelain, or marzipan...


Bridget and Willow, livin' and lovin' every day :)

This is just a glimpse of what we were up against in our bramble battle yesterday. The goats uncovered a massive dump pile under what looked like a bramble hill and now the work has begun in earnest to haul the junk out. The "junk" we've found has been everything from gates, telephone poles (with electrical boxes attached), a wagon, a roof, T-posts, fencing... And I'm sure, much much more. Yikes!

Some wild morning glory vines found their way in and up our rose bushes! ... A reminder that no matter what kind of thorny mess life throws your way, you've got to keep pushing through. There's light and beauty to be had on the other side, if you're willing to suffer a few scratches to get there.

Home Roasted Sunflower Seeds

Sunflower seeds. Chomping away at a handful brings me back to the days of softball in elementary school. I couldn't shell them very well with my teeth, so I'd just pop a bunch in my mouth and chew the whole seed up, shell and all. It was, admittedly, a tad messy and a little rough looking to spit the shell bits out, but that's the point, right? At least when you've got a bat in your hands!

I was looking forward to harvesting our own seeds this year and so was pleased to see our sunflowers towering all through the summer.  Then, we peeked out at the garden one morning to find our sunflowers looking like this:

I had a moment of panic. "They're dead!" I mean, they looked pretty dead. Petals shriveled and brown, stem sadly droopy... No sunflower seeds for us :(. Or so I thought. It turns out, the seeds weren't even ready yet! After the heads have started to droop and the petals have dried up, you wait until the back of the flower head has started to turn dry and brown. When the seeds have taken on their characteristic dark brown/black stripe and are nice and plump, it's time to harvest. I started monitoring them that day and just this past week, one of the flowers was ready to go. Here's how we went about collecting, roasting, and storing the seeds:

With my seeds all plump and striped, I hacked off the flower, including about a foot of the stem and brought it inside to dry out for a day (humidity, bad). 

Then, holding the flower head over a bowl, I bent and twisted it a bit and ran my hands over the seeds to help loosen them until they had all popped out.

After all of the seeds were removed, I rinsed them in a colander to remove some little bits of debris and dirt. Then I soaked them overnight in a brine of 1/2 gallon of water and 1/4 cup of salt (for lightly salted seeds go with 1/4 cup of salt, if you like 'em with the salinity of store-bought seeds, go with 1/2 cup)The next morning I spread them out on a baking pan and roasted them in the oven at 350 F for 20 minutes (you want to make sure they're dry), stirring occasionally. 

After they cooled, I stored them in a glass jar in the pantry. From one head we harvested over 2 cups of seeds. We went with Mammoth Sunflowers from High Mowing Organic Seeds and all of the seeds we planted sprouted and grew to full size.

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Bridget and Willow - The Story We Forgot To Tell

When we first took Willow in and I started bottle feeding her, I became the closest thing she had to a mother. I took that responsibility seriously and did the best I could to give her the care she needed to recover and thrive, but couldn't help but be very aware of the fact that I wasn't a goat. I wouldn't be able to teach her how to forage, show her what to eat and the right time to eat it, or teach by example, the plants to avoid eating at all costs. I wouldn't be able to nurse her and know instinctively when she'd had enough. I wouldn't be able to support her while she learned the ins and outs of the social hierarchy of our goat herd. I wouldn't be able to assure she'd ever be accepted by them. These are all things that a dam or mother goat will do for her young, and I wished I could somehow do for Willow. While wishing didn't turn me into a goat, it did seem to turn a certain goat of ours into a mother. To our amazement, Bridget has taken over that role for Willow and watching their relationship evolve over this past month has touched us deeply. I realized, while talking about it with Scrapple's Dad last week, that we hadn't shared much of their story with you. Actually - I haven't shared much at all (postcards don't count) in the past weeks! A good long update has been way overdue. This seemed like a good place to start.

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