Tough as Nails (or at least one nail)

Yesterday morning after breakfast we made the beautiful drive out to Lucky Penny in Garrettsville. Deep blue Skies. Marshmallowy white clouds. Rolling green hills dotted with red barns and hay silos, paddock fences and dense patches of forest. Some of Ohio's most breathtaking farmland was letting us know: this was going to be a great day...

We pulled into the farm and started into a few basic chores, which included delivering a few bags of feed to each barn. In the ground floor of the hay barn, where a few goat pens are housed, I noticed that a little white goat kid was acting funny: head in the corner, not chewing her cud, not running up to greet me like the rest of her pen companions. Abbe, who followed me into the barn a few minutes later, saw what I saw and took action. She carried the little one outside to give her some fresh grass, fresh water, and a little grain. Here she is eating with the chickens:


How sad. How pathetic. Anderson went to retrieve medicine, and we would have to wait and see about her condition.

Okay, so maybe it's not going to be a great day, but still...could be pretty good...

Around 11:30, Abbe tells us to hop in the car and drive a few hundred yards down the road to her neighbor Dave's farm. Abbe and Anderson have been renting milking space from Dave, who has a heard of dairy cows; now they want to disassemble all of their milking equipment and tear down a barn's worth of goat pens so that they can relocate to their own side of the street, rebuild their own milking area, and save some money. Fair enough--we're glad to help out...

The first tear-down task is to remove some fencing from a milking area that's been sitting empty for a few months. Would be a fairly simple, straightforward chore, except for one thing: spiders. I don't exactly love 'em, and Shelly hates 'em. I mean HATES them. And I'm not talking about little harmless daddy longlegs. I'm talking about big, hairy, nasty arachnids. The kind that bite and leave an open sore dripping with ooze. The kind that make me put on work gloves and won't let me pause long enough to pull out my phone and snap a quick pic for this blog.

By 12:30, we were finished with that nightmare of a little chore. Okay, so maybe not a good day, but still...a solid day...a rewarding day...gettin' things done...

Around 1:00, we joined Abbe, Anderson, and another part-time farmhand named Megan to help with some serious barn tear-down. We hoisted our crow bars and sledge hammers and began pounding away, removing wooden planks from goat pens and stacking them up for nail-removal. It may sound like a drag, but truthfully, it was a lot of fun. If we've learned anything from our two year old son, it's that destruction, too, can be a form of creation. It feels good to see the results of your toil immediately--in this case, a pile of planks stacked up at one end of the barn and nothing but the framework of the pens behind us. Here's Shelly reveling in her work:

But not long after this photo was taken, a tragic turn of events. From across the barn, I hear the following:

"Uh oh. I stepped on a nail."

Mind, this is broadcast in a normal volume, in a monotone voice. Next thing I know, I'm helping Shelly hop out of the barn. Abbe's got a paper towel applied to the bottom of her foot to staunch the bleeding. Anderson's speeding back to the farmhouse to retrieve a towel. I throw all of our crap--boots, crow bars, bloodied socks--in the trunk. Then I undo the car seat and toss it in the trunk to make room for Shelly,

who, as you can see, is as cool as a cucumber the entire time ("I can't even feel it, really").

With her foot wrapped and my head on straight, we drove for 15 minutes to the ER at Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna. I guess a nail in the foot is not a big deal, because we waited for nearly two hours to receive treatment. At last, an inspection by a doctor, some x-rays, and the diagnosis: a clean puncture wound, no bone damage, 10 days of antibiotics, and some pain killers if needed.

The hardest part of the whole ordeal for Shelly was the shot of novocaine the nurse administered directly into the bottom of her foot before scraping and cleaning the wound. She said that the pain of the shot was worse than the actual nail.

And finally, for those of you who love blood and gore, here it is:

You can just make out the point of penetration about an inch below the space between the middle toe and the second biggest toe. Ouch.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't a good day at all...but these things happen, right? Perhaps what Ohio's breathtaking farmland was telling us was just a big load of crap?

Hopefully, Shelly will be mobile enough by Friday to enjoy the wedding we're headed to in Philadelphia. If she's proven anything, it's that she's tough as nails. She should know.

The Pecking Order

As a Latin teacher, I expend a great deal of mental energy parsing words and explaining the meanings of their component parts to my students. Every now and then, there's an overlap between agriculture and etymology. For example, the Latin word pecunia, which means "money" and gives us the adjective pecuniary in English, is itself derived from another Latin word, pecus. Pecus means "herd" or "flock," and the connection between the two words is fairly simple: in the early days of agrarian economics, head of cattle (or sheep or goats) served as currency.

I'm continuing to learn the etymology of additional agricultural words and phrases as I spend some time on the farm. One such expression is "pecking order." In a community of birds, such as the roosters and hens at Gwen's farm, those at the top of the pecking order, like Giorgio the attack rooster (pictured above; see the entry from Monday, July 19th for further details), have all of their plumage intact. Birds lower in the order have some of their feathers missing, such as the hen seen here drinking whey...

...because birds higher up in the chain of command have plucked them out. That's the pecking order.

I've also learned the history of scapegoat and bellwether, but I won't bore you with the details now (I'll do it later, of course). Instead, I'm happy to report that the third time milking was a charm for Shelly and me. Shelly milked the first two nannies, Ginny and Jedda, and I milked the other two, Rose and Daisy, and we filled a pail with nearly a gallon of clean, useable milk. The first two tries, as previously mentioned, were futile; both times the milk was dirtied by the stomping hind legs of the nervous goats, so Gwen gave it to the pigs.

As we milked, Kenya, Gwen's herding dog, kept herself cool in the opposite corner of the shed.

Kenya is a true working dog: she spends all her days and nights with the goats and sheep. Last Monday she smelled pungently of skunk; she did her duty and attacked the poor critter because it had wandered into the wrong paddock. No wonder she was so tired...

So anyway, Friday morning's visit to Gwen's farm was satisfying. We both can milk goats. Yahoo. Next Wednesday we return for another round of practice. In the meantime, we will spend Monday out at Lucky Penny, and Shelly will work at the creamery next Tuesday. So there will be much to post about soon. Until then--

You Heard it Here First!

Here's what I wrote in yesterday's post:

"Franklin Square has always been a reliable place to get a tasty sandwich or gyro, unlike many of Kent's restaurants (to my memory, at least). But I'm happy to report that the dining culture in Kent is showing signs of improvement. Could it have something to do with local food producers like Lucky Penny?..."

And here are two snippets from a story entitled "Meals are Casual, Eclectic in Kent" in the Food Section of today's Akron Beacon Journal:

"The Franklin Square Deli is another popular lunch spot, and a favorite of Chef Michael Fiala, who operates the River Brasserie & Bar in Cuyahoga Falls, but lives in Kent where his uncle, Jerry Fiala, is mayor.

Fiala usually orders a No. 6 — smoked ham, salami and provolone — or a No. 9, which is a No. 6 with cappicola added to it. The deli has been at Franklin and Water streets in the heart of downtown since 1983."

***

"Kent also is home to Portage County's newest goat cheese creamery. Cheesemaker Abbe Turner opened Lucky Penny Creamery in an abandoned union hall on Temple Avenue last year. The cheese is made with milk from the goat herd she raises at her Hiram Township farm. It's been finding its niche on grocery store shelves throughout the area.

Lucky Penny is one of several artisan goat cheeses made in Portage County, and Turner also offers cooking classes at the creamery. While it's away from the hustle and bustle of campus, Turner said she's been surprised by how many customers have found her during her limited hours on Saturday when she sells cheeses and goat's milk soap. She hopes eventually to develop the creamery into more of a destination, which could include serving food and wine."

...No, the article doesn't make the same connection, exactly, but it hints at it. For the full article, click here. That's all.

Giorgio the Attack Rooster, Tractor Supply, and Some Non-BP Related Disaster Clean-up

Every Monday, Shelly's sister Samantha makes the 45 minute drive from Mentor to Kent to look after Rheinhart while we work out at Lucky Penny Farm. But yesterday, since Abbe and Anderson had a personal matter to tend to, we mish-mashed a day's worth of farm-related activities together. Here's how it all played out:

9:00 am. We drove across town to Gwen Volkert's home and farm, where we got the chance to try milking her goats again. Not much improvement there.

But no matter. Gwen is a generous host and teacher, and she told us the story of her beautiful property (pictured above--nice iPhone shot, Shelly!), most of which used to be a celery farm, and she gave us a sort of "year-in-the-life of" a part-time farmer as she showed us around.

As I mentioned in the previous entry, Gwen has more than just goats. She has 4 sheep, 2 pigs, 30+ hens/pullets, 2 dogs, 3 cats, and an attack rooster named Giorgio (seriously: he attacked one of the contractors who stopped by to discuss plans for a new barn!). She gives all of these creatures plenty of space to roam (upwards of 16 acres), fresh grass and choice grains, lots of love, and lots of attention. And all these animals give her and her family much in return: their milk (and, of course, cheese), their eggs, their fur and hide, and--alas--their meat. Petunia the pig (below), for instance, will be sent to slaughter at the end of the season, and her meat will feed a family of four throughout the winter.


Does this make you cringe? Maybe a little? Okay, maybe a lot? In truth, I find it a bit unsettling too. But (just a few more seconds on the soap box, please) it is a healthy example of sustainable living. More and more people are returning to this kind of centuries-old subsistence, and as they grow their farms like Gwen is, eventually they're farming more food than they can eat themselves. As a result, the rest of us are getting a better choice of fresh, local foods at green markets and groceries stores. So I guess I'll get used to the idea that friendly pigs and cute goat kids wind up on the table sometimes...

12:00 pm. What's all the fuss about this store called Tractor Supply? It's like the Wal-Mart for farmers, right? Well, we thought we'd find out for ourselves, so we drove to Ravenna to check it out. If you're looking for a vast selection of wrangler shirts, muck boots, overalls, straw hats, tractor wheels, electric fencing, wood-fired stoves, shovels, or--in our case--goat feed--


--you'll find it all at Tractor Supply. Check it out if you can. No, seriously.

1:00 pm. Lunch at Franklin Square Deli in downtown Kent. Franklin Square has always been a reliable place to get a tasty sandwich or gyro, unlike many of Kent's restaurants (to my memory, at least). But I'm happy to report that the dining culture in Kent is showing signs of improvement. Could it have something to do with local food producers like Lucky Penny?...

1:30 pm. We drove the short distance to the creamery for "disaster clean-up." A 250 lb. batch of chevre didn't turn out quite right the night before, and in the scramble, a mound of dishes, cheeses molds, bus tubs, buckets, etc. were left piled up and waiting for us to save them from their milky, curdy filth. It took about 2 hours to take care of the whole mess. Good times.

3:30 pm. Off to Macy's to purchase a suit for a wedding at the end of the month, then to the grocery store to pick up a few ingredients for dinner. Does this have anything to do with farming? No. But for those of you have a kid/kids (the human kind), you know how hard it can be to do stuff like this with one or more in tow--especially if yours, like ours, is two years old...

* * *

This morning Rheinhart & I finished parent-toddler swim class at the Roosevelt High swimming pool! Shelly, meanwhile, is at the creamery, packing cheese and helping prepare for farmers markets. More later this week on Book IV of the Georgics and a third try at milking...

"A Plenteous Store of Milk"

Book III of Vergil's Georgics is devoted to animal husbandry. I have to admit that only a few short weeks ago I didn't have a real good idea of what the term "animal husbandry" even means. In Book II, H. Rushton Fairclough translates the vocative agricolae to "husbandmen." When I teach agricola as a basic vocabulary word in the first week of Latin 1, the meaning given is much more straightforward: "farmer." So then, husbandry = farming, right? Not exactly.

I asked Anderson ("This may be a dumb question, but...") and he answered that "husbandry" generally refers to the care and maintenance of farm animals. Etymonline tells me that the second syllable of the word comes from the Old Norse bondi, which, among other things, means "peasant" or "peasant farmer." But I digress...

The whole point of this entry is to share the following passage from Georgics III and tell how it relates to our most recent "husbanding" (?!) experience here in Ohio:

From [goats] is a larger progeny, from them a plenteous
store of milk; the more the milk pail has foamed from
the drained udder, the more richly will flow the streams,
when again the teats are pressed...
(III.308-310)

After several weeks of making cheese with goats' milk, we finally had the chance to try our hands at milking them! Last Monday at the creamery, we were fortunate enough to meet Gwen Volkert, a KSU professor who owns a farm just outside of Kent in Franklin Township. She has a small herd of Nubian goats, four Icelandic Sheep (pictured below), two pigs, and quite a few chickens.

At the moment, Lucky Penny isn't milking its own goats, so we were more than happy to accept Gwen's invitation for a few lessons. She's currently milking four of the nannies. Here's me giving it a go:

Vergil's correct: goats really do yield "a plenteous store of milk"! But no passage in the Georgics prepared me for the trickiness of expressing the milk. In short, I'm bad at it. The kids are much better:

I suppose if I keep practicing, I'll get better...

Shelly, too, is much better at it. According to Gwen, it may be something mothers are naturally better at. But if all goes according to plan, we will both be milking and taking care of Gwen's animals while she's out of town a few weeks from now. If we're lucky, we may even get some practice with one of the sheep, which she plans on milking later in the season after it's weaned its twin ewe lambs!

And speaking of the "plenteous store of milk" that goats produce, a few days ago Shelly brought home a gallon+ of raw goats' milk from the creamery and made some fresh, tasty ricotta. Last night my mom layered the ricotta between homemade pasta and local heirloom tomato sauce to make a fantastic lasagna. It was delicious. Summer is good.

The Goat, The Bad and the Ugly

Back in March, when we first met Abbe and we asked about life on a farm, she warned us. She gave us the "not all fun and games" talk. I recall her words quite vividly.

She told us about the good days, when the goats would pasture in the sunlight, and at night she and Anderson would share a bottle of wine and stargaze on a blanket spread out over that same grass. Last Friday, when Shelly and I went goatsitting, we had a brief taste of just how good farm life could be. After we finished our chores, we enjoyed the view of this bucolic landscape at dusk...


...and then we picked some wild raspberries before tucking the animals in to bed. But on the same visit, we noticed that one of the male kids looked a little funny. He wasn't chewing his cud, and he'd only stand long enough to avoid being trampled on by the nannies flocking to the gate to greet us, then he'd fall back down again.

Yesterday, when we arrived at the creamery for a full day of cheesemaking, the first thing Abbe told us was that the poor critter had passed away. Parasite overload was the diagnosis. But yes, she did warn us of these moments.

Was this as bad as the time that Abbe and Anderson could barely make out the silhouette of a coyote dragging the carcass of a goat they had just buried in the distance behind their farmhouse? Was this as bad as it will be a few days from now, when I help Anderson load all of the male kids onto a truck and deliver them to the slaughter house? I suppose it would be futile to compare notes, really. But the point is, the business of animal husbandry and seeing food from "field to farm to table" can be ugly.

For the rest of the day I helped Shelly and Abbe to produce a small batch of feta and, in the downtime, to salt and package some chevre. The eight hours of my shift weren't enough to see the process through from beginning to end, but I certainly (and literally) got my feet wet. Coupled with difficult moments on the farm like those mentioned above, the following points about cheesemaking have given me a new appreciation for cheese (and all food, for that matter):

• Making good cheese requires a lot of cleaning.
  
  
  Yesterday we scrubbed floors and vats and tanks, did dozens of dishes, sanitized containers and bins and cartons, washed buckets and tubs, et cetera , et cetera...
  

• Making good food takes time and patience.
  
  
  While the milk is being pasteurized, or the cultures are doing their thing, or the rennet its thing, you have to fill the in-between time with other tasks, like salting chevre. That's what Shelly's up to in the picture above. Later in the day we experimented by mixing honey with the chevre. Yum.

• Making good food requires precision and attention to details.
  
  
  Milk, live cultures, rennet, and the end product, cheese, are all very fickle. There's a lot of calculating involved. Not to mention that there are legislators and guys in lab coats working for them who tell cheesemakers like Abbe how they think things should be done. Above, Abbe is double-checking a special circular log that documents the proper pasteurization time and temperature of the milk.

• Making good food requires love and a sense of humor.
  
  Abbe often tells us to think good thoughts during the production process. She asked me for instance, to stir the curds and whey with lots of love. And as far as her sense of humor goes, this is what you see as you enter the raw milk room at the creamery:
  
  
  
  

Blahgging & Cheesy Reads

Not much to report as far as farming and cheesemaking goes. Later today we'll head out to the farm to water and hay the animals--Abbe and Anderson are out of town and we're filling in...

Overall, this has been a blah week. The staggering 90-degree heat and especially the thick humidity has made it too annoying to enjoy the outdoors. Instead, we've mostly been indoors enduring sickness (both Rheinhart and Shelly are recovering from strep throat) and staving off boredom with toys, books and (crappy) movies.

In addition to the Georgics, I'm now reading The Cheese Chronicles, by Liz Thorpe. Thorpe graduated from Yale, moved to New York, and when she had enough of her cubicle job, she started working in cheese. She took a minimum wage job behind the counter at Murray's Cheese and worked her way up to become one of the top purveyors of artisanal American cheeses in the country. The full title of the book is The Cheese Chronicles: A Journey Through the Making and Selling of Cheese in America, from Field to Farm to Table, and that pretty much sums up what it's about...

Here's Thorpe's scientific breakdown of what turns some people off the taste of goat and sheep cheese:

"Citrusy. Spicy. Piquant. Peppery. Zingy. Sharp. Goaty. Bucky. Bitey. Sheepy. Woolly. Lanoliny. Mouth-watery. Tangy. Hot. Intense. Bracing. Zippy. Prickly. I have used all those words, at one time or another, to try to describe the uniquely sharp/animal intensity of certain goat and sheep cheeses. Even the sharpest cow milk Cheddars don't have it. It's a peculiar high note of flavor (and aroma) that's almost vibrational. And there's a reason: short-chain free fatty acids.

Milk fat is made of glycerol molecules bonded to chains of fatty acids. Fatty acids themselves are chains of carbon atoms. More than ten carbon atoms qualifies as a long-chain fatty acid. Less than ten, and it's a short-chain fatty acid. Goat and sheep milk have more short-chain fatty acids than cow milk does, and these are responsible for piquant flavor when their bond to glycerol is broken by lipase enzymes as the cheese ages. Separate them, and they become free. Short-chain free fatties are desirable in the proper proportion for zip. Too many or in the wrong proportions, and you get rancid cheese. I've found that some people do not like the intensity of flavor of goat and sheep cheese because it tastes sour, or "off." The aroma and flavor should always be balanced, but these cheeses may not be immediately pleasing to folks used to cheese from cows."


...So yeah, she knows her stuff...

Shelly finished reading the Chronicles a few months back, and she's been pushing me to open it up and give it a try; I'm glad she did, because it's good. Meanwhile, she's reading a book recommended to her by our friend Molly called Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese, by Brad Kessler. So far so good, according to Shelly.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that we also picked up the summer issue of Culture, a publication all about cheese. If you think the title of articles like "Remains of the Whey" is compelling, then I highly recommend it.

Balin' Hay

9 am. 85 degrees and muggy as hell. A wagon loaded with 175 bales of hay.



Our first task yesterday at the farm was to "hay and water" the animals, but as soon as that relatively simple chore was finished, we had to unload the wagon above into the hay barn. In short, it's some of the hardest work I've ever done.

One person steps up onto the wagon and throws the hay down; another (or more if you're lucky) drags the bales of hay into the barn and heaves them up into brickwork piles that begin to take shape like this:



About half way through the first wagon, Anderson snickered as he informed me that another wagon was scheduled to arrive at 11:30. Ugh. And sure enough, after we finished the first and paused for lunch, a second wagon arrived.



It's worth mentioning that the farmer who delivers the hay, seated on the tractor above and known to Abbe and Anderson as "Nipper" (full name's Bob Nipper), is a tender 86 years of age...

After we finished the second wagon around 2:30 or so (by which time the temperature had climbed into the 90's), the bales in the barn were piled high above our heads. Another wagon or two, and there will be hay enough to feed the goats throughout winter. So yes, it's an important task. But man is it a hard one.

"...Goats that Blight the Plants..."

While working my way through the middle of Book 2 of the Georgics, I encountered the following passage:

Sin armenta magis studium vitulosque tueri,
aut ovium fetum aut urentis culta capellas

But if your business is rather the keeping of herds
and calves, or breeding sheep, or goats that blight the plants...

(II.195-196; trans. Fairclough)

I shared the translation with Shelly yesterday in the car, and we both got to wondering: how (or perhaps why) do goats "blight" plants? So I searched several internet sources, and here are three interesting points about goats that help to explain the reference:

• The domestic goat (capra aegagrus hircus) is a "subspecies" of goat that originates from the wild goat of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. Capella is the Latin word for a female goat (a "nanny" or "doe" goat).
  

• There are over 300 breeds of domestic goats, and they all like to eat. Lucky Penny is home to just three: Nubians (also called Anglo-Nubian), LaManchas, and Alpine Dairy. The last of the three is the type of goat featured on their product label:
  ....okay, maybe this doesn't help explain the reference, but I'm trying to tie things together here...
  

• Goats are "browsers," not "grazers," like cattle or sheep. This means that they "will chew on and taste just about anything resembling plant matter." So this more or less explains the reference in the Georgics. One web site I came across had the following to say:

"Invasive herbivores can cause great damage. For example, goats were introduced by sailors to many remote oceanic islands during the age of European seafaring exploration, to provide a source of food when the islands were revisited. Goats introduced to the island of St. Helena in the 16th century eliminated over half the endemic plant species." (source)

I've been reading the Georgics with an alertness for anything related to goats, and this is the first strange thing I find. But now that I've looked into an explanation of it, I do recall something vague that I saw as a kid--either in a cartoon or a comic strip--which stereotypes a goat eating a tin can. Maybe this is it (?):


I'll keep reading the Georgics, and hopefully Vergil will continue to teach me about goats. But in the meantime, feel free to print out and color the image above...