Three Waters Farm Bakery
It occurred to me last week during my Friday morning bake-in that I have made a lot of cinnamon buns. When my children were small, I would start a batch after dinner, let is rise overnight in the fridge and bake cinnamon buns for breakfast. It was fun and easy; the smell of rising dough and baking rolls improves the outlook on any morning.
This is our nineteenth year at the Market; for eleven of those years I have been baking cinnamon buns. Doing a quick calculation based on average sales, I have made more than 27,000.
June 16th, 2010
A Natural
Tweedle is in a new mother’s daze. Newborn triplets are, after all, quite a responsibility for anybody. She keeps them clean and well fed and it takes up all of her time. We could say that she is “settled,” which is a happy situation for her and for me. Once upon a time, Tweedle was unmanageable, our resident barn lunatic.
She was handraised, which usually goes a long way towards making a goat a good barn citizen, but Tweedle was, apparently, the recipient of the ‘crazy’ gene that I find in some of my goats from time to time. ‘Crazy’ in this instance means extremely intelligent, highly reactive, and so, hard to manage — not the best ingredients for a calm barn scene. Typically, I move these types of kids to homes that revel in goat antics, and such was my plan for Tweedle.
She was probably practicing one of the tricks in her repertoire, like bouncing off the barn walls, but however it happened, there she was one morning with her rear leg dangling like it was broken. A goat on three legs can still move pretty fast, but we finally caught her and took her to the vet, who declared the tendon torn and put the leg in a cast, immobilizing it with the hopes that it would repair itself — in six months or so.
So now we had a crazy yearling goat in cast who needed a shot twice a day and just catching her was a job that took two people. It felt like a hopeless situation — we couldn’t send a crazy, gimp goat out into the world. So we kept at it, minimizing as best we could the trauma for her. She was pregnant, of course, which added to both the hope and trepidation we felt for her.
She kid one evening before dusk. I was alone on the farm, doing the evening barn check, and there she was, working on delivering her first kid. It soon became clear to me that this kid was not in a perfect position for easy delivery. I felt a wave of hopelessness; after all, I could never get within five feet of her without her bolting; it always took two people to catch her.
Time is the essence in a situation like this, at least for a positive outcome for the kid. I slowly approached her and in this miraculous moment, she stood perfectly still at my approach. I slipped my arm under her neck for security, support, and stability, and slipped my other hand to the kid’s emerging head, automatically clearing its nose and mouth, working my hand in slowly to find the source of the problem. Not a big problem as problems go, just a foot bent backwards. I straightened it out and she pushed out this giant kid. I ceased to exist for Tweedle as she began to know just what was the most important thing for her to do.
I was apprehensive about the coming battle of milking her but she never flinched, not once, not even in the beginning — as if she was born to to be milked, which, of course, she was. Tweedle is three years old now, with four sound legs, and she has developed into one of the best milking does I have ever had, producing more than one and half gallons of milk a day at the peak of her lactation and a steady gallon the rest of the year. She trusts me to do my job and I trust her to do hers. We don’t socialize – her preference – but we have a solid working relationship. All in all, a much happier ending.
April 4th, 2010
Every spring I work over the question, “Who is cuter, lambs or kids?” After a good ten years or more of pondering, I finally have an answer.
It depends who is looking at you!
March 31st, 2010
With a little assistance, Mae Mae delivered thirty pounds of kids.
Upside, Down, Backwards, and Mae Mae
March 19th, 2010
Modern Art Mae Mae
March 11th, 2010
Just Wondering…
Mae Mae’s secret
March 9th, 2010
My favorite new technology is the Cell Phone. It is a convenient tool for calling the house when extra help is needed in the barn and it is a great tool in an emergency, when veterinary advice is necessary. This time of year, Stephen and I don’t go down to the barn without our cell phones; the ewes’ udders are getting bigger and tighter every day and two dairy goats are due next week.
So last night, when Stephen left to do the early evening barn check and a few minutes later the phone rang, I was sure that he was calling about lambs. “It’s getting kind of crowded down here,” he said. “Lambs?” I asked. “Kids.” he replied.
Does. Early. Triplets. Perfect.
Tweedle's Triplets
March 7th, 2010
Late winter is a fitful time, a time between sleeping and waking — the bed is warm but the air is so cold. The mourning doves’ melancholy dirges resonate with my reluctance to shift into this new season, even as the curtain rises on daffodils pushing up complete with buds ready to open.
The sun is regaining its intensity and strength, climbing a little higher for a little longer every day. You can feel the heat through the cold air and the promise of too much heat later, but that is easy to overlook for now.
The birds and the light and the barn call to me insistently: Ewes will soon be lambing at dawn; Best to be Earlier than Early.
And so it is. Here She is — the end of winter — time to embrace the dawn to dusk schedule which comes, luckily, with lightly perfumed air, cool temperatures, and glorious, wondrous, beautiful babies.
Tawney's Lamb
March 6th, 2010
We’ve had a lot of freezing weather here in the sunny Southeast. The wind has been cheerfully gusting along this freezing weather at 15 miles per hour. Not quite as cheerfully, I have invented a new method of unfreezing dye solution and a new method of unfreezing the dye artist.
When you get right down to it, there really isn’t too much to be uncheerful about!
January 4th, 2010
It has been unfolding in the slowest of slow motions, our Spring. We have had so much cold (for us) weather and so much rain, that the greens are greening almost imperceptibly. I have gotten most intoxicated with all those in-between almost-there colors that I love so much. Browns, greys, soft peaches and pinks, and those most wonderful greens, the washed out ones, the barely greens, the green greys, the green browns, the puffs of green on washed out golds, all those intimations of green, Oh I Love Them, and I have had plenty of time to look!
These are all one-of-a-kinders, and so I have posted them on my Etsy site.
La Grande First Breath of Spring Series
Brushed Mohair First Breath of Spring Series
Superwash Merino Fingering First Breath of Spring Series
March 30th, 2009
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