Poultry Party

This weekend was chocked full of farmy, foody goodness.  I learned so much and ate incredibly well.  Friday night I went over to my friends' house and we ate burgers from the best beef you can find (imagine: all the ground beef came from a single grass-fed cow, rather than thousands of corn-fed dudes pumped full of anti-biotics to make them gain weight...I'll stop now).  I home-made some brioche buns to accompany our burgers and some whiskey may have been consumed as well.  Another great evening at L+D's.

Kelsey makes a friend at Boondockers Farm

Saturday morning I was up bright and early. Many hours were spent slangin' veg at the Hollywood Farmers' Market in NE Portland.  We sold tons of garlic, peppers, beans and the like.  Garlic was an especially big seller and I was an awesome sales woman if I do say so myself.  I also did a ton of trading with the other vendors and walked away that afternoon with more than enough food to last me through the weekend (the goods included an enormous bottle of kombucha, a fat hunk of blue cheese, loaf of multi-grain bread, somes peaches + blueberries, half a pound of oyster mushrooms and some crab).

The Boondockers

After the market I headed south to Clackamas Community College for OSU's small farm school, where I attended the afternoon workshop about on-farm veterinary care.  It was awesome because we got to do hands-on work with goats, sheep, alpacas and a draft horse named Lucy.  I'm sorry I didn't get to take any pictures because I was so busy paying attention to everything Jen Willey (the woman teaching the class) had to say.  Along with a lot of useful information about what to keep in your veterinary medicine cabinet and how to administer those meds, I walked away with a good deal of information on parasites and de-worming, which is a huge deal in the world of animal husbandry.  Essentially the solution is stool-sampling.  These random samples should be done every 3 months or more often if symptoms arise in an individual.  Parasites can cause enormous damage to a herd and must be dealt with on a regular basis.

After farm school I drove over to Boondockers farm in Beaver Creek for a potluck party with lots of cute young farmers, more good food and plenty-o-beer.  Some of my homegirls from SE Portland showed up and we had a good old time meeting new folks, hanging out and sleeping under the stars.

The next day Evan and Rachel gave us a tour and talk about their heritage poultry-raising business.  I forget how many birds they had on the farm, but needless to say it was a lot.  They have six Great Pyrenees that act as watch-dogs for their thousands of birds.  These sweet dogs take their jobs very seriously and training them seems to be pretty simple.  I love it when animals like these are put to use!

 There were a couple very cute kiddos hanging out and as evidenced by the photo above, the dogs were very sweet to them.  After the tour, Evan and Rachel did a slaughter demonstration which was kinda gross but useful.  I'll tell ya, killing a bird looks significantly more difficult than doing away with a rabbit--but what do I know?

Back on the farm things are moving along smoothly.  Today Adam and I harvested some carrots and apples while we talked about what needs to go in the ground before the sun starts setting at 5 o'clock.  I want to plant spinach and carrots for sure.  And of course we're going to be planting lots and lots of garlic in a month or so.  The orders for tomatoes are coming in and finally we can fill them!  It's about time.

Autumn is upon us, I can feel it in the air and in my bones.  Soon it'll be time for hot apple cider in the afternoon and all that delicious autumn goodness.  Until then I'm going to soak up as much summer sun as I can and enjoy the waning light as it sets behind the western hills earlier and earlier with each passing day.

With Love,

The Plucky Peasant

Stiff upper lip