Cows!

Have I not even mentioned our cows??? Oh my goodness, I am so far behind!

Well, first there was CowCow, who you can read about here. 
She was joined by another black Angus - a rescue cow who was extremely malnourished and being badly injured by her herdmates. We weren't even sure she would survive the transfer to the ranch. When we checked on her the next morning, the two had found each other and she was dubbed MooMoo.

CowCow and MooMoo

We figured MooMoo could at least help with clearing the brush, even if she never regained enough health and strength to bear another calf. She has since managed to get a little muscle on her bones and most of her sores and injuries are healed. But is still extremely shy and wary, both of us and of the newest cows. She likes hanging out with CowCow, though, her first friend in probably forever.

The two Angus cows doing what cows do, graze and explore.

Then in December, we added six Dexters, a smaller breed. They were being sold off from a much larger herd, maybe because they have horns. To us, horns seem an asset as they will be better able to defend themselves against marauding hunting dogs that misguided and unthinking people inexcusably allow to run loose in the forests around here. (If I sound a little angry, it's because I am: such a pack killed my sweet Blackie-cat. I am furious and horrified about it still.)

It took two trips to get all the Dexters to their new home at the ranch, three in each load. Below, Unicorn - so named because someone removed one of her horns years ago so she has only one remaining - takes her first tentative steps from the livestock trailer. Unicorn is a pregnant mama, due any time now.

Besides Unicorn, there is

• Princess Buttercup, who may or may not be pregnant (the previous records were a little sketchy); 

•  T-Bone, Sir Loin, and Porterhouse, who are all steers; 

• and Ferdinand, a cute curly-headed young bull calf, who, so far, lives up to his namesake in temperament.

The herd had a happy bellowing reunion in the woods.

Most of the trees in the picture above are melochia. Considered a weed tree, melochia is fast growing and actually is very good cattle feed, high in proteins. After the cows eat the easy-to-reach lower leaves, they'll push the brittle little tree right over and get to work on the upper leaves. You can also see the remains of a couple banana starts in the foreground - a juicy treat for the herd. We will have to figure out a way to run fencing around the lower banana patch before too long. The upper patch is already fenced off from the livestock. Even the horse like banana leaves!

Speaking of the horse, he tends to mostly ignore the cattle now that there are so many of them. But he does seem to appreciate the many new trails to follow, all the better to reach those greener pastures I'm sure he's heard about.

The cattle have now formed one large herd, all eight of them. They wander through forest and field, trampling the brush and weeds, mowing and fertilizing the grasses, and creating trails for easier exploring. We provide several water troughs and a mineral block. It's so fun to be hiking around up there and realize you are being watched by a forest cow, or have Unicorn come up for a nuzzle and maybe a treat if you remembered to fill your pockets with hay cubes or liliko'i.

We'll be moving to more intensive rotational grazing eventually, but right now the livestock pretty much have run of the lower half of the ranch and it's working out just fine.

Harvesting Honey

I told y'all about our bees, right? We got them back in February and they have mostly been just doing their thing all summer. We are quite happy to have these hard-working insects on our ranch. They are certainly earning their keep by pollinating the rainforest, wildflowers, and tree crops out that way.

Recently, we were able to pull our first honey from the hive. You might be surprised at how many steps there are to harvesting honey. I wasn't able to get the first parts photographed since I don't have a bee suit (and am not willing to be stung for documentation purposes). Mike, however, does have a bee suit, and actually, he is the one who works with the hives. So, what you don't see here is the smoking to calm the bees during check-ups and harvest, the lifting of the lid, prying out the frames to find those that are ready to harvest, and transporting them back to our house where the extraction process happens. We'll begin the photo essay from there...

Each frame is heavy with liquid gold, hiding inside beeswax. Don't worry, we leave plenty for the bees to survive on. Plus there's the bonus of something or other blooming year-round in the tropics.

Before we can get to the honey, we have to open up the caps that seal each cell of the comb. The first time we did this, we used a homemade scraping tool. We have since moved on to a pin roller which makes the job much easier and also leaves fewer of the cappings in the honey, and a lifting fork for the bits where it might be too uneven for the roller.

Next, the frames, three at a time, go into the hand-crank extractor. After you're done spinning the honey out of one side, you turn each around to get the other side extracted. The extractor has just enough room on the bottom to hold the honey from these three frames (about 2-1/2 gallons) before it needs emptying, so we'll drain it out the spout before doing the next three frames.

We'll have to lift the whole thing up high enough to get a five-gallon bucket underneath. The honey pours out of the valve near the bottom and runs through a strainer to catch the cappings and other bits of wax that got loose. This wax, along with the wax scraped from the spent frames, will be melted before being used to create candles, salves, etc. We'll need a sunny day to do this - but it's the rainy season, so we are storing the unrefined beeswax in the freezer for now.

Once the pure honey is in the big bucket, we can fill our honey jars...

... and since it's been such a good harvest, we have extra to sell!

Kaimu Rainforest Honey - like our label? These one pound jars sell for $5. If you are on-island, you can bring your own jars for a discount. Local, raw, pure, unfiltered honey from deep in the wilds of Puna. Mmmmm... or should I say Bzzzzzzz...

Our First Cow!

Last Sunday, we bought our first ever cow! She's a sweet little 6-month-old Angus heifer.

First thing she did was sneak out under the electric wire, the little stinker. We rounded her up, eventually, and lowered the wire. Later, Mike also added another wire so now there are two strands around the 2-1/2 acre pasture area. One is low enough to keep the cow in, the other is high enough to contain the horse.

No name so far... the right one hasn't come along, but something like Houdini might be appropriate. She seems to disappear into the shadows so well that we've walked right past her while searching for our "missing" cow. But now that she seems to have found her happy place in the middle of the pasture, under some well-placed trees for shade during the middle of the day, it is easier to know where to look for her.

Of course, before we could bring our heifer to the ranch, we needed a livestock trailer. Mike designed this one utilizing bits and pieces we had on hand: hog panels, roofing tin, 2x4s. The whole thing slides right onto our trailer and then is held in place with screws through the cross bracing into the floor, as well as the yellow strapping you can see in the photos below. There's also a ramp that does not show in these pics, but it hinges up to become the back end of the trailer.

We're still looking for a few more cows so we can really get our herd started. In the meantime, it's starting to feel like Serenity Ranch is coming together at last!

Early Morning Jam Session

A good friend shared tomatoes with us, and though they are seconds--not quite good enough to sell at the market--they are perfect! Absolutely ripe like you can only get with homegrown. Delectably scented. Tender to the touch.

After eating our fill of fresh tomato slices for lunch, as a salad for dinner, and with eggs and vegies for breakfast... there was still quite a pile of these luscious fruits left over. Time to do up a double batch of Mom's Tomato Preserves! (You can tell it's a great recipe by how stained the page is above; that doesn't happen with one that is used only once!)

First, I have to let the chopped tomatoes sit overnight covered with sugar. I used Maui raw sugar which ended up giving a nice golden glow to the finished product.

The next morning, the juices get cooked down, the pulp added back in along with sliced lemons (from another friend) and cinnamon sticks.

Doing this little canning project brought back deeply-ingrained memories of long steam-filled days in the hot Idaho summertime, putting up the bounty of garden, orchard, and forest. It made me re-appreciate the homesteading skills I acquired over the decades, and feel happy that I can still utilize these skills.

Homemade jam - there's not much better than that! Thanks, Mom, for sharing your recipe with me all those many years ago!

News... and Piglets!

Our beautiful "Protein Field" of leafy trees & shrubs: moringa, cassava, & mulberry. Also, you may note hibiscus at the front of some rows - because flowers are food for the soul.

I am still recovering from that car crash that happened at the beginning of September.  This whole episode has really thrown me for a loop.  But finally, finally, I feel like some progress is being made and I'm able to do a few of the everyday things that I simply couldn't for so long.  Things like making dinner now and then, or putting up a batch of marmalade, or visiting with friends for a couple hours.  Believe me, it makes a huge difference to feel like part of the world again.

On the other hand, I've gotten a lot of reading done during these past two months, which has been nice.  I've read a book about North Korean defectors, a love story told through letters, a cute ghost story-mystery, a marvelously well-done sci-fi told through a 12-year-old's eyes, and a revealing take on young widowhood.  In between each book, I'm taking a pause with a chapter from Isabella Bird's Six Months in the Sandwich Islands.  And I managed to get my own book into a .pdf format for those who prefer reading on their e-gadgets, as well as for the international customers who have requested it that way (easier than shipping an actual book through customs sometimes).  [See the sidebar on the left for a link if you're interested.]

 

What else?  Oh yes, there was a documentary film crew here at our farm a couple weeks ago, conducting interviews, getting information, gathering footage.  It was a fun time!  If/when anything comes of it, I will be sure to let you know.  Kerry also posted about it on her photo-blog: exploretheshiningstars

Everything's growing really well: piggies and plants.  We've been harvesting an abundance of kabocha, papaya, sweet potatoes, sugarcane, guava, and cassava... and have traded with friends and neighbors for avocados, tangerines, and breadfruit (our 'ulu is not yet producing - soon though!).  With the rains comes transplanting season, and it is a real pain to not be able to get some of the potted plants into the ground, but it would be, quite literally, even more of a pain if I tried at this point.

Meanwhile, Mike is harvesting, cleaning, and pressing sugarcane into juice on a twice-weekly basis.  We have several customers, including an all-organic restaurant, who are buying the cane juice, and of course, we enjoy this super healthful drink too, fresh from our own fields.  The cane in the bucket below is for planting - too small for juice - and the kabocha shown is only a small portion of what we've harvested so far this autumn. 

Egg production has slowed only a little with the shorter daylight hours.  The oldest hens have given up entirely, hence sealing their fate: the stewpot.  But the youngest flock is just starting to lay - we got the first egg yesterday! - so we will soon be able to resume regular deliveries to the local "localvore" store in Pahoa.  These lovely eggs are just about flying off the shelves as word gets around that there are local non-gmo-verified eggs to be had at a reasonable cost.  Supply and demand would dictate that we should raise our prices, but we're going to hold off on that for the time being and ride out this slow time and see how it goes when the young'uns come into full production.

Instead of rewriting the post I just did on the farm blog, I'm going to cheat and link it here.  So go on over to Hubbell's Hog Heaven and read all about the newest litter of piglets.
Oh, okay, here's a sneak preview:

Cute, aren't they?  Only one day old in this photo. Spot's litter is due next week, and with the six being raised for meat, we have quite a barn-full!

My First Official Book Review!

Word is starting to spread about the farm book. Yay! We took a boxful to the local Natural Farm meeting last month, and online orders have been trickling in. And of course, folks who come to our farm for the tour have been snapping them up!

My friend Sonia Martinez, Big Island food writer and blogger, wrote a great review of my book for Hawai'i Homegrown Food Network. It was published in this month's issue.

Go ahead and take a moment to read the book review HERE. (No worries; link will open a new window.) And then, order your own copy if you haven't already! ;-)

The Hubbell Bubble Chicken Coop!

I've written before about our chickens and their coop. We've adjusted the design a bit now & then, making changes as needed, as any good homesteader would do. Just because we're living in a tropical suburb, it doesn't mean we've lost our homesteader roots! Our vacation rental guests seem to really enjoy seeing a 'normal' yard being far more productive than the usual lawn & shrubs. We often hear comments like, "That's a good idea! I'm going to do that back home, too!"

Since we've become so involved with the Natural Farming group, we've had even more people curious to see our backyard chicken set-up. One of these people is Mike DuPonte, our local ag extension animal specialist. He was so taken with our coop design that, at his instigation, UH-CTAHR (University of Hawaii - College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources) has decided adopt it as their model to promote backyard chicken-raising! We're a little dazed at all the attention, but hey, if it helps, that's cool. And it is nice to be recognized for a good idea when one rolls around. ;-)

A few days ago, several of us got together to buy the materials and construct a 12'x12' display model of the coop. We put together the panels that will be assembled later at the Food Resilience Project in Kohala at the beginning of February. We'll be making another whole set-up for the Cho Global Natural Farm Seminar coming at the end of Feb.

UH-CTAHR is printing up a brochure with plans for distribution at both venues. I think they will also be available at the CTAHR offices after these events.

For those interested in learning about Natural Farming and Indigenous Micro-Organisms, here's a link to our local group's website, Natural Farming Hawaii.

So now you know what's been occupying so much of our time these days. I'd say our new year is off to a great start!