Inside Storey

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch — Old Dot, Part One

2012-02-07T08:18:00.000-05:00

When my husband, Lynn Thomas, was growing up on a ranch north of Salmon, Idaho, his father, Charlie Thomas, had several teams of horses. He used horses for haying in summer (pulling the mower, buck rake, dump rake, etc. for cutting and stacking the hay) and pulling the feed wagon or sleigh to feed the cows in winter. One of the most fondly remembered family horses was “Old Dot.” She came to the ranch as a young mare and worked there until she was about 30 years old. Dot was probably the most versatile horse the Thomas family ever had. They used her for riding, packing, haying, pulling any kind of wagon or equipment, and “snaking” logs and poles out of the woods when they were cutting firewood or corral posts and poles.

Dot was a versatile horse. In this old photo
Charlie is riding Dot while skidding poles out of the woods.

Dot was a bay mare, about average height (a little over 15 hands), and stoutly built. When she was fat out on pasture, she probably weighed as much as 1,400 pounds, but in her “working clothes” she might have weighed 1,300 pounds. Her thick mane was split in the middle, on both sides of her neck. Lynn’s older brother Will Thomas remembers when Dot arrived at the ranch. “She was a young mare, just green broke. A man named Harry Bennett brought her and a brown gelding, in the fall of 1946, and wanted Dad to winter them and left a saddle and bridle with the horses. That was the last we ever saw of Harry Bennett,” says Will.

The brown gelding died, but Dot spent the winter on the ranch. Come spring, when her owner didn’t show up, Charlie trained her to work in harness. After he’d had her a few years and realized what a good horse she was, he advertised to try to find her owner. “By law that was the only way you could become the horse’s legal owner; you could keep the horse if no one came forth to claim it. Dad advertised the necessary amount of times, so he could get ownership to the mare. Mr. Bennett never responded to the advertisements, so Dad owned Dot, and the saddle and bridle,” explains Will.

“Dad broke her to harness, and he let my older sister Edna and me ride her. She had a heart of gold but was the hardest horse to catch that I’ve ever seen. If she didn’t want to be caught, it was an impossibility,” recalls Will. “We’d want to go riding and start out trying to catch her in the morning, and by lunchtime some days we hadn’t caught her yet, and we’d just give up! She was the smartest horse I’ve ever known. She knew that us kids couldn’t put the bridle on. She’d raise her head up higher than we could reach. So we’d take her into the barn and tie her head down low, to the manger. She never fought that; once you had her head tied down, she knew she was had!”

“Then we’d put the bridle on her and unbuckle all the halter straps so we could get the halter off, out from under the bridle, because Dad didn’t like it if we rode with the halter left on,” says Will. But the next thing was trying to get on, because he and his sister always rode bareback. Charlie wouldn’t let his children ride with a saddle; he thought it was safer for them to ride without one. “If you wanted to get Dad irate, all you had to do was mention wanting to ride with a saddle! Years earlier he had a neighbor in Wyoming (before he moved to Idaho) that got hung up in a saddle and dragged to death. He wasn’t about to let us kids ride with a saddle. He figured it would be safer for us to just fall off.”

Charlie let Will and Edna ride with saddles one time, when they rode up to Wallace Lake with some friends. “He let us use saddles so we’d have something to tie our coats onto, but he took the stirrups off! That was more uncomfortable than riding bareback!” To get on Dot bareback, Will or Edna had to get her up close to a fence or gate so they could climb up the fence and get on her. “She’d stand close to the fence, but about the time you started to jump on her, she’d move, and you’d end up on the ground!” Will recalls.

Dot hated to be away from home. It didn’t matter where you took her, she wanted to go home. If she got loose, or you turned her loose, she’d go home. In the fall Charlie took her up in the mountains behind the ranch, to drag logs or poles out of the forest. “She didn’t like to stay up there in the woods by herself so he kept her in a little pole corral, made from poles nailed to trees, for a couple weeks until we were done getting out the posts and poles (for building corrals and fences) or winter firewood," recalls Will. They hauled hay for Dot and took water to her every day in 10-gallon milk cans. "We kept her tied in the little corral, tied to a manger. If you didn't tie her up, she'd get out of the corral and come home. We probably just had the corral to keep animals from bothering her — and the range cows from eating her hay and drinking her water."

The Thomases did all their haying with horses for many years.

"Dad used to get out about a thousand poles each fall. I'd ride old Dot up there, because we didn't have a way to haul her, and at the end of the 2 weeks we'd just turn her loose and let her come home. I rode her up there, and Dad drove the truck. He'd go up a little ahead, to cut down some trees and have them ready to snake out to the truck. It probably took half a day to ride her up there; it was 17 miles and all uphill and took me half a day or more. We hauled the wood home in the pickup. Dad put a bolster — a little two-wheeled trailer we hauled back and forth — behind the pickup, and the tips of the poles would be on that trailer. We brought everything out tree length and sawed it up at home,” recalls Will.

Charlie hooking up a log for Dot to pull to the road.

Dot was the only horse they took to the woods, because she was the best at snaking poles and logs, pulling the tree-length poles to the road. She worked well by herself, though she was never happy about it. When Charlie got her hooked to the pole or log, he'd just throw the halter rope over her hame, and she'd go right to the loading dock and stop at exactly the right place. "You didn't have to lead her; you just had to get the heck out of her way! She'd run into trees or anything else in her path — she just wanted to get her job done and get out of there," says Lynn.

Charlie using Dot to drag out a load of poles to haul home

“On the last day, when we had the last of the poles loaded up and ready to go, we’d take her harness off, throw her harness up on the load of poles, and turn her loose. She’d take off on a dead run and take a shortcut down the mountain. She’d be standing at the gate to the ranch by the time we got home with our load,” recalls Will. She could come down out of the hills a lot faster than the loaded truck; Charlie put a long reach (two-wheel trailer axle and bolster) a ways behind the truck to carry the back end of the poles. The truck had to come down all the switchbacks, but old Dot made a straight run down the canyon.

To be continued…

Heather Smith Thomas raises horses and cattle on her family ranch in Salmon, Idaho. She writes for numerous horse magazines and is the author of several books on horses and cattle farming, including Storey’s Guide to Raising Horses, Storey's Guide to Training Horses, Stable Smarts, The Horse Conformation Handbook, Your Calf, Getting Started with Beef and Dairy Cattle, Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle, Essential Guide to Calving, and The Cattle Health Handbook.

Our First Friday Freebie Winner — You Could Be the Next

2012-02-06T15:58:00.000-05:00

Happy Monday everyone! Congratulations to Sue Hazelhurst Walsh for being selected as our first winner (Sue won A World of Cake) of our February Friday Freebies!

Thank you to everyone else for posting your responses on Storey's Facebook page. Check back this week for another great title, and invite your friends to join. We love to hear from our fans so we can get to know you all!

Ann Larkin Hansen: The Farming Year Begins

2012-02-06T08:09:00.000-05:00

Ann Larkin Hansen shows that typically mundane tasks like record keeping and planning can be a satisfying process that will help you reflect on the successes of the year before. Chapter eight in her book, The Organic Farming Manual, covers the importance of record keeping to maintain a successful farm. Check out this great blog post to see the successes that Ann saw last year.

The Farming Year Begins

“To everything there is a season,” and January is definitely the season for paperwork. I need to compile last year’s farm records — receipts, records, and notes — into the big ring binder that holds the diary of all our farming years here. Then I’ll know what got accomplished — or not — in 2011, which is the starting point for planning for 2012.

These Rhode Island Red chickens mind the
snow less than any others I've ever raised.

Once all the paper is in a pile and I start putting things in order, the high points of the year play back in my mind. After 30 years of digging the garden by hand (I know, I’m crazy), I finally bought a rototiller last spring and took it on its maiden voyage last May. Wow. I love good machines.

Summer was wet, wet, wet, and the result was the most massive first cutting of hay we’ve ever had — beating our previous record by 50 percent! The only problem was losing a roller bearing and the internal race on a roller on the round baler. Fortunately, I was able to hire a neighbor to finish the baling, and then it took another neighbor and I two weeks to figure out first, what was wrong; second, how in the heck you get a 6-foot-long steel tube out from under the belts at the top of the baler without killing yourself or dropping it through the inside of the machine; and third, how to get it all back together once we got the right part. This involved two old wagon tongues, some logging chains, a tow rope, and some precise maneuvering.

Our adopted miniature donkeys, Bob and Charlie,
looking for breakfast

Fall was warm and dry, and we had a terrific apple crop. As always we applied a little Tom Sawyer psychology to entice all available friends and relatives out to help pick:

“Experience real farm work! Learn to press cider! And avoid bees!”

We added in a campfire and some food and managed to get all the apples picked, get a ton of cider made, and have an excellent party. In fact, this event has become quite a beloved tradition in the family. Except for the bees.

The sad part of fall was selling the beef herd. But this spring we are replacing them with dairy heifers; they belong to good friends whose grass-fed organic dairy operation has outgrown its pasture base. This will work great for me and for them: My pastures need livestock to stay productive and healthy, and I am getting old enough where I’d like a little help in the barnyard when it’s time to work cattle. I’ve enjoyed the winter off but miss seeing the cattle out in the pasture.

Which brings me to making plans for the coming year. This is where the farming year really gets started, in the middle of winter, with reviewing how things went last year so I can figure out what needs to happen this season. In the orchard I’ve decided to get rid of the two pear trees, since they are stingy bearers and the fruit is not very good. It was taking a chance growing pears this far north, but I thought I’d give it a try. I guess this experiment is over. I’ll replace them with cherry trees, I think.

The fields need lime, but the soil test shows I’m okay for other nutrients. My friend who helps with haying in exchange for part of the crop also spreads all his manure on my fields, since he doesn’t have fields, and he got 15 of 30 acres covered last fall.

I'm stacking the cleared brush in piles along this
fenceline. Later I'll come back and burn it.

Lastly, the fences need some attention before the heifers get here. There are some broken wires and missing clips, a couple of corner braces to rework, and a stretch through some low ground that needs to be cleared of brush. I work on this a little every morning after chores, while the dogs check for new tracks. In the afternoons I head for the woods, hoping to get as many pines thinned and as much prickly ash cleared as possible before the spring thaw, when woods work gives way to farming.

For more great tips on starting and running a successful certified organic farm, check out The Organic Farming Manual.

Enter to Win A World of Cake!

2012-02-03T14:43:00.002-05:00

Storey Publishing is giving away an autographed copy of
A World of Cake by Krystina Castella.

All you have to do is go to Storey's Facebook page (see rules here),
and answer this question:

What is the most unique dessert you've ever eaten
and where were you when you ate it?

Good luck — you have until Monday to enter!

Sue Weaver: Raising Milo, Part Two

2012-02-02T14:58:00.000-05:00

Before You Get Goats

Throughout this miniseries I'll be posting pictures of adorable kids and expounding on their virtues, so it's only right that I make this clear from the start: goats aren't right for every household. A goat owner needs a well-developed sense of humor. If you don't have one, get another species, maybe sheep. A friend defines goats as sheep on speed. That sums things up quite well. The same intelligence, curiosity, and irrepressible joie de vivre that makes goat lovers wax enthusiastic about their goaty charges drives other people up a wall, so stop now and revisit my photo essay on mischievous goats. Enough said?

Salem and Shiloh were little guys when they joined us.

Salem and Shiloh, our first bottle babies, taught us to leave no kid unsupervised. Once, in the few minutes it took me to visit the bathroom, Salem hopped from floor to kitchen chair, chair to counter, and counter to bread box and was smiling down from the top of the refrigerator when I came out. When Salem and Shiloh were one month old, we added a dairy buckling to the mix and named him Morgan. Soon our Internet connection, which was then in dial-up mode, became quite wonky. The phone company sent out a repairman. The cause: kid-chewed telephone wiring.

Soon the three musketeers and Dmitri, a bottle lamb I was raising at the time, moved from their indoor bottle-baby cribs to a pen with their own doghouses. They were closed in at night but had free run of our yard during the day. One day the passenger-side door on the truck came open, and the kids piled inside. Dmitri couldn't join them, so he started to scream. I ran out and began pulling kids out of the truck, but as I'd lug one out, the one I'd hauled out just before him hopped back in, so there were at least two kids in the truck at any time. This went on and on like something from the Keystone Cops.

They moved outdoors when they got a little bigger.

At seven years of age and 275+ pounds apiece, Salem and Shiloh still like to hijack motor vehicles. Just yesterday I posted this to my YahooGroups goat list: Picture this: I'm perched by the computer this afternoon and idly gaze out the window. I sit up and say, "Uh, John, there are goats in the van."

Now they're big guys, tipping the scale at 275 to 300 pounds.

Salem is an ace at opening doors, but if we park the van so the nose is a bit uphill, the weight of the doors generally keeps him from opening them. But not today. I rush out and evict several goats, including Salem, who fills the front seat by himself. More are clustered around the door. Emony, one of the Nubian doelings, trots off with a copy of The Horsetrader (the regional pennysaver-type tabloid) in her mouth. John, for reasons unknown, parks incoming bills above the sun visor on the passenger side of the van. Unwise, I know, but he's done it for years. Now a month's supply of bills is scattered across the floor, the front seat, and the ground. Some are mangled beyond recognition. I scoop up what's left, slam the door, and bring them inside. Surprisingly, John's not upset; he says he'll figure out which bills are missing and call to find out how much we owe. Later he goes to retrieve the Doubleburger he stopped by McDonald's to get for our geriatric Airedale. The greasy papers are on the console between the seats, but the bag and the hamburger, even the pickle, are gone.

Besides all this, the goat tribe has idiosyncrasies that can make keeping them an adventure, such as: they are hard to fence. If there is a weak spot in the fence, goats find and exploit it. Add to this that it's every goat's dream to see what's over the next hill — or at least what's growing in the neighbor's garden. They are also adroit climbers with a passion for automotive vehicles.

Shiloh is tall enough to eat leaves from trees.

Finally, you can't keep just one goat. Oh, you can if you furnish another roommate like a friendly sheep, alpaca, or pony, but goats need company and prefer to be with people or with their own kind. And a lonely goat will let you know it, at the top of his lungs. This does not engender good relations with close neighbors, especially if your goat is a Nubian or Boer, breeds that are notorious for their loud, strident voices.

Yet it's these same quirky qualities that endear goats to many folks, myself included. They're exuberant and affectionate and live to make you smile. In addition to being your best friend, some goats give luscious milk, tote your packs when you go camping, pull your children in a cart in the kiddies' day parade, take part in your church's living nativity at Christmastime, and happily bring joy to hospital and nursing home shut-ins (goats love visitations). In many states 4-H has written programs for recreational goats: carting, packing, and even goat agility. Goats are fun! As you read this series, I hope you'll agree and that you'll add a goat or two to your animal family. But be prepared. Mischief is a goat's middle name.

Sue Weaver sold her first freelance article in 1969. Since then her work has appeared in major horse periodicals, including the Western Horseman, Horse Illustrated, Chronicle of the Horse, Flying Changes, Horseman’s Market, Arabian Horse Times, the Appaloosa News, the Quarter Horse Journal, Horse’N Around, and the Brayer. She has written, among other books, Storey’s Guide to Raising Miniature Livestock, The Donkey Companion, and The Backyard Goat. Sue is based in the southern Ozark Mountains in Arkansas.

Jess Thomson: An Introduction

2012-01-31T08:00:00.000-05:00

Storey's best-selling Dishing Up® series is adding another book to its roster. Coming in November 2012 is Dishing Up® Washington!

Photo of Jess Thomson, compliments of her blog

Please meet Jess Thomson, foodie and the author of this upcoming cookbook. Get to know her better by checking out her blog: Hogwash — thoughts on food and life and her Hogwash Facebook page. These sites will give you a sneak peak at some of her recipes, her commentary on what is going on around her, and her fun writing style.

Storey is thrilled to have Jess as one of our newest cookbook authors. Please join us in welcoming her by commenting here or on one of her sites or tweet her @onfoodandlife.

Storey's Dishing Up® series includes:
Dishing Up® Maine by Brook Dojny
Dishing Up® Vermont by Tracey Medeiros
Dishing Up® Maryland by Lucie L. Snodgrass
Dishing Up® Oregon by Ashley Gartland
Dishing Up® Washington by Jess Thomson (November 2012)
Dishing Up® Virginia by Patrick Evans-Hylton (May 2013)

Barnheart Book Launch — A Huge Success!

2012-01-30T11:41:00.001-05:00

Jenna Woginrich is not only an amazingly motivated, earth-conscious, musically talented, animal-loving human being, she is also one of Storey's best-selling authors. She has written Made From Scratch (a memoir), Chick Days (an absolute beginner's guide), and the newly released Barnheart (a memoir).

Jenna's books are proudly displayed front and center
at her local bookstore, Battenkill Books.

Battenkill Books in Cambridge, New York (local to Jenna), hosted the extremely successful Barnheart book launch on January 21. "Jenna was introduced by author Jon Katz, which was fun," reported Storey editor Carleen Madigan. With standing room only, the audience members came from all over Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont "and included some of her regular blog followers." They had plenty of questions, "mostly about how she manages to balance her work life with everything she’s doing on the farm."

Jenna brought her working-dog border collie, Gibson,
to her Barnheart book launch at Battenkill Books.

Carleen went on to say, "The people at Battenkill Books did a great job promoting the event ahead of time and handed out the posters, which people loved! That place seems like a good example of how a local bookstore can sell a ton of books by promoting a local author and selling signed copies. I think Jenna said Battenkill presold about four hundred signed copies of Barnheart!"

Jenna's fans loved the Barnheart posters that were handed out.

Stay tuned to Inside Storey for more about Jenna — we promise to keep you up to date on her future events. If you are itching to learn more about Jenna immediately, read her blog, Cold Antler Farm. She posts regularly about all her homesteading trials and triumphs.

Sue Weaver: Raising Milo

2012-01-27T07:30:00.000-05:00

I rarely make New Year's resolutions, but I made one this year: to write an illustrated e-book about finding, bottle raising, and training dairy goat wethers (a wether is a castrated male) to drive, pack, do tricks, go on shut-in visitations, and more. I'll distribute the e-book for free in an effort to help create a market for some of the many thousands of newborn baby bucklings destroyed at birth each year at goat dairies and by some goat breeders.

High-producing dairy goats are lean creatures carrying very little excess flesh; their kids are too bony to raise economically for meat. Doelings (female kids) and a few topflight males are sold or reserved as breeding stock, but for dairies and many goat breeders, it isn't cost effective to feed milk or expensive milk replacer to excess male kids. The solution: most plunge newborn bucklings and flawed doelings into a deep bucket of water and drown them, often before they draw their first breath.

Many dairies and most breeders, however, prefer to sell reserved bucklings rather than destroy them. My goal is to inspire more people to raise and train one of these kids. There are so many great things goats can do!

These six-month-old Saanen wethers are in training to be driving goats. Photo by Rose-Marie Gallagher

I talked about clicker-training goats to drive, pack, and do tricks in The Backyard Goat, but I had to leave out a lot because of space constraints. In my e-book, Get Your Goat: Raise and Train a Recreational Wether, I'll show and describe some of the things I couldn't include in The Backyard Goat, such as house-training a kid (it's easier than training a puppy), hauling goats in your van or SUV, sewing a harness, and building shafts to convert a utility wagon for a goat to pull. I've reserved a newborn Nubian buckling to pose for step-by-step early training pictures, and one of my as-yet-untrained grown wethers will star in adult training shots.

House-trained kids can live in your home. Photo by Sue Weaver

My baby-buckling-to-be should be born sometime in the next few weeks. His name will be Milo, and he's coming from Emily Dixon's Ozark Jewels herd in Mountain Grove, Missouri. I've gotten all my purchased Nubians from Emily because she's a caring, conscientious breeder who does not euthanize newborns and strives to find them good homes (the ones that don't find new homes live a short but happy life and go into the Dixon family's freezer).

Dairy kids like these Saanen-Nubian bucklings
are too bony to raise for meat.Photo by Emily Dixon

Over the next few months, I'll be blogging about raising and training Milo. In the meanwhile I invite you to view these videos to see some of the cool things goats can do.

Goatee and Me

Spotty's Tricks

Goatpacking: Through the Wind River Mountains

Vegan Pie Crust — Cooking with Goats

Barbara Pleasant on Ask Andrea Radio Show

2012-01-26T08:00:00.000-05:00

Barbara Pleasant, author of Starter Vegetable Gardens, The Complete Compost Gardening Guide, The Complete Houseplant Survival Manual, and Garden Stone, is a guest on Ask Andrea's "Happy Green New Year: Go Green for 2012!" In this radio interview (which you can listen to online), Barbara gives tips on keeping successful houseplants during the winter months, indoor gardening projects for winter, tips for beginners to plan a starter vegetable garden, and which garden plants benefit (or fail) from growing in containers.

Happy Green New Year: Go Green for 2012!

To read more on growing and going green topics from these ladies, click the links below:

Barbara's website: http://www.barbarapleasant.com/

Andrea Ridout is a veteran of radio and TV, hosting her national home improvement radio show, Ask Andrea, for over a decade. In the last few years, she has concentrated on green initiatives, beginning with cohosting the Energy Show in 2006 and culminating with writing, producing, and hosting Mother Earth News Radio, a national program that aired through spring 2011. Her other radio credits include hosting energizeGreen and guest cohosting the Marty Griffin Show, as well as numerous appearances on programs as diverse as Martha Stewart Living Radio and Daybreak USA.

Author Event: Tanya Denckla Cobb

2012-01-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Meet the author of Reclaiming Our Food, Tanya Denkla Cobb!
She will be at two events this Saturday (see below for details).

More and more people are seeking out local food, and Reclaiming Our Food tells the stories of more than 50 groups across North America that are finding new ways to provide local food for their communities. For example, Growing Gardens in Oregon installs home gardens for low-income families and hosts follow-up workshops for the owners. Lynchburg Grows in Virginia bought an abandoned urban greenhouse business and turned it into an organic farm that employs people with disabilities and sells its food through a local farmers’ market and a CSA. And Sunburst Trout Farm, a small family business in North Carolina, is showing that it’s possible to raise fish sustainably and sell to a local market. Photo essays by acclaimed photographer Jason Houston bring the local food movement to life in unforgettable images. This practical handbook will empower and inspire community activists and planners, schools, small farmers, and everyone who wants to increase his or her community’s access to food that doesn’t arrive on a train, plane, or cargo ship.

"With a keen ear and thoughtful insight, Tanya Denckla Cobb not only showcases some of the most promising work, she explores the motivations and theoretical models that are leading the charge to fundamentally and permanently transform the way we grow and eat food."

— Charlie Jackson, Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project

___________________________________________

Tanya Denckla Cobb,
author of Reclaiming Our Food

2nd Annual Seed Exchange
Saturday January 28th, 10:00 a.m.

State Arboretum of Virginia

Blandy Experimental Farm

Blandy Farm Lane, Boyce, VA

Book Signing Event
Saturday January 28th, 1:30 p.m.
Winchester Book Gallery (see event on Facebook)
185 North Loudoun St. Winchester, VA 22601

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch — Pole Cats

2012-01-24T07:30:00.000-05:00

It’s a good thing cats have nine lives, because they often get themselves into trouble. Over the years some of our cats have had some hair-raising adventures. When our kids were young, we had several good barn cats, and the kids had their favorites. Our son Michael’s special pet was Spot, so named because he was a big white cat with a large black spot.

Spot was our son's favorite cat.

Cats on our ranch have to be wise and wary to survive very long, because they are always at risk from such predators as coyotes, foxes, bobcats, great horned owls, red-tailed hawks, and eagles. The cats are especially vulnerable when they are out in the fields hunting mice. Some of our cats, particularly the young, inexperienced ones, have disappeared. They probably became dinner for our many resident predators.

Spot was field-wise and wary and managed to escape being eaten, in spite of his flashy color. He lived on our ranch to a ripe old age of fifteen. He probably had many narrow escapes that we weren't aware of, but he had two scary adventures that we did know about.

The most life-threatening episode was when he was mousing in the field below our house the day Michael was cutting hay with our new pull-type swather. Michael was a young teenager by then, and Spot was probably about nine years old. Michael was very good at driving tractors and handling machinery, and probably his keen eyes and good reflexes were the only things that saved Spot, who tried to hide in the tall hay instead of running off when the tractor approached.

Michael, Andrea and me, sitting on our back porch with Spot

Michael was glancing back at the swather, as usual, to make sure he was cutting the hay in perfect windrows and not missing any hay between the swaths. He was on the steep side of the field and driving very carefully to make sure the machine didn’t slip too far down the hill.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a bit of movement just ahead of the cutter and suddenly realized it was Spot. Instantly, he hit the up lever, which raised the header (since there was no time to shut off the machine). Because he was on the steep hillside, he already had his hands on those levers, carefully maneuvering the header as he went along.

Our daughter Andrea, at age four, with Spot
and Pepper (the dog) on our back porch

The header bobbled back down, but by that time Michael had the cutter stopped. He was sure he’d killed the cat and shut off the tractor to go back and look and heard the cat yowling. The header was on top of Spot, holding him captive in the windrow. So Michael went back to the tractor and started the swather again, to raise it off the cat. Spot immediately ran off and hid in some rosebriars along the edge of the field and wouldn’t come out — so we couldn’t assess his injuries.

A few days later he came back to the house for food, and we were relieved to see that he had no serious wounds. The swather cutter had shaved all the hair off his hind legs and part of his back and cut his tail off. The hair grew back, and the tail stump healed. Thanks to Michael’s quick thinking and fast reflexes, his beloved cat was okay and lived many more years as a bobtail.

Spot’s other adventure had happened a few years earlier, when Michael was only eight years old and his cousin Scott Perkins (age sixteen) was staying with us for the summer. One morning Spot did not show up for the daily cat-food handout. We didn’t think much of it at the time because he often went off on hunting forays for a day or two.

Then a bit later in the day we heard a cat crying, looked toward the sound — and noticed something white on top of the telephone pole at the top of our lane. Sure enough, it was Spot. He must have climbed up there during the night or early morning and was afraid to come down.

We hiked up the lane to the pole and tried to coax him down, but he would not come down. We thought that after a while he’d get hungry and come down, but he did not. We were afraid to leave him there through the next night because in that vulnerable position he would be easy prey for an owl. We had to figure out a way to get him down.

Finally, my husband Lynn drove our jeep up close to the power pole and put our tallest ladder on top of the cab, leaning it against the pole. He steadied the ladder while Scott (who was the tallest and also lithe and athletic) bravely climbed up the ladder. It was still a bit of a stretch for him to reach the cat. Spot was desperately ready to be rescued by that time and allowed Scott to grab him and bring him down. Scott carefully inched back down the ladder, holding onto it with one hand and with the other cradling Spot tightly against his chest — while Lynn held the wobbly ladder firmly against the pole. Michael was ever so grateful to his older cousin for rescuing his beloved cat.

Twenty-five years later (this past Christmas) we had another “pole cat” episode, but this time we couldn’t rescue the cat. We had just built a house for our daughter Andrea and her four kids, here on the ranch, and they had barely moved in (just after Thanksgiving). Her kids have a bunch of cats, and the cats were getting accustomed to their new home after being moved here from town.

One of the grandkids' favorite cats, Patches

Andrea was afraid to let the cats wander around outside at first, because of all the coyotes, eagles, hawks — and now wolves (which we didn’t have 25 years ago). So she kept them in her little shed and trailer house for a few days, then started letting them out during the day and locking them safely back in at night.

One evening just before Christmas (December 23) young Emily (thirteen years old) went out to feed and lock up the cats, and Patches was missing. He had climbed up the power pole next to the house and was sitting on the transformer. Andrea telephoned us, and Lynn drove up there to assess the situation. He realized that we couldn’t rescue the cat because the pole was too tall and the power lines too close to the cat. Andrea called a friend who works for the power company, who told us they no longer rescue cats off power poles. However, her friend would have come himself with his extension bucket, but it was a cold night (below zero) and his diesel truck was not plugged in and would not start.

Young Emily was distraught about her favorite cat being stranded up there, so close to the power lines. She spent several hours out there in the dark and the cold, trying to call him down, bribing him with food. At one point Patches tried to come down, backward, but he only made it partway, got scared, and ran back up the pole — this time clear to the top, and even closer to the deadly power lines.

Granddaughter Emily and Patches.
Em brought the cat into the house to comfort him
after his adventure on the power pole.

Finally, Emily gave up and came back into the house to get warm. When she went back out a few minutes later, there was no cat on the pole. She got worried that he’d been electrocuted or fallen to his death and began frantically calling him. Patches came wandering nonchalantly out of the dark, and she was so relieved that she brought the cat into the house to check him out for injuries and feed him and comfort him. He seemed fine. He probably became more receptive to thinking about coming down after realizing that he was all alone out there and it was up to him to save himself.

At any rate, we didn’t need any more of these pole-climbing adventures, so the next morning Lynn took a sheet of tin up to Andrea’s place and attached it around the base of the power pole so no cats can ever climb up it again!

Heather Smith Thomas raises horses and cattle on her family ranch in Salmon, Idaho. She writes for numerous horse magazines and is the author of several books on horses and cattle farming, including Storey’s Guide to Raising Horses, Storey's Guide to Training Horses, Stable Smarts, The Horse Conformation Handbook, Your Calf, Getting Started with Beef and Dairy Cattle, Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle, Essential Guide to Calving, and The Cattle Health Handbook.

Andrea Chesman: Music and Noodles

2012-01-23T08:21:00.000-05:00

When you live in a DIY world, music can be as much a part of your life as carpentry and dinner from food you raised yourself.

It was around my dinner table — I can’t remember the menu at this point — that a casual conversation about the dearth of venues for singer-songwriters morphed into the idea of starting a once-a-month coffeehouse series. Eighteen years later the Ripton Community Coffee House is still going strong.

There’s a dedicated volunteer crew that keeps the organization alive. I feed the performers and crew who come early for setup. I got that job because I live closest to the venue, not because I am a cookbook writer. The musicians expect dinner to be made by the executive director’s wife, and expectations are low.

My expectations are high, however, and I like to please. Still, the menu can be a problem. Inevitably, there is a vegetarian in the group. Vocalists want to eat lightly and never want cheese before they sing. Male instrumentalists eat hearty, the younger the heartier.

The dishes I choose must be ready by sound-check time for the crew but held up for the sound man and the performers, who will eat a bit later. The meal must be portable, because half will be served at the venue and half at my house, where the performers can relax.

Lately, my go-to meal is Chinese sesame noodles, accompanied by Sweet Spicy Thai Slaw. Sometimes, I’ll roast some tofu to add protein. The great thing about Sesame Noodles is that it can be adapted to what is in season and what is in the fridge. In this week’s version I swapped in a handful of chopped cilantro for the leek. Scallions can replace leeks; cilantro is always a good addition. During the gardening season, summer vegetables replace the carrots and daikon radish.

In a DIY world musicians should always eat free (see my favorite DIY blog, coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com) and recipes should be freely adapted.

Sesame Noodle Salad
Serves 4 to 6

An arsenal of Chinese condiments combines to make the spicy dressing for these noodles. Serve as soon as you combine the noodles and dressing. If you want to make this dish ahead, cook the noodles and toss with sesame oil, assemble the vegetables, and make the dressing. Refrigerate separately, and combine just before serving.

1 pound dried vermicelli
1 leek, very thinly sliced
3 tablespoons Asian sesame oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 inch fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup tahini
1/4 cup water
3 tablespoons soy sauce, or more to taste
1 tablespoon rice vinegar, or to taste
1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar
1 tablespoon rice wine
1 to 2 teaspoons Chinese chili paste with garlic, or more to taste
2 tablespoons sugar, or more to taste
1 carrot, finely julienned
2 turnips or 6-inch piece daikon radish, peeled and finely julienned

1. Cook the noodles in plenty of boiling salted water according to the package directions until tender but firm to the bite.

2. Place the leek in the colander. Reserve 1 cup of the cooking water. Drain the noodles by pouring into the colander; the hot water will cook the leek. Rinse with cold water. Transfer the noodles and leek into a large bowl, and toss with 2 tablespoons of the sesame oil.

3. In a blender combine the garlic and ginger, and process until finely chopped. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon sesame oil, tahini, water, soy sauce, rice vinegar, black vinegar, rice wine, 1 teaspoon chili paste, and sugar. Blend well. Dip a noodle into the sauce to taste for seasoning, and add more soy sauce, rice vinegar, chili paste, or sugar, as needed.

4. Toss the noodles with the carrot and turnips. (If you can’t serve immediately, cover and refrigerate the noodle mixture. Hold the dressing at room temperature for up to 4 hours.) Just before serving add the dressing to the noodles, and toss well. Taste, and adjust the seasoning as needed. Serve immediately.

From Recipes from the Root Cellar by Andrea Chesman © 2010. All rights reserved.

Andrea Chesman is a food writer and gardener and the author of many cookbooks, including Recipes from the Root Cellar, Serving Up the Harvest, and Pickles and Relishes. A resident of Vermont, she has been a contributing editor for Vermont Life and Edible Green Mountains.

2012: What Storey Has In Store for You

2012-01-21T08:00:00.000-05:00

Take a look at our Spring 2012 Catalog. We have books for cooks, woodworkers, crafters, farmers, herbalists, and more. If there is something creative, crafty, or tasty that interests you, we have a book to help you master the skills necessary.

Click below to see Storey's tried-and-true best sellers and our wonderful crop of new titles.

Open publication - Free publishing - More books

Official Book Launch for Barnheart by Jenna Woginrich

2012-01-20T10:17:00.001-05:00

Official Book Launch for Barnheart
by Jenna Woginrich

Sunday, January 22nd
4:00 pm
Battenkill Books
FREE

UPDATE: Thanks to Jenna’s publisher, Storey, we are going to be giving away 50 “Barnheart” posters (11 x 17″) at Jenna’s book launch. The posters will feature the cover art from the book – gorgeous!

The homesteading adventures of local author and Jackson, NY resident Jenna Woginrich have caught the imagination of thousands who dream of a more self-sufficient lifestyle. As she learns to farm by trial and error, she records her offbeat observations and poignant moments with honesty, humility, and humor. In Barnheart, she tells the story of her quest to find a permanent home for herself and her livestock – a herd of sheep, a flock of chickens, some geese and ducks, rabbits, a goat, and a turkey. Even when taking on cranky neighbors, small-town politics, and the difficulties of running a farm alone on a shoestring, she never loses her sense of humor. You’ll find inspiration in this entertaining tale of longing and striving for a more authentic life.

Even if you can’t attend the event in person, you can still support Jenna and us by ordering your signed copy here: http://www.battenkillbooks.com/index.php/2011/12/pre-order-jenna-woginrichs-new-book-barnheart/. Thank you!

Curiosity Forum events are a partnership of Battenkill Books, Hubbard Hall, and Leslie Parke Studio. All events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted.

http://www.battenkillbooks.com/index.php/2011/12/curiosity-forum-official-book-launch-for-barnheart-by-jenna-woginrich-1222012/

Pull Out Your Roots

2012-01-18T14:50:00.000-05:00

Open up your root cellar and pull out those winter veggies; I have a great recipe for you to try!

I made this recipe for a potluck Thanksgiving dish. It combines traditional fall and winter flavors in a deliciously unique way. It was a smash hit with the family.

Sage-Roasted Fall Vegetable Salad
Recipe from Serving Up the Harvest by Andrea Chesman
Serves 6

I doubled the recipe for a Thanksgiving gathering
of 20 people, and there was plenty to go around.

Salad
1 cup uncooked wild rice
3 cups water
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
12 cups peeled and diced fall vegetables (any combination of winter squash, carrots, beets, rutabagas, turnips, parsnips)
1 onion, diced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups sliced Belgian endive, radicchio, or other fall green

Cranberry Vinaigrette
2 shallots, chopped
1 cup homemade or canned cranberry sauce
2 tablespoons raspberry vinegar or other fruited vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
I cup walnut oil or extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Combine the wild rice, water, and salt in a small saucepan. Cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, and simmer until the rice is tender and most of the grains have burst open, 40 to 60 minutes. Drain off any excess water. Let cool.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 450°F. Lightly grease a large, shallow roasting pan or half-sheet pan with oil.

Combine the diced fall vegetables, onion, and sage in a large bowl. Add the oil, and toss gently to lightly coat the vegetables. Transfer to the prepared pan, and arrange in a single layer.
Roast for 30 to 40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender and lightly browned. Let cool.

To make the vinaigrette, finely chop the shallots in a blender. Add the cranberry sauce, vinegar, orange juice, and oil, and process until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

Combine the roasted vegetables, sliced Belgian endive, and vinaigrette in a large bowl. Toss gently to mix. Taste, and add salt and pepper if desired. Serve at room temperature.

In my version I used a combination of Florida Mountain turnip, parsnips, and carrots for root vegetables. As Rachael Ray would say, "It was delish!"

Side note: If you plan to make this, and you like a lot of flavor, it wouldn't hurt to double the vinaigrette. I felt the salad could have used a little extra dressing.

— Kristy Rustay, Marketing Manager

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch — Pandora’s Box

2012-01-10T12:00:00.000-05:00

This is the story of our first experience with a relatively rare calving problem. I didn’t take any photos during that adventure. In those early days of our ranching venture, I didn’t take very many pictures with my old box camera. The only photo I have for this story is one that was taken a year or two after this episode — of Pandora and one of her other calves.

This story begins on a very cold day in January 1972. Pandora was calving. She was an independent-thinking, temperamental Black Angus cow, a daughter of old Molly — a wicked old cow who deserves a whole story of her own sometime. Pandora was pacing the fence in the maternity pasture, so we put her in a calving pen and watched and waited. Nothing happened. She became more restless and upset, madder and madder, but no calf appeared. Day faded into evening.

After several hours of Pandora's pacing the corral and trying to get out, with her labor pains becoming more and more serious — with no results — we resigned ourselves to the unpleasant fact that we would have to catch her and check to see what was holding up the birth process. We’d put it off as long as possible because she was not a gentle cow, but now we could delay it no longer. Something was very wrong.

We didn’t want to tie her up. She was the type of cow that can pivot and jump around so fast (even with her head tied to a post) that she could injure the person trying to check her, creating a crack-the-whip effect and banging you into the fence first on one side and then the other, if you could keep up with her that long. So we ran her down our lane to a head catcher — and caught her head with great good luck the second try. She ran right through it the first time. This was our “cow checking and cow milking” chute; it was much better than the squeeze chute, for these purposes.

With her head caught and me holding her tail tightly to one side in this chute, she had much less room to dance around while my husband Lynn checked her. The calf was still alive, but no feet had come through the cervix yet. The legs seemed twisted around. We called our veterinarian, Dr. Pete South, and even though it was now 11:30 at night and he’d just gotten home from a party (and was in the bathtub), he agreed to come right away.

Pandora on summer range pasture with one of her other calves
(a heifer named Pandamonium), a few years after her trouble delivering Torque.

It was a nasty, dark, cold night, about 8 degrees with a wind blowing — so the wind chill factor made it well below zero. We used our jeep lights and a flashlight to provide illumination, since there was no yard light in that part of our barnyard. I held the flashlight in one hand and Pandora’s protesting tail in the other as Pete checked the cow and diagnosed the problem as torsion of the uterus.

Due to an overactive calf (moving just wrong as the cow is getting up or down with her belly suspended and swinging) or to the cow’s fighting other cows (bouncing around), the uterus had flipped over and put a corkscrew twist in the cervix, making it impossible for the calf to come through. When Pete told us the probable reasons for torsion, we figured Pandora might have flipped her uterus while fighting, since she was always fighting other cows.

Torsions can be mild, less than 180 degrees, or a full 360 degrees. Pandora’s was 360-plus. True to her name, whenever she got into trouble, she always did it big-time. Pandora was the mythical character who opened the box and let all the troubles out into the world, remember?

When we told Pete the cow’s name, he chuckled and said that all she needed was to have her box straightened out, so he set about doing that. He cut a slit in her left side and reached his arm inside her abdomen — and began heaving. He got the big heavy uterus swinging, then with some massive heaves turned it over to where it was supposed to be, undoing the twist in the cervix.

Pandora’s box took a large effort to turn over. She was a big cow, with a big crossbred calf inside her uterus — and he was also a very stubborn fellow. Calf, placenta, uterus, and fluids altogether weighed well over 100 pounds. But Pete’s strong arm and good-humored determination eventually got the job done.

Once the torsion was corrected, we were able to help Pandora deliver the calf. She needed help now, even though the calf was finally in proper position, because with the slit in her side she was unable to push effectively. Each time she strained, air just rushed through the hole in her side; she couldn’t create much pressure. So we pulled the big crossbred (Angus-Hereford) calf, and put him into the barn, out of the wind. Pete sewed up the cow and we put her in the barn stall to mother her calf. She licked him vigorously and got him dry, but we had to help by thawing his ears.

As usual, Pandora didn’t appreciate our efforts. But she was very glad to have her baby at last, and Pete chuckled again when I told him I was going to name this calf Torque. Torque grew up to be one of our biggest and best steers that fall, so we were glad we were able to save him — glad that Pete got Pandora’s box straightened out.

Torsion of the uterus is not very common. At that point in time, early in our cattle-raising experience, we had never heard of it. Pete told us that he usually dealt with only about six cases a year in our county — out of about 35,000 cows. With those percentages we didn’t know if we’d ever have another case in our small herd, but over the 40 years since Pandora, we’ve had two other torsions, and our son has also had a couple of cases in his cows. Thanks to Pandora and her box of troubles, however, we were able to readily diagnose the problem and knew what to do about it.

Heather Smith Thomas raises horses and cattle on her family ranch in Salmon, Idaho. She writes for numerous horse magazines and is the author of several books on horses and cattle farming, including Storey’s Guide to Raising Horses, Storey's Guide to Training Horses, Stable Smarts, The Horse Conformation Handbook, Your Calf, Getting Started with Beef and Dairy Cattle, Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle, Essential Guide to Calving, and The Cattle Health Handbook.

Cookie Crafting at the Berkshire Museum!

2011-12-22T20:31:00.003-05:00

Valerie Peterson, author of Cookie Craft Christmas

'Tis the season for cookies! Each year the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, hosts a gingerbread decorating family event as part of their Festival of Trees. This year Cookie Craft Christmas coauthor Valerie Peterson was able to share her wealth of cookie knowledge with the visitors.

In a Friday evening hands-on workshop, Valerie taught a group of crafty adults her secrets for rolling dough, decorating before baking, royal icing techniques, and dozens of seasonal ideas.

Saturday's family event was a blast! Santa made a surprise appearance and handed out blank cookies to all the children. Pastry bags and candies covered the tables as kids created sweet masterpieces. Valerie showed curious participants how to make some special designs with piping and flood icing, colored sugar, aspic cutters, and more!

Here are some of the photos of our cookie-filled weekend!

Happy Holidays from all of us at Storey!

Catherine Samson shows off her cookie man!

Decorated before baking

Kids decorated with royal icing.

Circus-themed cookies

Santa handed out cookies.

Eat More Kale

2011-12-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

Eat more kale. It’s been my words to live by for years, ever since I discovered that this delicious green was for eating, not for decorating salad bars at steakhouses. This enlightenment happened for me sometime in the 1980s. When I wrote Recipes from the Root Cellar I included 33 recipes for kale – wilted salads, stir-fries, sautés, braises. And, of course, crisp oven-baked kale chips.

Indeed, after returning from the Mother Earth News fair this fall where I did some cooking demos, I wrote about cooking—kale!

I usually phrase my personal mantra as “Can’t Cook Enough Kale” so as not to infringe on a Vermont artist who supports his family with a small business selling t-shirts and bumper stickers saying “Eat More Kale.” But when mega fast-food chain, Chik-fil-A threatened a lawsuit against Bo Muller-Moore for trademark infringement, I had to jump into the fray in defense of kale.

Chik-fil-A has a marketing slogan of “Eat Mor Chiken,” which appears as hand-written signs held by cows. The defense, of course, is who ever confused a leaf of kale with an extruded piece of chicken nugget? And how can you trademark a saying of “eat mor” and have it apply to eating more of everything?

Yesterday I brought Crispy Kale Chips and a Wilted Kale Salad, both recipes from Recipes from the Root Cellar, to the Middlebury Natural Foods Coop and gave out samples. My display included a hand-written sign that read, “Eat More Kale.”

“Aren’t you afraid of being charged with trademark infringement?,” Someone asked.

“They’ll never take me alive,” I replied.

Enjoy More Kale. Plant More Kale. Grow More Kale. Eat More Kale.

Crispy Kale Chips (Serves 1 to 4)
Potato chips: be gone! Roasted kale is so delicious, you never need to turn to them again for a hit of crisp and salt. My son introduced me to this delicacy, but he learned to make it in a cast-iron frying pan over a hot wood fire outdoors. It took me a while to figure out this version, which is faster, more suited to the average lifestyle, and so good it will make kale lovers out of the most picky eaters. This is more appropriate as a snack or hors d’oeuvre than a side dish because of the high volume of the pieces.

1 bunch kale (I prefer curly kale), leaves chopped in 1-inch pieces and tough stems discarded

About 2 tablespoons canola or extra virgin olive oil

Coarse sea salt or kosher salt

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F.

2. Measure the kale and transfer to a large bowl. For every 4 cups of firmly packed leaves, add 1 tablespoon oil. Mix well with your hands to make sure the leaves are evenly coated. Spread out on a large sheet pan into a single layer. Use two sheet pans, if necessary.

3. Roast for about 10 minutes, until the curly tips of the leaves are darkened and the interior of the leaves are a bright green. If you are using two sheet pans, roast in batches, unless you can use the “convection bake” option. The leaves should be mostly crunchy and browned, but not blackened.

4. Toss with salt and serve.

Andrea Chesman is a food writer and author of many cookbooks, including Serving Up The Harvest, Recipes from the Root Cellar, Mom’s Best One-Dish Suppers, and Pickles and Relishes and is coauthor of Mom’s Best Desserts and The Classic Zucchini Cookbook from Storey Publishing. She has also written and edited numerous additional cooking, food, and garden publications.

Andrea Chesman lives in a historic farmhouse in Ripton, Vermont, where the poet Robert Frost boarded. She lives with her husband and two sons. When she is not at work on a writing project, she edits and indexes cookbooks for numerous publishers.

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch — A Very Special Calf

2011-12-13T09:00:00.000-05:00

This is the story of a calf who lived in a box in our kitchen for more than a month.

When our children were young teenagers, they took care of our cattle and did the chores for a week one November while my husband and I went to a cattlemen's convention in Oregon. At that time we had a milk cow (“Baby Doll”) and she supplied us with more milk than our family could use. We sold milk to several neighbors--so the kids were also delivering a few gallons of milk while we were gone. They took milk one day to Jim Bailey, our neighbor 2 miles up the creek. His milk cow was dry, and due to calve in about 6 weeks.

When Michael and Andrea arrived at Jim's place, the veterinarian was there, doing surgery on Jim's cow. She had been sick and not eating. The vet suspected she had hardware, and was hoping to find the foreign object and remove it. But when he opened her up, he discovered she was full of infection; she had severe peritonitis and there was no hope of saving her.

The calf inside her was still alive, and the vet asked Jim if he wanted to save the calf. Jim didn't want the calf since he wouldn't have any milk for it--the cow was dying--and he also didn't have time to take care of a premature calf. Our kids hated to see the calf perish, too, and offered to help care for it. So Jim told the vet to go ahead and get the calf out, and then he gave it to the kids as a gift.

It was a bull calf, tiny and frail, at least 6 weeks premature. The wind was cold, so Jim loaned the kids a blanket to wrap around the calf. They put him in our pickup cab. Andrea held him on her lap while Michael drove home, and brought him into the house.

Michael built a fire in the wood stove in the kitchen and Andrea dried the calf by the stove with towels while Michael made an "incubator" from a big cardboard box. They put the box in the kitchen, with a bed of towels in the bottom. Michael cut a hole out near the bottom of the box so warmth from the stove would go in.

The calf was still very cold and shivering, so the kids put a small electric heater by the hole, to blow warm air into the box. They covered the top of the box to keep the warmth in, and put an electric heating pad on the calf, but he shivered and shook for several hours.

Another urgent task was feeding him. We always keep some frozen colostrum in the freezer for emergencies during calving season, so Andrea thawed out several containers. She warmed some on the stove and poured it into a bottle with a lamb nipple. She tried to get the calf to nurse, but he wouldn't suck. After a couple hours of trying, the kids called another neighbor, for help. He brought an esophageal calf feeder (a tube that goes down the calf's throat) and helped the kids force-feed the little calf.

The calf was weak and listless and the kids were afraid he would die. They stayed up all night with him trying to get him warm. Andrea kept taking his temperature, which stayed subnormal most of the night. The colostrum gave the calf some strength and energy, however, because by 2 a.m. that morning he changed his mind and decided he wanted to live, after all. His first dinner had worn off, his tummy was empty again and he realized he was hungry. This time, when Andrea offered him a bottle of colostrum, he nursed it and drank almost all of it.

A new problem soon emerged. By morning his temperature was up to normal, but it didn't stop there; it kept going on up. The calf had a fever, and was breathing fast and shallowly; he had pneumonia. Worried, the kids called us on the phone for advice. We were surprised to hear about their calf project, and glad they'd been able to keep him alive, and we told them what to do for the pneumonia. It would be a tough job to save the calf. At that stage of fetal development in gestation, his lungs were not yet fully developed or very strong, and pneumonia could easily kill him.

Andrea found the medications I told her to use, and filled the syringes, and Michael gave the injections. The calf was so small and skinny that it was difficult to find enough muscle tissue to put the antibiotic injections into. And the calf didn't like the shots. He wiggled and squirmed and kicked, so Andrea had to help hold him still.

When we got home 2 days later, and saw how tiny and frail the calf was--no bigger than a house cat--we were truly amazed that the kids had been able to keep him alive. He was just a fragile little hide stretched over tiny bones, with almost no hair at all. His “premature” hair was very short and velvety.

I took over the night feedings; he had to be fed every 4 hours

The calf still had a fever, but it was starting to come down. The kids were glad we were home, glad for reinforcements, since they were worn out after staying up nights to feed and doctor the little fellow. I took over the night feedings; the calf had to be fed every 4 hours to keep up his energy and fluid, so he wouldn't dehydrate from the fever.

He gradually got over the pneumonia and became livelier. Whenever he wasn't sleeping, he jumped around in his box, kicked the sides or butted it with his head. He was so bouncy and noisy in the box, kids started calling him Boom Boom. Within a week he was ramming the sides of the box so hard we feared he might tip it over, so we fortified it with chairs around the outside, tying them all together around the box with a rope. Soon we had to add pieces of plywood to make the sides of the box higher and stronger.

After he was a few weeks old, we cut down the number of his feedings (no more getting up in the middle of the night!) and gave him bigger bottles. We also let him out of the box periodically for more exercise. We often let him into the livingroom for a few minutes of play, and he loved to buck around chasing the kids, trying to butt heads with anyone who would play with him. It took all 4 of us to "ride herd" on him, to keep him from crashing into the furniture or skidding out onto the slippery dining room floor. He had trouble standing up on the linoleum; his legs splayed out and then he’d be stranded on his belly.

Boom Boom loved to play in the livingroom, running and bucking around.

Boom Boom was still too small and frail to go outside, especially since the weather had turned cold. Temperatures dropped to 40 below zero just before Christmas. So he stayed in his box in the kitchen for 4 weeks. We were afraid to put him outside just yet, because he still didn't have much flesh on his bones or very much hair; he needed a much thicker fur coat before he could withstand winter weather.

By Christmastime he had grown to about the size he should have been at birth. He eagerly looked forward to his romps around the livingroom, and his antics were hilarious entertainment--as he galloped and snorted and bucked around, chasing the kids or bouncing off the couch and chairs. We were reminded of a similar sassy premature calf that lived in our house at Christmastime 8 years earlier (a calf the kids named Rudolph), who liked to chase the kids around the room and “fight” the ornaments on our Christmas tree.

We had to keep him from crashing into the furniture or bouncing up onto the chairs and couch.

Soon after Christmas, we fixed Boom Boom a stall in the barn, with fluffed up hay for bedding, so he could snuggle down into it and keep warm. He liked the barn stall; there was more room to run and buck. His box in the house had become quite cramped for space as he grew larger.

The kids were sad to see him go outside, however. They thought it was fun having him in the house, even though the box in the middle of the kitchen was an awkward obstacle and we had to keep washing the towels we used for bedding. The big box took up most of our small kitchen area and it was difficult to get to some of the cupboards. It was also hazardous to spend much time by the stove, since Boom Boom liked to reach up and try to lick or chew on anyone he could reach. I'd be stirring something cooking on the stove and suddenly feel him nibbling at my back, or my shirt being pulled by his inquisitive mouth.

We fed him bottles (milk from our old Holstein cow Baby Doll) until our “nurse” cow, Liza, calved in January. Liza was a crossbred daughter of our 18-year-old Holstein, and she usually raised 3 or 4 calves. If we had an orphan, or a heifer that didn't want to be a mother, Liza raised the extra calves. She gave birth to a big bull calf in late January, and as soon as she had regular milk (we snitched the extra colostrum at first, to keep in the freezer for any other newborn calves that might need it) we gave her another baby. Boom Boom was very happy to have a real mother, and a brother. Now he had someone to rough-house and knock heads with besides us.

Andrea enjoyed feeding Boom Boom and Liza's calf some grain every day in their outdoor pen.

We fixed a shelter for the 2 calves in an outside pen, for the weather was still cold. Those calves eventually had to share their mama with another orphan, a little heifer whose young mother didn't want her. Later, after weaning, Boom Boom spent the next winter with the weaned replacement heifers, and quickly grew to be the largest critter in the group. We were proud of the kids for saving him, in those precarious first days when his condition was critical and we weren't here to help them. They earned him. He became a big yearling and a pet, and the kids were reluctant to sell him the next fall, even though they planned to convert him into savings for college. Raising him was a good experience for them, nursing him into the world and saving his life. It was a big challenge that gave them a lot of satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.

Lynn clowning around with Boom Boom when he was a big yearling.
Boom Boom always seemed to like people best.

And Boom Boom was very happy to be alive. It was always fun to watch him cavorting around with his “siblings” and later with the weaned heifers, being a big sassy clown. Whenever the kids went out to the pasture, he came to see them, wanting them to scratch his ears or tickle him under the chin. We sometimes wondered if he knew he was a "cow"; he seemed to prefer our company to that of his own kind. He definitely liked people best. He was certainly one of the characters on our ranch that we'll never forget.

Heather Smith Thomas raises horses and cattle on her family ranch in Salmon, Idaho. She writes for numerous horse magazines and is the author of several books on horses and cattle farming, including Storey’s Guide to Raising Horses, Storey's Guide to Training Horses, Stable Smarts, The Horse Conformation Handbook, Your Calf, Getting Started with Beef and Dairy Cattle, Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle, Essential Guide to Calving, and The Cattle Health Handbook.

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch — Ginger, Part Three: A Good Ranch Horse

2011-11-29T08:00:00.000-05:00

To read Part One of this series, click here.
For Part Two, here.

Even though my brother used Ginger as his 4-H project for several years, I still enjoyed riding her at home on the ranch. She was still my favorite horse for riding range until I became more at ease with riding Nellace — the skittish Thoroughbred mare that was still quite green in her training.

I always enjoyed riding Ginger on the ranch and on the range. Here,
my brother is riding Nosey, my dad is on Nell, and I'm riding Ginger
— ready to ride out on the range to move cattle.

Ginger was very good at herding cattle and chasing strays back to the herd when we took cattle out to summer range or moved them to a different pasture. Dad usually rode Nell on these rides, and I rode Ginger.

She and I had become a really good team, especially after the cattle drives we made in 1957, the summer before I used her as my 4-H project. The longest drive was in late summer, when all the ranchers on our BLM range allotment met early in the morning and gathered cattle off the lower part of the range to take them up into the mountains where the grass was still green. We started very early because we knew it would get hot and the cattle would have trouble climbing up the mountains in the heat.

Dad and I, riding Nell and Ginger, helped gather the cattle out of lower Baker Creek before starting the long drive up to the head of Baker Creek and over the steep mountain into the right fork of Withington Creek. There were eight riders, but it was still a difficult job to move all the cattle in one big herd up over a mountain where some of the cows had never been before.

By late morning we had the big herd partway up Baker Creek, and we stopped in the shade of the timber to let the horses and cattle rest and to eat our lunch. We’d each packed a sandwich and an apple in our coats, tied behind our saddles. But we were much more thirsty than hungry, after chasing cows for several hours in the heat and coughing in the dust churned up by the herd. Lester Withington, the elderly rancher who lived at the mouth of Withington Creek, showed us where there was a little spring, higher up in the timber, where we could get a drink of cold, clean water. The cattle were very thirsty, too, and spread out along Baker Creek getting their drink.

Ginger was good at herding cattle. In this old photo a friend
(on Possum) and I (on Ginger) are bringing a young cow
and her calf home to the barnyard.

After lunch we started the hardest part of the drive, pushing the cattle over the top of the mountain and into Withington Creek. The cows and calves were hot and tired and didn’t want to climb. Some of them kept drifting too far down the slope as we edged around the mountain, and I nearly wore Ginger out trotting and galloping back and forth on the lower edge of the herd, trying to keep the cattle at the proper level and keep the herd leaders moving upward instead of downward.

It was the hardest work Ginger had ever done. Several riders were following the big herd, urging the cattle on and wearing handkerchiefs over their faces to keep from breathing too much dust. The rest of us were very busy along the lower edge of the herd, trying to keep the cattle moving upward.

If a cow or calf broke from the herd and started down the steep mountainside through the rocks, one of the cow dogs would usually chase it back, but some of the cows were cranky and tired and wouldn’t obey the dogs, and a rider would have to go down after them and bring them back to the herd.

This is part of the mountain we had to go over with the herd of
cattle, to take them from Baker Creek into Withington Creek.

Lester Withington was helping me work the downhill edge of the herd, using his long bullwhip. The cracking/popping sound of the whip helped keep the cows moving in the proper direction. But after several hours of this effort, his arm was very tired, and he showed me how to swing the whip and pop it. I used his bullwhip until we got the cattle over the top and started down the other side into Withington Creek.

The cattle were weary and hot, but they traveled much better going downhill — and they could smell the water ahead. When they got down into the creek bottom, they all headed into the creek to get a drink. We went to the creek also, but upstream from the cattle, to drink and water our horses. I flopped down on my belly and sipped cold water from a small pool where it ran between some rocks. Ginger drank greedily, but I limited her to 15 swallows at first, because she was so hot and sweaty and I didn’t want her to get stomach cramps and colic.

We let the cattle scatter and start grazing and rode among them, helping the bawling calves find their mothers. The cows were so busy eating the green grass that they weren’t worried about their calves; we had to make sure they “mothered up.” If a calf doesn’t know where its mother is, it always goes back to the last place it nursed her. We didn’t want any calves hiking back over the mountain in search of their mothers.

Ginger was a good cow horse — always willing to work — and I enjoyed
using her for all the cattle work. Here, my brother (on Scrappy), my father
(on Possum), and I (on Ginger) are riding out through the orchard to go to the range.

When we were sure they’d all found each other, we rode home down the little jeep road along Withington Creek, letting our horses have a few more drinks of water along the way — after they’d started to cool off and were no longer breathing so fast. By the time Dad and I got home, it was 6 p.m. We’d been riding for 12 hours. In later years that wasn’t an unusual thing for a long day gathering cattle on the range, but at that stage in my young life, it was the longest and most challenging ride I’d ever experienced. I was proud of Ginger for handling it so well.

She was a good cow horse, always willing to work. In the winter, however, we didn’t ride much because the cattle were home from the range, being fed hay in the fields. Most of the horses got a vacation. Ginger was usually the one we’d grab if we had to do an unexpected cattle roundup or bring in a sick cow for treatment because she was always easy to catch and very level-headed. She wasn’t silly after time off from work.

So she was the horse I chose one spring day in 1960 when my father and brother and I had to bring a young cow into the corral to treat for a medical problem. I jumped on Ginger bareback to herd the cow in from the field. After we treated the cow, Dad and Rocky were putting away the equipment (ropes, syringes, etc.), and I rode Ginger for a few minutes around the pasture, practicing figure eights at a canter. It was a lovely warm day, and the ground seemed dry. I wasn’t thinking about the fact it had been muddy not long before, and in some places the dirt was just dry on top.

I often rode Ginger bareback for fun, and sometimes I didn't bother
with a saddle for a short ride in the pasture.

Ginger hit a slick spot just as she leaned into a tight turn at the canter, and her feet went out from under her. She fell down flat on the ground, and I didn’t have time to jump clear or pull my leg out from underneath her. I wasn’t wearing cowboy boots and wasn’t using a saddle, so there was nothing between my leg and her — and the ground. She smashed my ankle and broke it. To date, that’s the only broken bone I’ve ever suffered — through various crazy adventures, spills, and horse accidents.

My leg was in a cast for 6 weeks that spring, and I was terribly upset about not being able to ride for a while. I was afraid that I wouldn’t get the cast off in time for the special performance our 5-H Wranglers were putting on. I’d sold a story about our club to Farm Journal, and they were sending a photographer to take pictures of us. Fortunately, my cast was able to come off, in the nick of time, and I didn’t have to appear on the cover of that magazine with a broken leg!

My leg was in a cast for 6 weeks that spring.
This photo was taken of me, my brother,
and my baby sister, on Easter Sunday.

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch — Ginger, Part Two: My First 4-H Project

2011-11-15T09:30:00.000-05:00

For Part One of “Ginger” click here.

In 1958, when I was in the eighth grade, ranchers Jerry and Velma Ravndal moved to a smaller ranch closer to town to raise Arabian horses. Their stallion, El Khamis, later sired many half-Arab ranch horses in our area, including several good horses for my family. Jerry Ravndal used that versatile little stallion for many things — roping and holding calves for branding (helping many of the neighbors with their cattle work), packing out deer and elk during hunting season, winning the Arabian costume class at the local county fair.

Jerry Ravndal in Arab costume, riding his Arabian stallion El Khamis

The Ravndals started the first 4-H horse club in Idaho, the year they moved to town from their remote ranch on the North Fork. I was part of their first crop of 4-H kids. About 25 of us kids (ages nine through fourteen) met at the Ravndal home for 4-H meetings, and I decided to use Ginger, the orphan/pet filly, as my project.

My mom drove me to the first weekly meetings at the Ravndal place. It was late winter, and the weather wasn’t nice enough yet to bring our horses. So the first meetings were spent indoors, learning about horse breeds, horse terminology, basic rules of horse care and good horsemanship. We did a lot of reading and studying. This wasn’t just a riding club; it was a serious learning program so we could take better care of our horses and learn how to become better riders.

Through the course of that first year, we learned the proper ways to groom a horse and catch and halter a horse, how to properly saddle and bridle our horses, how to tie them, correct ways to mount and dismount, and how to ride in balance with our horses at the various gaits. The goal was to improve our communication with the horse and learn about various aspects of feed and care to keep our horses healthy.

Many of the things covered in those first lessons I already knew, because of my early interest in horses and reading everything about horses that I could find in our local small-town library. But there were still many important things I didn’t know. Velma divided our group into beginners and advanced riders, and I was happy to be in the advanced group.

We started calling ourselves the 5-H Wranglers. The fifth H stood for “Horses.” We held our summer meetings out at the fairgrounds on the edge of town, and we came on horseback. We continued our lessons with hands-on demonstrations and practiced the fundamental skills we were learning.

Jerry and Velma Ravndal helping one of the 4-H kids
give a demonstration of the proper way to saddle a horse,
at one of our 4-H meetings at the fairgrounds

Most of the club members lived in or near town and didn’t have very far to ride, but Ginger and I had 14 miles to come. My mom thought that was too far, but I was confident that it wouldn’t be any problem. Ginger had a fast trot, and I knew we could easily make it in a couple of hours. The first time, I started early — just to make sure I could get to the fairgrounds in time for the meeting.

I knew it would be shorter to cut straight across through the hills, but I wasn’t sure how to get through some of the ranches close to town, not knowing where the gates were. I decided to stay on the road (4 miles of dirt road from our ranch, then 10 miles along the highway). Ginger could trot along the edge of the road where the ground was soft (not so hard on her feet and legs), and it would be about as fast as trying to go through the hills with all the ups and downs.

I wasn’t sure how Ginger would react to cars whizzing by on the highway, since she’d never seen a highway before. Back in those days there wasn’t much traffic, and I knew I could ride along the wide, grassy space between the highway and the fence—except when crossing the bridges. I always rode facing the traffic because Ginger wasn’t as scared of the cars and trucks if she could see them coming. She was more skittish and jumpy if they came zooming up behind her. The big, noisy trucks were her worst problem, and she’d try to spin away and bolt. If the truck was coming from behind us, I had to turn her around so she could watch until it went by. She’d stand there trembling, but I could keep her from bolting by talking to her calmly and keeping a tight hold on the reins.

The only time a scary truck nearly caused an accident was when my brother was riding Ginger to town the next year — when we were both in the 5-H club and I was riding Nell, one of our other ranch horses. As the noisy truck approached, my brother Rocky noticed that his saddle cinch was fairly loose. Ginger had a round back — not enough withers to hold a saddle very well — so we always had to keep the cinch snug. Rocky realized that if Ginger tried to whirl away from the truck, his saddle would slip sideways. So he quickly jumped off and held her until the truck passed, then tightened his cinch before we continued on our way.

Our 4-H group heading out for a trail ride into the hills behind the ranches

Ginger had a very fast trot. That first year when I rode her to town for our meetings, I timed her by the mile markers and found that her medium trot could cover a mile in about 10 minutes and her fast trot covered a mile in 4 to 5 minutes. I became better at judging distances and our speed, and as Ginger got in better shape (able to travel farther and faster without tiring), I realized we didn’t have to leave so early. We could make it to town in about 1½ hours, alternately walking and trotting. It often took a little longer coming home in the afternoons. If it was really hot, we didn’t trot as fast.

That summer was glorious. Velma was a perfectionist about good horsemanship, and our advanced group soaked it all in. We learned how to handle our horses properly on the ground when leading them, how to teach them to walk faster when we were riding, how to post the trot, how to change leads at a gallop, how to “collect” our horses so they could move with more precision and agility when changing direction, and so on.

Our meetings were mostly lessons and hard work, but now and then the Ravndals took time to give us some “fun” rides, too, like the time we all went on a trail ride into the foothills behind their ranch. We took our lunches and had a picnic out on the trail.

As we came to the end of our summer’s work, we were proud of our progress and accomplishments. The beginners were no longer bouncing at the trot or inadvertently jerking their horses in the mouth. Everyone was riding better, in balance with the horses’ movements, and the horses were responding better to leg and rein cues. For most of us, horse and rider were becoming truly a team, working together in harmony and unison.

At the end of the summer we put on a horse show for our parents, friends, and the community. We all wore white shirts with green neckerchiefs, and dark-colored pants — so we all matched. We cleaned our saddles, washed our saddle blankets, and had our horses neatly groomed. During the show we gave demonstrations on correct methods of tying, leading, saddling, and bridling our horses and had several horsemanship classes to test our riding skills and our horses’ training. The advanced riders demonstrated figure-eights at the canter, mounting and dismounting, and backing up.

We also had some special events, including a costume class. We were judged in pairs. My friend Marilyn Muench and I spent hours making Indian costumes to wear, using burlap dyed brown, decorated with painted seashells, beads, and feathers we sewed onto the burlap. We practiced riding our horses with just jaw ropes (no bridles) and rode them bareback.

Me on Ginger and my friend Marilyn on SweetHeart,
dressed as Indians and ready for the 4-H costume class

Ginger was very calm and trustworthy for this kind of fun. Her upbringing as an orphan/spoiled pet made her perfect for this role. She was tolerant of many things that a more nervous, flighty horse might not be able to handle. By that time I was tall enough (and Ginger was short enough) that I could mount her bareback by grabbing her mane and swinging a leg up over her back.

Marilyn’s horse, “SweetHeart,” was also fairly gentle, and we didn’t have any trouble riding our steeds in the costume class, walking, trotting, and cantering as a matched pair, controlling our horses with just a rope through their mouths.

The next summer my brother Rocky was old enough to be in 4-H, and he wanted a horse project, too. Our parents thought he should use Ginger. At first I didn’t want to give up Ginger because I enjoyed riding her so much. I thought he should use Nosey (the big buckskin mare). But Nosey was very tall for a small boy and more nervous than Ginger. Possum, my first horse, was getting too old and stiff for that much trotting back and forth from town. My dad talked me into taking our other young mare, Nell, as my project, so Rocky could ride Ginger.

My younger brother Rocky was old enough to be in 4-H in 1959,
and he used Ginger as his project.

So that summer Rocky and I rode to town twice a week on Ginger and Nell for our club meetings and drill practice; the 5-H Wranglers were planning to put on a special mounted drill for our horse show and for the fair. The two mares were in excellent physical condition, making the 28-mile round trip to town 2 days each week and riding range in between — to check on our cattle.

Ginger was the reason I learned how to shoe horses. One week our parents were gone to a church conference and Rocky and I were taking care of the ranch. On one of our rides to move cattle, Ginger lost a shoe. She made it home without going lame, but I knew she wouldn’t be able to travel 28 miles the next day to our 5-H meeting without becoming tender and sore. We had a pile of old horseshoes in the shed, and I searched through those. I found some that Dad had taken off Ginger the year before, that still had some wear left, and were the proper size and shaped to fit her feet.

I got Dad’s shoeing tools, found the horseshoe nails, and bravely tried my first attempt at putting the shoe on, while Rocky held Ginger for me. Her foot didn’t need much trimming because she’d worn it off a bit after losing the shoe, and fortunately, the hoof hadn’t chipped or cracked. I smoothed it a little with the rasp and then placed the shoe as perfectly as I could.

Ginger and Nell in a corral in town. Rocky and I rode these mares
to town twice a week that summer for 4-H meetings and drill practice.

Driving the first nail was the big challenge because I wasn’t sure which way it should go. Horseshoe nails are beveled on the tip, so they curve outward when driven — to come out the side of the hoof wall instead of going straight into the foot. I knew that if I placed it incorrectly, it would curve into the sensitive inner tissues and make her lame. So I only pounded it in a little ways, very carefully, and when it didn’t start to come out, I pulled it out and set it the other way — and it worked perfectly. I realized that the nail heads were a clue; one side was smooth and the other side was rough — probably so a person could easily tell by look and by feel which way the nail should go. Thus I learned my first lesson about horseshoe nails: rough side inside.

I got that shoe on, and it stayed on through our trip to the fairgrounds and back the next day. When our parents got home later that week, Dad looked at Ginger’s foot and thought I’d done a good job. After that, he let me start shoeing our ranch horses. I’ve been doing it ever since (for more than 50 years now). Dad gave me some advice, and so did Jerry Ravndal. He was a farrier and guided me through a “horseshoeing apprenticeship” as one of my 4-H projects.

Rocky and I made many trips to town with our horses, and sometimes it was really hot in the afternoons on our way home after the 4-H meetings. We often stopped at the Baker Store, the little country store at the highway junction where we turned off to go up Withington Creek. Mr. Crooks was always friendly, and on hot afternoons he’d bring each of us a glass of water.

Rocky and I made many trips to town with our horses
during the several years we were in 4-H. In this photo
Rocky is riding Ginger bareback at the ranch.

On really hot days we also stopped on our way in and out of town at the Arctic Circle, near the fairgrounds. This was a drive-in place that sold milk shakes and ice cream cones. We didn’t have money to buy anything, but we could use the water fountain in the parking lot. The amusing thing was that Ginger quickly figured out how to get a drink, too. The first time Rocky tried to get a drink she pushed him out of the way with her nose and tried to sip the water. So we’d always turn the water on for her and let her sip from the spouting fountain. People passing by would always stop and gawk at the horse delicately sipping water from the drinking fountain. Nell never would try it, but Ginger looked forward to these water stops as much as Rocky and I did.

[to be continued]

Heather Smith Thomas raises horses and cattle on her family ranch in Salmon, Idaho. She writes for numerous horse magazines and is the author of several books on horses and cattle farming, including Storey’s Guide to Raising Horses, Storey's Guide to Training Horses, Stable Smarts, The Horse Conformation Handbook, Your Calf, Getting Started with Beef and Dairy Cattle, Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle, Essential Guide to Calving, and The Cattle Health Handbook.

Kids — Again!

2011-11-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

Last month John and I decided we wouldn't breed a milk goat to kid next year. Goats are very family oriented, and they love their offspring, so I'm too softhearted (some could rightfully say softheaded) to break up their families. It's nice to make them happy, but we have more goats than we need.

Bon Bon loves her babies. These are Jadzia and Curzon,
the first kids she had after moving to our farm.

Last Friday I was working on the computer when I heard the distinct sound of buck blubbering right outside the door.

Bon Bon, our brown Nubian doe, hadn’t gone out in the field with the other goats and the sheep because she was in heat and busy making goo-goo eyes at our young buck, Kerla, through the fence. Old Angel, the Wiltshire Horn cross ewe who was raised by goats, was in heat as well, and she was goo-goo eyeing Kerla, too.

Next Bon Bon had The Clones: triplets, a boy and two girls.
Two years later they're all grown up but still the three musketeers.

Hearing blubbering, I raced outside. Kerla had gotten over the fence and was making overtures toward Bon Bon. He’s never bred anything before, so he knew what he wanted but not quite how to go about it.

I rushed back to the house, snagged a lead rope, and tried to catch Bon Bon before the deed was done. Bon Bon was running and whacking Kerla with her head, all the while egging him on (she has always had a Klingon approach to sex), so the two of them stayed just out of my reach long enough for him to figure out what goes where. After he'd connected three times, I figured what's the use and left them to their own devices.

Kerla joined us in early 2010 and
became our first house-trained goat.

So it looks as though we're having kids in late March. Stay tuned: I'll keep you posted.

I eventually grabbed Bon Bon by the ears and asked her to please have only one kid or at the very most two. It worries me that she gave birth to triplets (“The Clones”) the last time she kidded two years ago and that a daughter owned by my Nubian breeder friend, Emily Dixon, had quads this past year.

Now that Kerla is a big guy (and
a buck at that), he lives outdoors.

I penned the lovebirds together overnight while Angel moped sadly outside the gate. Bon Bon’s enthusiasm had flown by the following morning, so Kerla returned to his paddock and his buddy Mopple but with a new development: a strand of electric stretched above the woven wire. He touched his nose to it once, shrieked, and dashed up the ramp to the top of his Port-a-Hut, snorting. Mopple, being a sheep and unable to touch the hot wire, was amused.

None of the does hangs out by our older buck Martok anymore. In fact, most of them abandoned Martok in favor of Kerla while Kerla was just a kid. Even some of the ewes prefer him. We have seven adult rams in paddocks on either side of Kerla’s, and the ewes stand by Kerla’s paddock wagging their tails. I have no idea what that boy has, but if we could bottle it, we'd make a fortune!

Kerla smiles. He's going to be a dad!

Saturday is National Learn to Homebrew Day

2011-11-03T14:30:00.000-04:00

A quick, Storey reminder that this Saturday the 5th of November is National Learn to Homebrew Day. For more information you can drop by the American Homebrewer's Association homepage.

If you are in Storey's general neighborhood there is always the Berkshire County Homebrew Supply LLC and the Wandering Star Brewery who are co-hosting an event to celebrate. Check out their facebook page for more details.

Cheers!

Can't Cook Enough Kale!

2011-11-02T11:00:00.001-04:00

I am behind in every aspect of my life – in part because I have been busy trying to put my garden to bed. Not a minute too soon, because the snow came this weekend. Putting the vegetable garden to bed was a fairly easy task, because the soil is so lovely and yielding. I planted a nice big bed of garlic and mulched the salsify, which I won’t harvest until the spring.

Salsify put to bed.

Garden writers can wax poetic about time and worries slipping away in the zen of gardening. Not me, I was caught up in a sweaty profane battle against bishop’s weed in my perennial bed. Bishop’s weed spreads by underground runners, and I suspect in a battle for territory against mint, the bishop’s weed would prevail. It arrived unannounced and unwanted, probably in a perennial I purchased or was give by a “friend.” Trying to get rid of it required digging up every square inch of garden and then sifting through the soil to remove even the smallest piece of root that remained. I have no illusions that I succeeded in eradicating that pest, but I do think I made serious headway. And along the way, I separated the iris and daylilies, which were in need of attention.

Kale in November

Quite honestly, I’d rather be cooking.

Sichuan-Style Stir-Fried Chinese Greens

This has a few exotic ingredients, because I wanted to keep this vegetarian and I wanted to make something you might not have already tasted. The odd ingredients are: Sichuan peppercorns and Chinese black vinegar. Sichuan peppercorns are actually the berry of the prickly-ash and can be found at Asian groceries, perhaps under the name anise pepper, Chinese pepper, fagara, flower pepper, or sansho. Chinese black vinegar has a distinctive flavor, closer to balsamic vinegar than to regular rice vinegar. To make a reasonable substitute for Chinese black vinegar, mix 1 part soy sauce, 1 part Worcestershire sauce, and 1 part rice vinegar.

Ingredients:

4 small dried chiles

2 teaspoons Sichuan peppercorns

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 1/2 pounds napa cabbage, bok choy, Chinese broccoli, kale, or other Chinese greens or a mix of greens, trimmed and sliced 1 inch thick, tough stems discarded

1/2 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon Asian sesame oil

Salt

Chinese black vinegar

1. Chop 1 ½ pounds kale or other greens

2. Heat 2 tablespoons in a large wok over high heat. Add the 4 small chiles, 2 teaspoons Sichuan peppercorns, and 2 minced garlic and sauté for 30 seconds, just until fragrant. Add the greens and stir-fry for 3 minutes, until the greens are wilted. Cover and let steam until tender, 1 to 3 minutes, depending on the green and your preferences.

3. Add the ½ teaspoon sugar, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, and salt to taste. Toss to mix. Drizzle with the vinegar and serve immediately.

From Recipes From the Root Cellar by Andrea Chesman. ©2010. All rights reserved.

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch — Ginger, Part One: The Orphan

2011-11-01T09:27:00.000-04:00

When my family started purchasing the upper ranch on Withington Creek in 1955 (a couple of summers after we’d been living in the cabin above it), we also got a new horse. A chestnut yearling filly named Ginger came with the ranch. Ginger was a friendly, inquisitive character but also a bit spoiled. She’d been orphaned at birth and raised on a bottle, so she was more like a big puppy dog than a horse.

Ginger and me in 1956, the summer after we bought the ranch.
She was more like a big puppy than a horse.

Her mother was a part-Thoroughbred mare named Lady Larabee, who belonged to Pepper Witteborg, the teenage boy whose mother, Ida, was selling the ranch to my parents. When Pepper went off to college the fall before Ginger was born, the old mare was turned out on the range with several other horses. Mr. Witteborg planned to round her up off the range the next spring and bring her home, because the old mare was going to have a foal.

As the story was told to us by Ida Witteborg, her husband rode out on the range a few times to check on the little band of horses, and they were doing fine — fat and happy as they roamed over the mountains. It was a mild winter, and the snow never got deep. The horses didn’t have to paw through very much snow to find grass, and the wind blew the snow off some of the ridges. It also melted off some of the south-facing slopes. So the horses were doing well and had plenty of food.

Spring came, and the old mare would soon be foaling. Mr. Witteborg rode out on the range to find Lady Larabee and bring her home. But when he found the herd of horses, the mare was not with them. He searched the surrounding hills and didn’t find her and finally had to give up and ride home because it was getting dark. The next day he and a neighbor rode out again to look for the mare.

At last they found her, in a sheltered little draw behind a grove of trees. She was lying down behind the bushes. As they rode closer, they could see that she was dead. What a shame, they thought, since the old mare had been so close to foaling.

Ginger as a 2-year-old, gentle and trusting

But wait! Something moved! The horses the men were riding started snorting as they approached the dead mare, and now they snorted even more and pricked their ears. They all heard a pathetic little whinny. A tiny foal scrambled to its feet, from where it had been lying on the other side of the mare, out of the wind. Upon hearing the other horses, the foal had gotten up and now came staggering and wobbling toward them. It was hungry and weak.

Mr. Witteborg got off his horse and handed the reins to his friend, then slowly approached the whinnying baby. The little filly came right up to him and nuzzled his arm, trying to suck his sleeve. He stroked the soft, velvety head and neck and spoke quietly and soothingly to the hungry baby, while at the same time taking a closer look at the dead mare.

Lady Larabee hadn’t been dead very long. Mr. Witteborg hoped the foal had been able to nurse the mare before she died, but he wasn’t sure. The baby was very hungry and weak. He gathered the foal up in his arms and carried it toward his horse. The horse snorted and jumped around as he approached, but his friend held the horse steady while Mr. Witteborg lifted the wiggling foal up across the saddle, then mounted the skittish horse. He and his friend rode slowly home, with the foal balanced across Mr. Witteborg’s lap.

When they reached the ranch, Ida Witteborg told him to bring the foal into the house to warm it, and she heated some milk on the stove. They tried to get the foal to suck a bottle, using a lamb nipple, but the foal refused to suck. So Ida squirted some of the warm milk into the back of the foal’s mouth with an eyedropper, and the foal had to swallow it. She fed the foal about half a cup of milk with the eyedropper, a little at a time.

By the next feeding the foal was a little stronger and more eager and sucked the bottle enthusiastically. Foals nurse their mothers much more often than baby calves do, so Ida got up every couple of hours during the night to feed this baby. She and her husband fixed a place for the foal on the enclosed front porch of the house, fencing off part of the porch with chairs and creating a soft bed of hay for the foal to lie in. Ida named her Ginger because of her golden chestnut color.

Ginger in our yard with some of the other horses

By the time Ginger was a couple of days old, she was much more lively and strong and needed more room. They made a place for her outside in one of the sod-roofed sheds and extended the bottle feedings to every 3 hours. Eventually, she lived in the orchard pasture with the ranch horses for company, and Ida fed her just four bottles a day. Ginger became so attached to her human “mothers” that she wasn’t very interested in the other horses; she preferred to spend time with people. She often followed Ida up onto the porch and tried to go into the house.

Ginger was a big sassy yearling in 1955 when the ranch was sold to my family. Ida told us about the filly’s unusual background, which explained why she liked to follow us around and come into the house yard every chance she got. She was a little pushy and spoiled but also very trusting, like the time I walked through the orchard and Ginger came limping up to me, wanting me to take a rock out of her foot. It was wedged tightly in the sole of her hoof, but she stood very patiently as I picked up her foot and pulled and pried and finally got the rock out.

She made a nuisance of herself in the barnyard, however, always getting in the way, always chewing on everything, always getting into trouble. That next summer my dad decided Ginger should live in the pasture up Cheney Creek with our other horses. At first Ginger was unhappy about being banished from the orchard and barnyard because she wanted to be with people, not horses. But soon she adapted to her new status and stayed with the little group of horses — Old Possum, Nosey, and a 2-year-old filly named Nellace that my uncle had bought as a future ranch horse.

I wanted to train Ginger to ride, but my dad didn’t think that was a very good idea. Because Ginger had been raised by humans and was spoiled and headstrong, my dad felt she might be too much challenge for an inexperienced 13-year-old girl to train. The filly liked to have her own way, and since she was big and strong, Dad thought I might have trouble. Ginger was gentle and would probably never buck, but she was stubborn and might be a difficult pupil for someone who had never trained a horse.

So my father asked the neighboring rancher, Mr. Gooch, to “start” Ginger. Mr. Gooch took her down to his place for a couple of weeks, got her used to wearing a saddle and bridle, and rode her every day for a while, teaching her to stop, move out, and turn. He had to be very firm with her at first, but she was smart and soon realized that it was easier to obey than to fight with her rider.

Ginger and me — after I started riding her

After those two weeks of “kindergarten,” Ginger was more ready for me to start riding her, and I gladly took on the task of continuing her training. The filly was very bold and not afraid of anything, and it wasn’t very long before the two of us were going out into the hills every day to check on the cattle. Ginger had a fast trot, and I enjoyed riding her.

I rode her so much that summer that her feet started to get tender and she needed shoes. Dad always put the shoes on our other horses, but he was busy with some other things right then and also felt that maybe it would be good to have a professional farrier put Ginger’s first set of shoes on.

Dad wasn’t home when the farrier came. I haltered Ginger and brought her to the barnyard for the farrier to shoe her. Being timid and inexperienced, I didn’t speak up or protest when he tied her to the crosspiece on our big pole gate by the barn. She was fairly well halter-trained by then; we’d tied her up many times. But I worried about tying her to something that flimsy, especially for her first shoeing. I would have been glad to hold her instead, but the shoer was an old cowboy who didn’t think a little girl could be much help.

Ginger was nervous about the shoeing and moved around a little. The shoer became impatient with her and slapped her for not standing still. This upset Ginger even more, and she pulled backward. The cross pole on the gate came loose. The filly went flying backward and the pole came with her, scaring her out of her wits. She went galloping around the barnyard with that pole chasing and bumping her and scaring her even more. It took awhile before we could corner her and slow her down enough to catch up with her and grab her — so the pole would quit chasing her, and so we could get it loose from her halter rope.

After that traumatic experience, Ginger was never trustworthy to tie up. She might stand calmly, or she might not — and whenever she set back she did it with all her strength and determination. From then on she usually tried to avoid situations where she’d have to be tied, just to minimize the risk for broken halters and ropes or injury to her neck.

[To Be Continued . . .]

Seasonal Storey Excerpt: Ghoulish Goodies

2011-10-31T09:00:00.002-04:00

If Halloween in your neck of the woods is shaping up to be anything like ours, the holiday might have you and your children shivering from unseasonably cold temperatures and maybe even sitting under several inches of snow. In western Massachusetts we got our fair share of the latter over the weekend and it isn't likely to melt before this evening as the weather hovers around freezing. Depending on the ages of your children, this might find them returning home earlier than usual once the excitement of dressing up like a super-hero, mythological creature or undead monster (and the corresponding sugar buzz) wears off.

Fortunately the holiday need not end there as the Sharon Bowers book Ghoulish Goodies is full of kid friendly recipes for transforming your typical holiday snacks into creepy, frightful fun. There are more than 70 projects transforming typical fair such as Rice Krispie treats and pretzels into spooky jack-o-lanterns and witch's knuckles. Below is a recipe for a "Cup of Worms." Have fun!

"Cup of Worms" (Makes 8 Servings)

This creepy dessert couldn't be simpler: chocolate pudding, cookie crumbs, and gummy worms. But kids love it so much more than they could love that génoise sponge with Italian meringue and candied violets that took you two days to make! Go figure.

2 (3.5 ounce) boxes instant chocolate pudding mix
4 cups milk
24 chocolate wafers or 12 chocolate sandwich cookies such as Oreos.
Gummy worms
Unsweetened cocoa powder

1. Prepare the chocolate pudding with milk, according to the package directions

2. Place the cookies in a heavy ziplock bag and crush by beating and rolling them with a rolling pin or wine bottle.

3. Put gummy worms on a plate and sprinkle lightly with a few teaspoons of cocoa, rolling them to coat.

4. Put two to three tablespoons of pudding in the bottom of each of 8 clear plastic cups or glass custard cups. Drop one gummy worm into each cup. Top with remaining pudding, then top each with crumbs. Place three worms on top of each cup. Chill until ready to serve.

Photo by Kevin Kennefick

Happy Halloween!

Today is National Food Day

2011-10-24T11:46:00.004-04:00

That's correct, October 24th is National Food Day here in the United States. Today is in fact the inaugural celebration of the holiday, one that seeks to focus on highlighting the many challenges facing our country and the world's ability to sustain both all of its citizens and the environment in which we live. If you want to explore further what this day means you can go straight to the source at the Food Day webpage or you can stay in touch with everything happening all day long by following National Food Day on Twitter (@CSPI) or on Facebook.

Locally, here in North Adams, home of the Storey Publishing office, there is the Keep Farming Kickoff Event.

For a more global perspective, take a look at Andrew Stout's article over at the Huffington Post.

Lastly, whether it be making a list of all your favorite local farms that you'd like to pay a visit later this fall to gather everything you need for your family's big Thanksgiving Day feast or pulling together another harvest meal from your own garden, how will you be celebrating the country's first National Food Day?

Notes from Sky Range Ranch: Tribute to a Writing Career

2011-10-18T10:00:00.000-04:00

Last month I was surprised and flattered when Lee Pitts, a well-known ag writer, book author, and humor columnist (whose column appears in many agriculture and livestock publications), wanted to write an article about my writing career. What he wrote about me appeared in the 2011 Fall Marketing Edition of the Livestock Market Digest. I thought he did a great job of capturing the background and evolution of my writing efforts, and the reasons I write about cattle and horses. I thought I’d share his article with my blog readers this week, in lieu of my regular stories.

Heather, today, prepares to ride range on "Rubbie,"
one of the ranch cow horses.

Heather Thomas, by Lee Pitts

I think it’s safe to say that the livestock industry has never produced a writing machine like Heather Thomas. So far the tally is 20 books and 10,000 articles and the Salmon, Idaho, rancher/writer shows no signs of letting up. And if you don’t think 10,000 magazine articles is a lot just think back to high school when you were assigned just one term paper. Do you remember the dread and downright fear of the deadline just that one term paper caused? Now multiply that by over 10,000 and you get some idea of the absolute brilliance and ability that resides in Heather Thomas.

I know the name rings a familiar bell. Pick up any publication even remotely related to livestock and there’s a good chance that there is an article by Heather in it. At last count her byline has been seen in some 255 different publications! I didn’t even know there were that many! Heather says that, sadly, many of these publications are gone, but therein lies another astonishing fact about Heather’s career: as the Internet and the economy have made the publishing industry one of the worst businesses to be in, her career seems to only gain in strength. Good editorial content is a common denominator of the publications that remain in business and “good editorial and content” and the words “Heather Thomas” should be listed in Roget’s Thesaurus as synonyms.

You can’t write 20 books and 10,000 articles without starting your career early in life, and certainly Heather did. While most of the adolescent girls were studying boys and the proper use of makeup, Heather had more of a deep abiding love for horses and cattle. And she felt a need for sharing that affection with others. “When I was in grade school,” says Heather, “I wrote stories about horses and other animals, just for fun. When I was in 7th grade (1957) my dad (a Methodist minister) sent one of my stories to our church’s national Sunday School paper and it was published in November 1958—and I received a check for $10. I was hooked! I discovered that I could actually earn money doing something I enjoyed.”

After that she sold numerous horse stories to several children’s magazines like Highlights for Children, Golden Magazine, Jack and Jill—mainly informative pieces about horses, breeds of horses and horse terminology. In high school Heather decided to step it up a notch. “My first article for an ag magazine was about our 4-H horse club (the first one in Idaho), called the 5-H Wranglers. I sent it to Farm Journal in December 1959 and they bought it for $100 (an enormous sum in those days, to a 10th grader!) and it was published in May, 1961, under the title, “Like Horses? Start a 5-H Club”, with me and my yearling filly on the cover.”

This is the May 1961 Farm Journal featuring Heather's story about the 5-H horse club, with a photo of Heather and her yearling filly on the cover.

Stop the presses! We’re talking about the Farm Journal folks! Just the biggest and most respected name in journalism back then. And the teenager from Idaho not only had a feature story in the magazine but was also featured on the cover! To anyone who makes their living as a writer that’s like hitting a homerun in your first at bat with the New York Yankees! While still in high school, no less.

After that, Heather sent a few more articles to Farm Journal and started writing for other ag publications. At first it was mostly horse related articles and then as she gained in confidence she started submitting articles on cattle care, for which she is probably most well known. Her first book was written in 1964 during the summer between her sophomore and junior year of college and some of her more recent books include Cattle Health Handbook (2009), Essential Guide to Calving (2008), Storey’s Guide to Raising Horses (new edition 2009), Storey’s Guide to Training Horses (new edition 2010), Storey’s Guide to Raising Beef Cattle (new edition 2009), Stable Smarts (2005), Getting Started with Beef and Dairy Cattle (2005), The Horse Conformation Handbook (2005), Understanding Equine Hoof Care (2006), Care and Management of Horses (2004). Grateful cattlemen and cattlewomen will remember an older book of Heather’s called Red Meat: The Original Health Food (1984).

We don’t want to give the impression that Heather never enrolled in the study of boys: in 1966 she married a local boy, Lynn Thomas, who grew up on a ranch on the other side of town. “He was a year ahead of me in school,” recalls Heather, “but it’s a small school/small town, and we sort of knew each other in high school. My dad bought a horse from him.”

Heather's husband Lynn — as a teenager he sold a mare to Heather's dad, and Heather later raised a foal from that mare, as a 4-H project (the yearling filly pictured on the Farm Journal
cover). Seven years later Heather and Lynn got married and started their ranching career.

Evidently the horse deal turned out okay because the two eventually married and then started trying to explore ways in which to make their shared dream come true: to become ranchers. “We put together 3 little ranches that by themselves were not big enough to make a living on, and made it work, running 170 to 185 cows, utilizing BLM range for summer pasture.” It’s not hugely productive country, some might call their place a “starve-out outfit,” but the pair eventually was able to put together a herd of fertile, hardy crossbred cows that could thrive on marginal land.

Heather says, "Lynn and I learned a lot about raising cattle after we
started raising cattle on our own — and we also felt strongly that a
ranch was a good place to raise kids. Our children, Michael and Andrea
(shown here at age 15 and 13, in 1983), were also a big help on the ranch.”

Like most ranchers they succeeded partly because the wife had a job in town. Only Heather didn’t have to make a long commute. She just woke up and started writing. “After I was married and my husband and I were raising cattle,” says Heather, “I started writing for more ag publications—partly because we needed the money and partly because of my passion to share our experiences and the things we were learning about raising cattle. Even though we both grew up on ranches, we learned a LOT more—often the hard way—after we started raising cattle on our own.”

Heather’s writing came at a good time for this humble reporter. Although I’d raised a few cattle and had a degree in animal science with advanced studies in Australia, that doesn’t adequately prepare you to become a real rancher. Over the years I had a lot of questions I felt too embarrassed to ask and nine times out of ten I found the answers in one of Heather’s articles. Heather is such a great writer because she’s been there, done that. “One of my goals,” she says, “has been to learn all I can about horses and cattle — to care for them as best I can and keep them healthy — and then share that knowledge with others.”

Heather typed thousands of articles on several old
typewriters and always tried to "keep it simple,"
writing about technical subjects in words
that are easy to understand.

Heather has the rare ability to take complicated diseases or procedures and make them simple. Her secret? “I think any topic can be made more palatable by simple English and fewer big words. I have a simple mind myself. I figure that if I can write something in terms that I can easily understand, then probably my readers can understand it, too. I often consider myself a ‘translator’ or intermediary between the veterinary/medical terminology/language and the average lay reader who prefers simple words. No one wants to have to use a dictionary when reading an article!”

Heather never suffers from writer’s block but if an editor assigns her to write an article that doesn’t directly apply to livestock or horses her mind rebels a little. But that doesn’t mean the editor doesn’t receive more than what he asked for.

I became a huge fan of Heather’s writing years ago. Other than the Digest, the first publication to ever carry my weekly column was a great newspaper out of Canada called Grainews. One of the reasons that I loved the paper so much was that they sent me a free subscription and once a month I got to read a diary of what was happening on Heather and her husband’s ranch, the goings-on in her life and all the animals they raised. And every one of them had a name! Even when they were having 185 calves per year every animal was named! There was Kachoozy, Clariberry, Nick Nack Paddy Whack Jack and Sophocles. The cow Jill had Jillie and Jillie had Chillie, Millie, Willie, Woolly and Wally. “Cherry Dumpling had Cherry Pie, Cupcake, Cinnamon Roll and Cookie Monster. Melody had Operetta, Mandolynne and Banjo. Bobbie had Bibbidy, Bobbidy and Boo. Flibberty had Gibbit. Big Kat had Little Kat, Kat’s Pajamas and Little Cat Panther. Star Face had Starlight, who had Orion, Twinkle, and Star Bright, who had Starsky. Buffalo Girl had Buffalo Chips, Buffalo Billy, Buffalo Jack and Buffalo Baby.

All the cattle on the Thomas ranch get named. Here's Heather in 1995 with a yearling heifer named "Norman" — for the orphan calf in the movie City Slickers.

You get the picture. And readers related to her stories. As I recall, Grainnews conducted a survey and found that the most favorite thing in their paper was Heather’s diary. And keep in mind this was a huge paper with countless columnists. During the course of writing her diary an event occurred that deeply impacted Heather and everyone who read about it. I know it still sticks in my mind.

Heather, Lynn, Norman, and a few of the other
30 yearling heifers on the ranch in 1995

There was a fire. It occurred on the night of July 5, 2000, and was started by fireworks on a friend’s place. “The friend’s dog grabbed a rocket as it was lit, and it went the wrong direction and ignited dry grass and sagebrush on a mountainside,” says Heather. In an attempt to put out the fire Heather’s daughter, Andrea, and a friend took a crawler tractor up the steep mountain to try to create a fire line. The wind changed and trapped them and the only way out was back through the blaze. Andrea was severely burned and ended up with very serious impairments, such as the thickening, contracting scar tissue from the skin grafts. “She also has serious lung damage from the pneumonia that nearly killed her in the burn ICU,” says Heather, “along with circulatory problems; the burns were so deep that they destroyed flesh (and blood vessels) as well as skin, and some blood vessels eventually rerouted [the body is amazing!! Some veins became arteries] so she has a few arteries right under the grafted skin, that are easily nicked. She endures constant pain and continues to have surgery to this day.”

Andrea was finally able to hold and hug her 2-1/2-year-old
daughter Emily after spending nearly a month in the burn ICU.

Recalls Heather, “A whole bunch of miracles lined up just right or she would not have survived long enough to be flown to Salt Lake. Andrea has endured it all with a very strong spirit and she continues on with her life with cheerful enthusiasm, taking care of her kids and helping other people. Very few people realize what she endures.”

Andrea and her daughter Emily a few years later —
Andrea is unashamed of her burn scars and impairments.

Perhaps for her own therapy Heather wrote a book about the entire experience. “I felt compelled to share our story, in hopes that it might encourage and inspire other people who are suddenly facing a traumatic detour in life.” The book is titled Beyond the Flames: A Family Touched by Fire. It was published by Oak Tree Press in 2004 and in many ways is her best work as a writer.

Andrea continues on with her life and rarely lets her "bad" days
and impairments keep her from doing what she wants to do.

These past 10 years Heather says that she and Lynn have slowed down a bit. “We no longer lease the extra ground, and we’re letting our son and his wife use part of our ranch and the range; we cut down our cattle numbers to allow them to build up their herd.” Her passion is still horses and cattle and what makes THEM tick and despite her claim to “slowing down,” Heather is actually writing more now than ever.

Readers who want to get a taste of what Heather calls her “critter stories” can check out “Notes from Sky Range Ranch,” which appears every other Tuesday on one of her publishers’ websites: http://insidestorey.blogspot.com. Or you can read a blog she does twice a month on another website that another publisher (Oak Tree Press) set up for her, to tell why she wrote Beyond the Flames, and to bring the reader up to date since then, regarding her family and experiences on the ranch: www.heathersmiththomas.blogspot.com.

Whew! It all makes this hack tired just thinking of all that writing. I don’t know how she does it all, but I know one thing, those of us in the cattle business are darn sure glad she does!

Heather and Lynn have slowed down a bit with the ranching
and have fewer cattle today but still enjoy them as much as ever.
Andrea took this photo of Heather having a chat with "Buffalo Girl,"
a pet cow belonging to young Emily.

From Heather: “Thanks, Lee. I have always admired and appreciated your columns, too, and I’m flattered and grateful that you wanted to write this tribute about me!”

October Is National Non-GMO Month

2011-10-17T14:00:00.003-04:00

This October is National Non-GMO Month. Now unless you are an acronym savvy, health conscious natural foods consumer, you might not know just exactly what this means. This is alright, Inside Storey is here to help.

The initials GMO stand for Genetically Modified Organism and yes, this concept is as frightening as it sounds. Basically, a GMO is a plant or animal that has been created in a laboratory. They are Frankenstein creatures that have never occurred in nature, their inner workings have been genetically engineered and manipulated with the DNA of other plants, animals, viruses and bacteria. To be clear, a GMO isn't some herbicide that is sprayed or antibiotic that is injected to a previously existing species. GMOs are the plants and animals themselves.

So your first question would be why on earth have these GMOs come into existence? What are the reasons behind their creation? There are two primary reasons. For the purposes of clarity, let's focus on plants:

1. A seed producer will tinker with their seed to make it resistant to their own particular herbicide.

2. A seed producer will modify their products to contain built-in pesticides.

Now let's consider these two 'advantages', shall we?

In the first case, we have the widespread use of weedkillers that will wipe out all undesirable plant-life that might negatively affect the crop, as well as the crop in question if it has not been modified. The seeds have to be engineered to withstand what they naturally can not. The obvious corollary to this enhanced defense is that other types of naturally occurring crops will be killed off when the herbicide is implemented whether these be indigenous or, let's say, a competitor seed producer's crop that just so doesn't happen to have this particularly leg-up.

The second reason is much easier to explain. Some of these plants now grow with the pesticide right there inside of them. It is part of their DNA. In many cases it is far too early to know just how these genetically modified plants effect the animals that consume them.

40 countries including Japan, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and all of the European Union have placed significant restrictions or outright bans on GMOs due to the the fact that they have never been proven safe for human consumption. The United States and Canada do not have any requirements for even labeling food that has been genetically modified.

For more information on GMOs, here is a helpful infographic created by Nature's Path:

Sue Weaver: Catching Sally

2011-10-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, September 17, we were driving down a little town street that separates Thayer, Missouri, from Mammoth Spring, Arkansas, when a white apparition stepped out of the brush toward the road. Both sides are very heavily wooded by an 80-acre-or-so plot bounded on three sides by residential areas and the fourth by Interstate 63. It was . . . a sheep. A Katahdin hair sheep all alone in the woods. What in the world? John slammed on the brakes while I reached for the lead rope we keep in the van.

As I got out of the van, she paused, took a long, hard look, then melted back into the woods. I followed, and she took off like a shot across the road.

Sally looks like this white Katahdin ewe.

Thus began the odyssey that has taken us to Thayer nearly every evening for the past 2 weeks. Though the sheep is fat and in obvious good health, she could be killed by dogs or coyotes, and it will be deer season soon. Someone will shoot her just for the heck of it. We need to get her out of the woods.

Where did she come from? How long has she been on her own? No one knows. No one reported a missing sheep to either town’s police department, and no one in the immediate area raises sheep. Since she is a Katahdin (a meat breed that sheds its wool), our guess is that someone bought her at the monthly Koshkonong, Missouri, sheep and goat sale just north of Thayer, then stopped at a nearby gas station and convenience store where she somehow bailed out of their conveyance.

We searched for her the first week in vain. The woods on both sides of the road are thick with underbrush dense enough to hide a sheep easily. Rattling feed buckets did no good. She wasn’t coming out.

The Saturday after we first spotted the ewe, whom we now called Sally, we spied her standing atop a steep hill on the electrical highline access road cut through the southern (Mammoth Spring) section of the woods. She waited until I was 20 feet away, then disappeared into the woods. That’s when we started leaving feed in a pan, which she — or maybe deer — emptied overnight.

We looked around last Saturday morning and devised a plan. We’d find out who owns the wooded land where we’ve been feeding her and who is in charge of the access road, then see if we can get permission to camp there. John would ask for 2 vacation days off work through the middle of the week while things are fairly quiet on the nearby roads. We’d take our two-horse trailer to the top of the rise with two or three sheep in it, a mesh gate to go across the back of the trailer, and part of our round pen to make a large catch pen with the gate at the far end from the trailer. We’d set up on a Tuesday evening and stay through Thursday, keeping our sheep in the trailer — hopefully baahing a lot to attract Sally’s attention. We’d also take the van with a mattress set up in back so we could sleep. The ewe would get used to our presence, become curious about our sheep, come into the round pen to kibitz with them, and one of us could go wide around and shut the gate.

Later that day we were scooting along the interstate, abreast of the part of the woods where we first saw her, close to a mile from where we’re leaving feed. There is a very steep, grassy bluff along the interstate, flat on the top for a short distance, then the dense woods. We looked up, and Sally was standing on the edge of the bluff, getting ready to start down toward the very busy interstate — what are the chances! I grabbed the bucket of grain, and John shot over to the side of the road.

Picture this: a 64-year-old, overweight woman in cutoffs, T-shirt, and running shoes, waving a bucket, crab-crawling up an almost vertical bluff, yelling, “Go back! Go back!”

This fortunately frightened the sheep, and she leaped back from the edge of the bluff. As I got closer she slipped into the woods about 3 feet behind some brush and stayed put, so I hoped perhaps she’d let me get closer. But no, as I gasped my way over the top, she turned and crashed into the woods.

Now she’s in the northern section of the woods again, where there’s no place to set up a trap. Not knowing what else to do, we drove around the surrounding residential area and gave people our phone number, asking them to call if they saw a sheep.

So we’ve had three close encounters on three successive Saturdays. If she goes back to the southern section, we might be able to trap her. Otherwise, I just don’t know. Please think the good thought for Sally the sheep. I’ll let you know if things turn out.

Farm Anatomy Blog Tour!

2011-10-07T14:00:00.001-04:00

Storey Publishing is excited to announce the forthcoming blog tour in celebration of the recently published Farm Anatomy by Julia Rothman.

We're partnering with some truly fantastic blogs who will each feature a special post about the book on different days throughout the month of October. Here's a complete schedule of the tour:

Monday, October 10, 2011: Mint

Wednesday, October 12, 2011: Growing with Plants

Friday, October 14, 2011: Things We Make

Saturday, October 15, 2011: print & pattern

Monday, October 17, 2011: small measure

Wednesday, October 19, 2011: SF Girl By Bay

Friday, October 21, 2011: Pikaland

Sunday, October 23, 2011: The Spunky Coconut

Tuesday, October 25, 2011: Reading My Tea Leaves

Wednesday, October 26, 2011: The Post Family

Thursday, October 27, 2011: Book By Its Cover

Friday, October 28, 2011: Design for Mankind

Make sure to follow along by checking into all these great blogs for reviews, sneak peeks from inside the book, recipe excerpts, interviews with the author, and maybe even a few giveaways of signed copies! We hope you'll participate with comments on the posts, and tell your friends to join in as well. Stay tuned, and discover more about this amazing new book!

You can purchase your copy of Farm Anatomy right now where all great books are sold:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Indiebound
Powell's
And our own Storey.com

-Adam Carmichael ~ Associate Publicist

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch — Nosey, Part Three: Riding Range

2011-10-04T10:00:00.000-04:00

To read the first chapter of the story, click here.
To jump right into the second part, click here.

The most fun I had during our first summer on the ranch was being able to ride in the mountains, checking cattle on the range. There was a lot more territory out there than I’d ever explored on my earlier rides up the creek from our cabin. My little brother Rocky and I had to learn where all the fences and gates were and the water troughs. We learned the grazing habits of the cattle and where we’d be most likely to find them.

That summer I was no longer riding bareback. I needed a saddle for range riding, to make it easier to mount and dismount, to open and shut the wire gates, to take tools along to fix the fences, and so on. Nosey wasn’t as patient as old Possum for getting on bareback and was also much taller. I also needed a saddle to tie things to — so I could take a jacket (in case of thunderstorms), my lunch, or a hammer and sack of fence staples.

I used a borrowed saddle from Lester Withington, one of the ranchers who had cattle on the same range. He was pleased that I was riding out there to help check on the cows and calves. He sometimes rode with me and showed me where the spring boxes for the water troughs were buried, since we sometimes had to open the top of a spring box and unplug the water line if a trough quit working. Occasionally, a drowned mouse would get stuck in the pipe and we'd have to pull it out. I also helped Lester move cattle.

Dad, my little sister (on Nosey) and me, heading out to ride range.
I'm using the old repaired saddle that I've now ridden for 55 years.

About midsummer my dad bought me an old repaired saddle from Clyde Stone at the saddle shop. It had originally been used for roping, but the rear cinch had been torn out of it in some kind of horse accident. Mr. Stone repaired the saddle, without a back cinch. It was less expensive than a new saddle, and Mr. Stone shortened the lace-up stirrup fenders as short as they could go, since I was very small at age 12. I am still riding that same old saddle (55 years later), with the same short stirrups.

Now that I had a saddle of my own, Rocky could use the borrowed saddle from Lester Withington. Together Rocky and I explored the range, riding Possum and Nosey, or the new black mare named Scrappy that our dad bought that summer, since our two fillies (Ginger and Nell) were still too young to be ridden.

When riding around in our home pastures, however, we still rode bareback a lot, especially after hiking up to catch the horses. We often galloped back to the barnyard area, hanging onto a handful of mane. The horses loved to jump the irrigation ditch as we thundered toward home. But one time when Rocky and Nosey got to the ditch and he was prepared for her to jump it, she suddenly stopped and he didn’t — tumbling over her head and splashing into the water.

On our range rides in the mountains behind our ranch, we saw many deer, large herds of antelope, coyotes and their pups (which often followed our horses), and a bear with cubs. I thought our horses might be afraid of the bear, but they just stood still and snorted as the bears loped on up the ridge and into the timber.

On our range rides in the mountains to check the cattle,
fences, and water troughs, we saw wildlife of all kinds.

Nosey was actually more scared of a badger that scurried away from us on one ride, when we startled it on our way to check a water trough. Nosey jumped sideways, and I nearly fell off. I was glad I was riding with a saddle because the stirrups helped me keep my balance during her unexpected leaps. She was much more flighty and spooky than old Possum, and I didn’t want to land on the ground. Old Possum would always stop and eat grass if his rider was off, but Nosey would rather run home.

Our cattle range had many interesting places to ride. The lower end was nearly flat, with a few low hills and lots of sagebrush. A little stream, Baker Creek, ran through the entire range, but the lower end of this stream always dried up in late summer after the weather turned hot. The top end was higher in the mountains, fed by a series of little springs. Part of the range up there was open hillsides with grass and sagebrush, and the north-facing slopes were covered with thick timber where the cows often lay in the shade during the heat of the day. They could hide in there, too, and be hard to find.

Much of the range was very steep. On one of our first rides on Possum and Nosey, Rocky and I were trying to go around a mountain to find Flicker Spring and a water trough we hadn’t seen yet, following directions that Dad had given us. We were supposed to go around the first big mountain beyond Baker Creek, then up into a big draw; the spring was at the top of that draw.

But we started up a false draw instead, before we got clear around the mountain. So we ended up climbing the steep mountain. The little draw we were following got steeper and steeper, and soon there was no trail. We were halfway up the mountain by then, and it was so steep we were afraid to try to turn around and go back down. It seemed safer to keep going up and angle our way over the top, then go back over into Baker Creek, where we knew our way around better.

The farther we went, however, the steeper it got. Soon we were in treacherous rocks with very poor footing. Every rock dislodged by our horses’ feet went crashing down the mountain. One big rock was immediately airborne and made only three bounces on its way down to the flatter country below. The terrain was becoming more challenging, but it was still easier to keep climbing than to try to go back down. I was afraid the horses might fall if we headed down. After Nosey slipped and her hind legs slid downhill several feet (the mare pulling herself back up by digging in with her front feet), Rocky and I were both alarmed. We dismounted, leading the horses the rest of the way to the top, through the rocks.

We were relieved when we got out of the rocks and onto more gently sloping ground. We finally made our way back down the less-steep side of the mountain into Baker Creek. We’d had enough excitement for one day and decided to try to find Flicker Spring another time. After we got home and described our ride, Dad told us that part of the mountain was “steeper than a cow’s face!” From then on that slope was called Cow Face by our family.

I was very glad Nosey and Possum were strong and surefooted. If either of them had fallen down in the slippery rocks, they’d have rolled all the way to the bottom. Nosey was a good mountain horse, however. Having grown up in the mountains, she knew how to handle herself, and she didn’t panic in precarious situations. Her surefootedness was a blessing, many times.

Dad rode her on many hunting trips, leading a packhorse, or sometimes a whole string of packhorses when he went hunting with his good friend Gene Powers and camped in the backcountry for several days to hunt elk. One time the packhorse he was leading slipped off a steep trail and might have tumbled to its death down the cliff, but Dad took a dally around his saddle horn with the lead rope, and Nosey pulled the scrambling packhorse back up onto the trail.

Another time Nosey’s strength and agility came in handy when Rocky and I were riding up Cheney Creek and found a stray Hereford bull belonging to Mr. Enquist, a rancher who lived several miles farther up the valley. He’d come through the fence and was all by himself in our mountain pasture. We started toward him to try to herd him down to our corral, so the neighbor could come and get him, but the bull was aggressive and charged at us. Rocky was closest to him, on Nosey, and as the bull charged at her, she started to spin away. The bull rammed her in the front of her chest, jamming one horn into her flesh, and picked her up with his head. She jerked free and galloped up the hillside, away from the bull. We were very lucky he hit her in the front, instead of broadside, or his horns may have ripped into her vital organs.

Rocky and I were quite shaken by the bull’s aggressiveness because we were accustomed to our own gentle Herefords. We threw rocks at the bull from a safe spot higher on the hill, but he wouldn’t go down the hill. He just stood there and shook his horns at us. So we gave up and rode home to tell Dad about the incident. When Dad and our neighbor Warren Gooch rode back up there, with Gooch’s stock dog, they didn’t have much luck, either. The dog tried to nip the bull and make him go, but the bull was too quick. Every time the dog snapped at the bull’s nose, he got a horn instead. The dog soon gave up and ran home. Dad and Warren Gooch rode back down to our fields and took a little herd of our cows up Cheney Creek to put with the bull, and then they were able to herd them all down together to the corral.

My little sister started riding Nosey when she was about 6 years old.

Nosey was a dependable horse for our friends to ride, except for her skittishness. As long as they were good riders, however, they had no problems. My little sister started riding at a young age, starting on old Possum and then graduating to Nosey and Scrappy when she was about 6 years old. I often took her riding with me on short rides, teaching her the basics of horsemanship. One windy day in early spring, I was glad we weren’t very far from home when Nosey spooked at something and whirled around, losing her young rider. She left my sister on the ground and ran home.

I often took my little sister on short rides with me —
with her on Nosey — while I was training my young filly Khamette.

I was riding a young filly, Khamette. I’d raised her from foalhood and was starting her training under saddle. Khamette was not quite 3 years old and had never had an extra passenger aboard, but she stood calmly as I pulled my little sister up behind me and gave her a ride home. Nosey was happily grazing in the barnyard when we got there and hadn’t even stepped on her bridle reins to break them.

Nosey was easy to shoe. I started shoeing all our ranch horses when
I was 14. Here, I'm shoeing Nosey, while two of the other horses
are tied in the barnyard waiting their turn.

Nosey was a part of our lives for nearly a dozen years. During that time she was one of our main all-purpose ranch horses. When I started shoeing our horses when I was 14 years old, she was one of the first ones I shod, because she was easygoing and nice about having her feet handled. She was large (and took number 2 shoes!) and occasionally leaned on the person shoeing her — which wasn’t so good — but at least she didn’t resist or try to jerk her foot away. All in all, she was part of my “horse education” in many ways.

Andrea Chesman: Mastering the Art of Stir-Frying

2011-09-30T12:00:00.001-04:00

Here is a basic recipe that can be adapted to ingredients at hand. In the demonstration I performed at the Mother Earth News Fair I used tofu as the protein and vegetable broth in the sauce. The firm vegetables were a combination of broccoli, carrots, and green beans and the oyster sauce was a vegetarian version sold as “stir-fry sauce.”

Basic Stir-Fry (Serves 4)

If I had my druthers, I’d probably make stir-fries on most nights. It is important to have all the vegetables prepped and all the ingredients assembled before you start cooking. And don’t forget to start cooking the rice first. I have an electric rice cooker, purchased years ago. It is an appliance that gets regular use and more than justified the expensive purchase price.

--1 pound boneless skinless chicken, beef, or pork, sliced into matchsticks, or 1 pound extra-firm tofu, pressed and cubed

--5 tablespoons soy sauce

--3 tablespoons oyster-flavored sauce or vegetarian stir-fry sauce

--2 tablespoons rice wine or dry sherry

--1 tablespoon sugar

--2 teaspoons sesame oil

--1/4 teaspoon black pepper

--1 onion, halved and cut into slivers, or 1 leek, white and tender green parts only, thinly sliced

--4 cups chopped or diced firm vegetables (asparagus, broccoli, carrots, baby corn, snap beans, snow peas or snap peas), corn kernels, or shelled peas

--8 cups slivered greens (cabbage, bok choy, broccoli raab, chard, escarole, kale)

--1/2 cup chicken or vegetable broth

--1 tablespoon cornstarch

--3 tablespoons peanut or canola oil

--1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and minced

--3 to 4 garlic cloves, minced

--Hot cooked white rice

1. In a medium bowl, combine the meat or tofu, 2 tablespoons of the soy sauce, oyster sauce, 1 tablespoon of the wine, sugar, sesame oil, and pepper and set aside to marinate.

2. To make the sauce, combine the broth, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, remaining 1 tablespoon wine, and cornstarch. Whisk until thoroughly combined.

3. Heat a large wok or skillet over high heat. Add 1 tablespoon the oil and heat until very hot. Add the meat or tofu and marinade and stir-fry, stirring constantly, until well browned, 4 to 6 minutes. With a heat-proof rubber spatula, scrape out all the meat or tofu and sauce into a medium bowl and keep warm. Return the wok to high heat.

4. Heat 1 tablespoon oil over high heat until very hot. Add the onion and firm vegetables and stir-fry until slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Add 1 tablespoon soy sauce, cover, and let the vegetables steam until soft, 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from the wok and add to the meat or tofu.

5. Return the wok to high heat and add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil. Add the leafy green vegetables and stir-fry for 1 minute. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon soy sauce and continue to stir-fry until limp, about 2 minutes more. Push the vegetables to the sides of the pan and add the ginger and garlic. Cook until fragrant, about 45 seconds. Stir into the vegetables.

6. Return the meat or tofu and vegetables to the wok and toss to combine. Whisk the sauce and pour into the wok. Stir-fry until the sauce is thickened and evenly coats the vegetables, 1 to 2 minutes.

7. Serve immediately with the hot rice.

Storey Publishing Release: Reclaiming Our Food

2011-09-27T12:00:00.000-04:00

Storey Publishing is proud to announce the release of Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Food Movement Is Changing the Way We Eat by Tanya Denckla Cobb (along with a foreword by Gary Paul Nabhan and photo essays by Jason Houston).

Over the last decade a food revolution has taken place: more and more people are turning to local sources for the food they eat. Whole communities are participating in farming, gardening, and networking initiatives to help more people access fresh, healthful food that doesn't arrive on a train, plane, or tractor trailer.

In Reclaiming Our Food, author Tanya Denckla Cobb offers an in-depth analysis of how groups throughout the United States are creating sustainable ways to provide local food. From Community GroundWorks in Madison, Wisconsin, to Greensgrow Farms in eastern Philadelphia, from Lynchburg Grows in Virginia to Nuestras Raices in Holoke, Massachusetts, readers will learn about the motivating vision and people behind each organization. They will also find advice and guidance on everyday issues such as distribution, working with at-risk populations, fostering community, providing therapeutic assistance, and building the infrastructure to maintain new initiatives.

Reclaiming Our Food (2011) Photography by Jason Houston

Powerful photo essays by photographer Jason Houston tell the stories of twelve more projects, including a community-supported fishery in Beaufort, North Carolina, that distributes locally harvested fish to its members; a foraging organization in San Francisco whose deliveries might include anything from wild mushrooms to acorn flour; and a beef cooperative that markets natural products from several farmers under one brand to build recognition.

Through the voices of the people on the front line, Reclaiming Our Food provides insightful commentary on the grassroots local-food movement across the country. The result is a practical handbook that will empower community activists and planners, schools, small farmers, and the leaders of other food related initiatives, while also serving as a reference and inspiring resource for students, policymakers, and community leaders seeking an understanding of what is happening and what is required to keep it on course.

Join the ongoing discussion on the Reclaiming Our Food facebook page!

Heather Smith Thomas: Notes from Sky Range Ranch — Nosey, Part Two: Our First Years on the Ranch

2011-09-23T10:00:00.000-04:00

To read the first chapter of the story, click here.

My brother and baby sister and I, riding in the back of the Jeep,
as Dad drove up into our 320-acre mountain pasture to find the horses.
I am calling them and rattling the bucket of oats — a signal for them to come running.

In later years the skittish buckskin mare became easier to catch, partly because I was always patient and took the time to outwait her (as a child I generally had “time” and wasn’t in as big a hurry as adults, who were always on a busy schedule) and partly because Nosey became more mellow and tolerant. By the time I was in high school and our horses were wintering on 320 acres in the mountains, all I had to do was call them and they would come running.

When I was in sixth grade, we suddenly had several more horses. The ranch below our little cabin on Withington Creek came up for sale; it was 640 acres, which included several small hay meadows and a lot of mountain pasture, providing enough feed for about 50 cows. My dad and his brother (an attorney in Idaho Falls, Idaho, 170 miles away) went into partnership to buy the little ranch. My family took care of the ranch and the cattle — with my brother Rocky and me doing most of the work irrigating and fencing because Dad still had his job in town as preacher.

My uncle’s interest in the ranch was mainly as an investment and a place where he could bring his family occasionally on weekends for a vacation, to ride horses. My dad eventually bought my uncle’s share of the ranch, in part by exchanging our little acreage and cabin (farther up the creek). The cabin was perfect for my uncle’s family vacations in summer, and the ranch was a better situation for my family.

I’d always dreamed of living on a real ranch, with horses and cattle, and now we had more horses. A young chestnut filly named Ginger came with the ranch, and we bought another yearling filly — a brown Thoroughbred named Nellace — from Lester Withington. Lester was an elderly cattleman who owned the ranch at the mouth of our creek; the creek was named for his grandfather, who had homesteaded there.

The big horse corral by the creek; the small gate in the background is
where we let the horses into the corral from the Cheney Creek pasture
when I led them down each day with old Possum. This photo
was taken in winter when our bulls were living in the corral.

Our ranch had very few fences, except for the boundary fence around the half that lay along the creek. Another 320 acres up in the mountains wasn’t fenced at all. Near the old house, next to the creek, was a big horse corral where former owners periodically kept horses when they gathered them off the range to break and train. There were also two sod-roofed sheds and an old wooden granary, but no other buildings or fences. During our first summer there, Rocky and I helped Dad dig postholes to create a pasture above our house.

We also built a battery-operated electric fence to separate 70 acres of mountain pasture from the hay meadows. We let the horses run on the 70 acres in the hills and were able to keep them out of the hay fields along the creek. With that much area to roam, the horses were usually far away from the corral, up on the mountain, and difficult to catch. Yet we needed them nearly every day, to ride range and take care of the cattle. Dad purchased some Hereford cows, and during the summer they were on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) range in the mountains, a long way from the ranch. The only way to check on them, move them, or round them up in the fall was with horses. Riding range was one of my favorite things to do.

Riding range was one of my favorite things. In this photo my dad and
little sister (on Nosey) are coming home from a ride to check on the cattle.

It was also my job (a delightful task, actually) every morning to hike up Cheney Creek — the tiny little stream that ran through the horses’ 70-acre pasture — and find the horses. I took a small bucket of grain and a halter and caught old Possum. Even if the mares and fillies were flighty and hard to catch, Possum was still my buddy, and he’d always come to me for grain, and he didn’t mind being caught. Then I’d get on him bareback. There was always a steep hill or bank that I could use for climbing onto him fairly easily while holding onto my grain bucket. Once mounted, I’d head down to the corral, calling the horses. They didn’t want to be left behind, because Possum was their boss and leader, and they always followed him.

They soon figured out that there was a reward waiting for them down in the corral, and they went galloping madly down the trail ahead of Possum and me. I had to become a really good rider to stay on old Possum bareback, hanging onto his mane, the halter rope, and the empty oat bucket, as he galloped down the steep trail that went through thick bushes in certain places, following the mares.

Every day, before I hiked up to find the horses, I poured oats into several feed boxes Dad had built in the corral, so that when the horses came galloping down the hill and into the corral, there would be a treat waiting for them. In a billow of dust they would pass me and Possum and dash to the feed boxes. I’d slip off old Possum and shut the gate, then turn him loose to let him go to eat some of the oats. Once inside the corral, the horses were all much easier to catch, even Nosey. I could always corner them in the corral, and Nosey seemed to realize there was no point in trying to run away.

My cousin Jennifer riding Nosey, ready to go out on the range with me.

During one of the first corral episodes, however, she did try to evade capture. My dad was helping me catch her in the round corral, and she just kept running around us. He threw his lariat over her head but missed a perfect catch — his rope was hanging by one ear. Nosey immediately stopped dead still in her tracks, assuming she was caught, and we realized that this must have been the way her former owners caught her.

Nosey became a very useful ranch horse. She was much younger and more spirited than Possum, so I often rode her when I went up in the mountains to check on our cattle. In later years she was a good “spare” horse for anyone to ride, as long as they were experienced riders. Our cousins enjoyed riding Nosey when they came to visit, and my baby sister started riding the big mare when she was about 7 years old — after she’d practiced on old Possum.

Nosey was also a good packhorse. Dad bought a packsaddle and used Nosey to pack blocks of salt out to the range for the cows. When we repaired some of the old boundary fences and started building new fences, Nosey was the horse we always used for packing the posts and heavy rolls of barbed wire up the steep hillsides.

One half-section of our ranch had no boundary fence. There had been a fence built around part of it when it was homesteaded in the early 1900s, but that old pole fence had long since fallen down and rotted away. Before we could use this part of our ranch for our cattle, we had to build a fence around it. At that point in time it was grazed by all the neighbors’ range cattle during the summer.

My little sister started riding Nosey when she was about 7 years old.

So Rocky and I helped our dad and a cousin build the 2.5 miles of fence around that pasture. I became good at digging postholes, setting posts and tamping them, and stapling the wire after Dad strung it out along the line of posts, using Nosey to pull the wire. My brother and I kept hold of the metal bar the roll of wire was spinning on, and Dad would ride along the fence line, with the end of the wire tied to his lariat, which was tied to the saddle horn. He and Nosy could string out the wire and drag it along the ground much easier than a person could do it by hand, because often the wire got caught on sagebrush and it took a lot of strength to pull it free.

Nosey also packed the rolls of barbed wire up to the top corners of the fence, where it was too steep to drive with the Jeep. It was so steep that when Rocky and I were unloading two of the rolls one roll fell back down the hill and we couldn’t catch it. The heavy spool of wire went rolling and bouncing, faster and faster, with longer and longer bounces, almost half a mile down the mountain before it came to rest in a flatter area. We had to lead Nosey down there and lift that heavy roll back onto the packsaddle and lead her up the mountain again.

I enjoyed digging postholes and building fences.

Building fence was hard work, but I enjoyed it. It took us all summer and fall to finish that particular fence. Half a mile of that piece of ground bordered another ranch (which was already fenced), so we only had to build fence around the other parts. We also built a fence around our orchard and garden down by the house, so the horses and cattle couldn’t get into the garden or chew on the apple trees. Dad paid us 50 cents an hour or 50 cents per posthole, whichever was more. In the rocky terrain of the mountain pasture, we were glad to get 50 cents an hour, because it often took several hours to dig one hole. By contrast, we could make more money being paid by the posthole in the rock-free soil around the garden, putting in several posts per hour, so we felt that was a really good deal!

[to be continued]

Seasonal Storey Excerpt: The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds

2011-09-22T12:55:00.007-04:00

A quote from none other than George Washington greets you just inside the pages of Robert Gough and Cheryl Moore-Gough's book The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds.

"Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and season passes away unimproved."

With the passing of summer (the autumnal equinox will occur tomorrow, September 23rd at approximately 9:04am) and the approach of harvest, it is not too early to begin thinking of seed saving.

If you are like me, you've been finding ways to finagle fresh sweet corn into your dinner since the first ears started appearing in your local stores and roadside stands. Growing up in the Midwest, the end of summer was synonymous with corn, a seasonal treat that I have never once been able to get enough of. Whether you are grabbing a grilled cob from a stand in a street festival of a major city or sampling any number of dishes at corn festivals across the country, one thing is clear, fresh sweet corn makes a difference.

So taking a cue from our good pal George Washington, let's insist that are preparations for next year are not lost, and that this already great season is only improved upon. What follows are excerpts from The Complete Guide to Seed Saving, (pg 108-109, if you're reading along from home) on sweet corn. You'll find a mix of technically precise language as well as easy to follow cues on how to save your seeds and improve upon last year's harvest.

"A corn seed is an indehiscent fruitlet called a caryopsis. Corn seeds sometimes germinate on the plant under wet conditions (vivipary)."

"Select ears for such desired characteristics as size, early bearing, and tolerance to drought or temperature conditions. The uppermost ear is often the largest. Ears are usually ready to be harvested from 4 to 6 weeks after they have reached the eating stage. In short-season locales, pick ears when the husks are brown. If seeds are mature, a light freeze shouldn't hurt them. But do harvest before a hard freeze for best seed quality..."

"After harvesting, pull back the husks to expose the seed. Hang to dry further indoors in a cool location until completely dry, 2 weeks or longer. Seeds that are not completely cured may heat in storage, reducing germination percentage. Husk the ears, and place them on a screen to dry for another couple of weeks. Then, twist the ears or rub two together to release the hard, dried kernels into a bucket..."

"Seed cleaning and storage: Winnow any plant debris. Store seeds in a cool, dark place in paper bags."

"Seed treatment: Many commercial producers treat corn seed with synthetic fungicides, especially when they're sowing corn seed in cold soil. If you've had problems with corn seedling emergence in the past, be sure the soil is fully warm before planting."

"Germination: Optimum soil temperature for germination ranges from 60 to 95 degrees F (16 to 35 C). The minimum soil temperature for sowing corn is 50 degrees F. Do not sow too early or the seed will rot in the ground."

Double Red Sweet Corn

A bonus fact or two:

"In Corn, the normal sugary (su), sugary enhanced (se), and supersweet (sh2) types are all recessive. In kernel color, black or blue is dominant, and all colors are dominant over white."

Alright, so maybe you aren't as into corn as I am. Chances are you love one or more of the 321 other entries in The Complete Guide to Saving Seeds. So I suppose I'll end this post with a question or two. Do you look forward to saving the seeds of your garden this fall? If so, which vegetable, herb, flower, fruit, tree or shrub's seeds do you look forward to saving the most? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.

-Douglas Riggs, Storey Publishing International Sales and Rights Assistant

Mother Earth News Fair — Book Signing Schedule

2011-09-21T15:30:00.002-04:00

Storey Publishing and Timber Press authors will be attending this weekend's Mother Earth News Fair and all 14 will be signing books. Below is a schedule of signings for Saturday and Sunday so you don't miss your chance to meet your favorite author. Book Signings will be held at the Mother Earth News Fair Bookstore unless otherwise noted.

Saturday, September 24, 2011 - Event hours: 9 a.m. - 7 p.m.

11AM
Andrea Chesman
Arden Bucklin-Sporer (at the MEN Stage)

1PM
Jackson Landers

2PM
Barbara Pleasant

4PM
Tammi Hartung
Jennifer Bartley

5PM
Ron and Jennifer Kujawski
Ann Larkin Hansen

6PM
Jenna Woginrich (at the MEN Stage)

Sunday, September 25, 2011 – Event hours: 9 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Book Signings (at the Mother Earth News Fair Bookstore unless otherwise noted:

11AM
Sherri Brooks Vinton

1PM
Ruth Rogers Clausen

2PM
Kathy Harrison

3PM
Carol Ekarius

All of these author's works will be available at the Mother Earth News Bookstore located in the Convention Hall during the fair, as well as online at www.motherearthnews.com/shopping. Of course, if you're attending the fair, be sure to stop by and visit Storey at Booth D1 in the Convention Hall!

Mother Earth News Fair — Author Speaking Schedule

2011-09-20T12:33:00.016-04:00

If you are like us, you're pretty excited about the forthcoming weekend's Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania (September 24 to 25, 2011). Storey Publishing and the Timber Press are happy to have 14 authors who will be speaking at the fair. Please browse the full list below, organized alphabetically by last name. A chronological list will follow in days ahead.

In the meantime, should you find yourself in need of any of these authors’ works, they will be available at the Mother Earth News Bookstore located in the Convention Hall during the fair, as well as online at www.motherearthnews.com/shopping. Of course, if you're attending the fair, be sure to stop by and visit Storey at Booth D1 in the Convention Hall!

Jennifer R. Bartley

Saturday, September 24, 3 p.m. — Eating Well Stage: "Organic Food and Flowers from the Fall Kitchen Garden"

Sunday, September 25, 11 a.m. — Storey Stage: "Organic Food and Flowers from the Fall Kitchen Garden"

Arden Bucklin-Sporer

Saturday, September 24, 10 a.m. — MEN Stage: "Creating and Sustaining School Gardens and Green Schoolyards"

Andrea Chesman

Saturday, September 24, 10 a.m. — Eating Well Stage: "Mastering the Art of Stir-Frying"

Saturday, September 24, 3 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Cooking Winter Vegetables"

Sunday, September 25, 12 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Can't Cook Enough Kale (and Other Hardy Greens)"

Ruth Rogers Clausen

Saturday, September 24, 12 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Coping with Deer: How to Have Deer and a Garden Too"

Sunday, September 25, 12 p.m. — Organic Gardening Lecture Hall: "Coping with Deer: How to Have Deer and a Garden Too"

Carol Ekarius

Saturday, September 24, 11 a.m. — Storey Stage: "Poultry Breeds Roundup"

Saturday, September 24, 6 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Poultry Breeds Roundup"

Sunday, September 25, 10 a.m. — ALBC Stage: "Fiber from Animals"

Sunday, September 25, 2 p.m. — ALBC Stage: "Poultry Breeds Roundup"

Ann Larkin Hansen

Saturday, September 24, 11 a.m. — Kids’ Stage: "Bug Patrol for Kids"

Saturday, September 24, 1 p.m. — GRIT Stage: "Finding Good Land for Your Organic Farm"

Saturday, September 24, 4 p.m. — GRIT Stage: "Electric Fencing 101"

Sunday, September 25, 10 a.m. — GRIT Stage: "Creating Healthier Woods with More Wildlife: What a Landowner Can Do"

Sunday, September 25, 3 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Finding Good Land for Your Organic Farm"

Kathy Harrison

Saturday, September 24, 1 p.m. — Seasons Room: "Food Preservation for the Faint of Heart."

Saturday, September 24, 4 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Food Preservation for the Faint of Heart."

Sunday, September 25, 11 a.m. — Eating Well Stage: "Food Preservation for the Faint of Heart."

Tammi Hartung

Saturday, September 24, 10 a.m. — Storey Stage: "Designing Your Herb Garden"

Saturday, September 24, 3 p.m. — Organic Gardening Stage: "Harvesting and Storing Herbs"

Saturday, September 24, 5 p.m. — Herb Companion Stage: "Growing and Using Herbs as Part of Your Daily Lifestyle"

Sunday, September 25, 1 p.m. — Seasons Room: "Designing Your Herb Garden"

Sunday, September 25, 4 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Harvesting and Storing Herbs"

Ron and Jennifer Kujawski

Saturday, September 24, 10 a.m. — Natural Home & Garden Stage: "Getting More from Less: Space-Saving Vegetable Gardening"

Saturday, September 24, 2 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Stretching the Growing Season"

Saturday, September 24, 4 p.m. — Organic Gardening Lecture Hall: "Stretching the Growing Season"

Sunday, September 25, 10 a.m. — Storey Stage: "Growing Garlic: Breathless"

Jackson Landers

Saturday, September 24, 11 a.m. — Seasons Room: "The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food"

Saturday, September 24, 3 p.m. — Seasons Room: "The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food"

Sunday, September 25, 11 a.m. — Seasons Room: "The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food"

Sunday, September 25, 2 p.m. — Seasons Room: "The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food"

Barbara Pleasant

Saturday, September 24, 1 p.m. — Organic Gardening Stage: "Getting Started in Organic Vegetable Gardening"

Saturday, September 24, 5 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Innovative Home Composting"

Sunday, September 25, 2 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Getting Started in Organic Vegetable Gardening"

Sherri Brooks Vinton

Sunday, September 25, 10 a.m. — Eating Well Stage: "Put ’em Up! Classic preserves, modern twist"

Sunday, September 25, 1 p.m. — Eating Well Stage : "Put ’e m Up! Classic preserves, modern twist"

Jenna Woginrich

Saturday, September 24, 10 a.m. — Seasons Room: "Chick Days: First Steps to a Backyard Flock"

Saturday, September 24, 1 p.m. — Storey Stage: "The Backyard Rabbitry: Rabbits for Meat"

Saturday, September 24, 5 p.m. — MEN Stage: "Taking the First Steps to Sustainability"

Sunday, September 25, 10 a.m. — Seasons Room: "Chick Days: First Steps to a Backyard Flock"

Sunday, September 25, 1 p.m. — Storey Stage: "Chick Days: First Steps to a Backyard Flock"

Sunday, September 25, 4 p.m. — Seasons Room: "The Backyard Rabbitry: Rabbits for Meat"