Newsletter For Friends

  September 2008

Greetings from DanaRay Farm,

“The goats were in the garden.” This simple little statement sent a panic through my entire system and put my brain on overload. Sort of like “Your hair is on fire,” or “I invited an axe murderer to dinner.” The garden…THE GARDEN! The goats were IN the garden! IN THE GARDEN…the very garden where the fall cabbage transplants were put out two weeks earlier…that garden…THAT GARDEN??!! The garden where the broccoli and brussel sprouts and cauliflower are. That garden??!! My brain quickly pictured a clear cut through a tropical rain forest and a herd of contented goats with well rounded bellies burping up a bit of cabbage flavored cud. They were smiling and didn’t look even a little guilty. All those plants…goats love cabbage…there’s nothing left my brain screamed…and I can’t replace them…it’s too late in the season…they’ll never be ready before the freeze…what am I going to give my CSA? How am I going to feed these people!? What else was in there…my mind quickly went through the inventory…pumpkins and winter squash…should be OK…hot and sweet peppers…goats wouldn’t eat peppers…I can’t picture them eating peppers…leek? Well maybe…celery and celeriac…I don’t think so but I’m not real sure.

Ray was looking at me through the car window. I always drive up to the barn to say good bye before going to my real job and as I lowered the window he hadn’t looked real happy went he had said…”The goats were in the garden.”…I think I took a deep breath as my brain took a break from all these images of a DanaRay Farm Blockbuster horror/disaster movie.

 “How bad?” I managed.

“Bad.” he paused “I came up and they weren’t in the barn and so I called them and they were in the garden. I think they were there all night.”  All night. ALL NIGHT?  A herd of goats in a cabbage patch all night…there can’t be a leaf left.

“Did they get…?”

“Take a look.” He said.

“No, I can’t, I’m running late…” so I left looking quickly into the garden as I backed up my car to head to work…well I can still see some brussel sprouts…it’s not a clear cut.  All day at work I envisioned the wreckage that was my beautiful perfect new barnyard garden.  All that day at work…there’s nothing left…followed by….what am I going to feed these people…kept running like an audio loop through my brain. This was followed by…I wonder what cabbage flavored milk tastes like?

 The next morning I took a deep breath and went to survey the damage. Well, somehow they managed to miss most of the tiniest of the cabbage and cauliflower transplants. The larger transplants had all their outer leaves removed but the center, their leaves just starting to turn in to form heads were mostly intact. The brussel sprouts were topped and a lot of the outer leaves were gone but the sprouts were still there. They ate the hot peppers…they were gone…there were a few crushed orange habaneras on the ground to show the space where the day before were a dozen plants all loaded with ripening peppers. There was a stick or two left from the jalapenos with a crushed blossom or two. The Hungarian hot wax had a few leaves left and a few damaged fruits…maybe they weren’t hot enough for whoever ate them all yesterday. Now I had to wonder what hot pepper flavored milk tastes like? They ate the leaves off the one variety of pumpkin but left them alone on the other two…I can’t picture them tasting good and they’re prickly. They ate all the baby beets…my fall beets. Oh no…

 I left the garden, the goats all lined up to say hi. A few of them bleated a greeting. Hi mom…well the gate just kinda fell open you know. I reached out and pet Sassy and she looked so happy as I did so. OK, I still love you…you all just better explain to the CSA why there’s no cauliflower, hot peppers, cabbage and beets this fall.

 ….

The last of the roasting chickens will be going to the butcher this month so if you want chicken get it now.

Ray has been cutting and splitting wood like crazy and the wood pile is growing and growing. I gave Ray just one job for this winter; keep the fire going. We will be warm this winter…and we’ll have plenty of good food to eat…after that I guess it’s all just gravy. We’re buying our own propane tanks which will save us nearly a dollar a pound so that’ll help. I fear we’re going to hear some terrible stories this winter…people needing to choose between food and fuel and the terrible consequences of their choice.

Ray says that of course he’ll have many jobs this winter and that I always make it sound as if he does nothing and I do everything. I tell him this is because the newsletter is written by me and so he should write his side as he did last month. So far he’s declined to do so…but as anyone who’s ever been here knows he works very, very hard.

We always look for ways to make the farm more efficient and I think we have a chicken that’s looking to help us with this goal. Ray always hangs the empty egg basket in the coop until he collects the first eggs around 10 in the morning. When he went up this one morning one very efficient hen had laid her egg right in the egg basket. Now that’s helping out the cause for greater efficiency.

We’ve decided to increase the shares in the CSA by ten. So if you’ve been on the waiting list for a while there’s a good chance of getting into our CSA next year. We’ll need to turn over a bit more garden of course and we’ll be requiring our members to give us a little help but the demand has been great so I think it’s time.

Well that’s all for now…the sun is red on the horizon so it’s time to go pick.

Talk to you soon,

Dana and Ray

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