Are YOU a food adventurer?

Our newest bumper sticker is unveiled!

I’d been planning this newsletter all week as a way to unveil our newest Oakhill bumper stickers (see photo above — ta da!). I figured I’d wax poetic about what it means to be a “Food Adventurer” and call it good. And, I’ll start there (but — suspense! — more adventure awaits after that!):

“Food Adventurer” is a fun phrase I started using in late 2012 as we were signing up the very first participants in our Full Diet CSA. That program is such a novel concept (commit deeply to one farm and eat super seasonally!) that I kept thinking of these “early adopters” as being on a serious adventure. We all were. We all still are! For the farmers and eaters alike, the Full Diet has been an adventure in the truest sense — a few solid bumps in the road plus plenty of wandering and a whole lot of thrilling fun. (For more about the Full Diet adventure, check out the article that ran in The News-Register‘s special Green Living section last Tuesday!) Anyhow, when I address these our Full Diet CSA members, I often do so by saying, “Dear Food Adventurers” …

I’ve grown fond of this phrase over the last year and a half. So, I thought: it’s time for a new bumper sticker! It’s been years since we put one out, but I love seeing the older version out and about in the county (Who still has the first 2006 manifestation on their car? We don’t even have one anymore!). The more I thought about it, the more I realized: all of our customers are “Food Adventurers.” Perhaps the Full Diet folks are most fully immersed in the adventure (well, except for us farmers, of course), but anyone committing to eat seasonally from a local farm is on an adventure. Because, except for a few of us, this way of eating is new and requires lots of stretching and growing before it becomes fully comfortable. I’ve written many times before in this newsletter about how much Casey and my diet changed when we first started working on a farm many, many years ago. There were so many foods that we had to learn how to cook (and enjoy!), and the process literally took years of eating vegetables every single day. And, even then, the vagaries of farming bring adventures still — What crops will be extraordinary this year? Which ones will disappoint? What will be late? Early? There’s excitement in walking the season through the farm food. I never tire of that link between our plates and the natural world outside our door. It is a thrilling adventure, indeed.

But, today adventure took on a new level of meaning here on the farm. Years ago, when we were “just” vegetable farmers (quite a big thing in of itself, folks!), we used to joke that we grew vegetables because “they don’t run away.” That was a somewhat flip and funny explanation of complex reasoning for not having animals on our farm at the time. And, that was the right decision for then, and having animals is the right decision now. Factors have changed. So has our knowledge base and goals.

But, you know what hasn’t changed? Vegetables don’t run away. But, guess what? Animals do. At least, sometimes.

In the first year of having animals out here (the dreaded 2012 — hardest year of our lives! And yet so fulfilling too! Like all big challenges!), we had a lot to learn about portable electric fencing and animal containment (which is also related to things like forage quality, reproductive cycles of animals, etc.) Animals getting out their paddocks was a pretty normal thing around here. Most of the time, these incidents were pretty minor. Someone would call for back-up, and within a few minutes, all the animals were happily contained again (the cool thing about portable electric fencing is that it’s … portable. Meaning that we could create new paddocks around the animals where they were!). But there were a few pretty epic events, all of which had happy endings even though they were stressful at the time.

Thank goodness, such events have become much less frequent. Happy animals + effective fencing = predictably contained animals. It’s been wonderful to have animal containment be a routine part of our farm — as it should be!!!!

But. Something must be funny with the moon or the planets or something, because within 24 hours (Sunday afternoon through Monday afternoon), we had four separate animal escape incidents — all involving completely different animals and situations! The first was a sow who decided she really preferred “farrowing” (birthing) in a patch of blackberries instead of the pen we’d set up for her. Once she was located, everyone smiled, because her litter of piglets looked so incredibly healthy, and mama sow was making happy mama sow noises. And, thankfully, portable fencing is portable, so now she’s contained in her special blackberry maternity ward.

Then, this morning, Casey set up an electric fence paddock for a bull calf we are bottle feeding. Up until that time, this young calf had only experienced “hard” fencing (i.e. where the efficacy of the fencing comes from it being rigid and solid rather than painful). For animals who have experienced electric fencing, we can often get a little wiggle room with setting up an energizer, because they visually know that the fence is a fence. This little guy didn’t yet, and Casey set up the fence before the energizer, then let him in, and BOOM he was out quicker than anything! I walked out to the car at this moment and watched Casey and Jasper sprinting down our field after the calf. They did manage to corral him back in, but not before reliving their football days! (Minus the cleats — but Jasper reported that the calf was faster than any Quarterback he’d ever seen.)

Then, José went out to collect eggs and something weird happened with the fence as he was entering the paddock that has the chickens and pigs in it, and BOOM the cattle and sheep were out! It took about 40 minutes to get them all back in.

THEN, Casey was receiving two new beef animals from a breeder — a heifer and steer. Everything was set up as normal; we’ve worked with this breeder before; there was no reason to think anything would be strange. But for some reason, as soon as he was unloaded, BOOM the steer took off down the field. The breeder took off after him and had the steer charge him (this is a Corriente steer, bred for rodeo roping with big horns!). Casey and the crew chased the steer on foot and in vehicles all the way across our large field into a neighbor’s field, where the animal charged Casey as well. Casey had to stand there watching this large animal run straight at him and then jump to the side (and grab the animal’s horns to be sure) at the last minute. The horns touched his body as the steer was going by. And, then the steer repeatedly charged the field vehicle Jasper was driving (an open topped John Deere Gator — not a very protective enclosure for poor Jasper).

At that point (1.5 miles from home), everyone agreed that there was only one safe ending to this story. Even if the animal could be contained (unlikely), we couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t charge one of us during our normal animal chores, and that is a risk we cannot have out here on the farm. We select all our animals for gentleness and ease of working with — this was the opposite!

So, I received a very excited phone call from Casey asking me to please bring him our rifle and ammunition. I packed the children quickly into the car (they were both playing in our wading pool and were totally naked!), picked up the rifle, and drove halfway across the island, down an access road I’d never driven on, and passed it off to Casey. Everyone else cleared out of the scene. At this point, the steer was headed back to our land, and Casey carefully followed it until he could get within shooting range. I watched with the kids from the car. Finally we heard a shot. The animal was still standing. Another shot, and the steer started falling. Finally, the kill shot, and he was down. Big sigh of relief.

I imagine this is all startling to read for some of you. Let me tell you: it was startling to experience! And then some! Gun ownership is a relatively new thing for us, let alone Wild West inspired cowboy scenes of charging steers with horns and such. Remember: vegetables don’t run away. They also don’t charge or put our lives at risk. Oh my what a day of Food Adventurers.

The breeder who sold us the animal apologized about a thousand times. He said he’s never seen any of his animals do anything like that before, and he is going to bring us a new one soon. In the meantime, Casey ended up working late cleaning the carcass of this animal so that it wouldn’t go to waste — a beef animal represents a lot of meat! Given that he’d just arrived on our farm, he will not be given to our customers, but we may split the meat up amongst the farm crew. We’ll see.

For now, we’re just happy to be home, safe, alive, and enjoying some quiet moments without any sprinting across fields. What a day.

I joked earlier that something must be off in the planets, but really I wonder. We’ve been following our Biodynamic farming calendars closely this month, and if the moon and planets can affect seeds, why not animals? Four breakouts in 24 hours is just too uncanny. Plus, Casey talked with a dairy farmer today who had his own epic breakout experience last night (same 24 hours period) — in the middle of the night, all 250 of his cows escaped their pasture and were wandering down the county road. He found out when a motorist woke him up banging on his door. How’s that for a rude wake-up? (They got them back in, but it was also an adventure.) So, really, cosmos, what’s up? Either way, let this moon phase or whatnot be over. We love our food/farming adventures, but the food itself is sufficient to keep us thrilled. We can do without the Wild West style of adventures (especially that end so dramatically).

But, anyhow, we’ve got new bumper stickers! We’ll have plenty at pick-up, so you can wear your own “Food Adventurer” status with pride. Feel free to take one (or two or three!) to put on your car, bike, water bottle, or whatever!

And, enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Asian greens — We most often use these kinds of Asian greens for braising. They cook up very quickly, making them great for breakfast or a “fast” meal (for us Food Adventurers who eat from scratch, “fast” meals can be hard to come by! That’s why I love making enough meals to have leftovers!).
• Lettuce — Casey and I ate lettuce salads several times this week. Seriously, lettuce? So good! I forget over the winter! I do so, genuinely and totally, love our hardier salads. But a head of good lettuce is a beautiful thing in so many ways (not the least of which is the appearance of the head itself before cutting!).
• Seasonal salad mix
• Chard
• Beets — We are nearing the very final end of our winter storage crops! I know that folks are probably “over” beets, but enjoy these last beautiful sweet bites of winter foods.
• Leeks
• Green garlic — We’ve been enjoying the green garlic immensely this last week. Many of our meals begin with green garlic frying in butter, and I find myself thinking every single time: “Is there a better smell? Is this heaven in my nose? Is this bliss?” Because it is amazing.