Spring Calves and a Tea Party Fountain
Spring, 2023 beef calves…. healthy and rambunctious
Of the five beef cows bred last fall, all five produced calves this spring…. The steer is named Pronoun, and will be raised for meat for the fall of 2024. The four ladies are Blanche, Sophia, Dorothy and Rose. Nicely done! As well, Mirabel, our milk cow, came through with a little heifer, Bella. Hopefully, she’ll become our new milk cow in a couple of years. Training is always the issue…..
Kashaya’s diligent attention to raising tomatoes and peppers allowed the Gleaners to sell bunches of them last Sunday at their sale in Willits (along with some basil). That was after we planted just over 100 tomato plants and 180 pepper plants (mostly hot) in the garden here. It seems that Cowboy Candy is extremely popular….. and we need plenty of hot peppers to make enough of it!
Needless to say, spring has sprung….. there are flowers galore on the farm! Take a peek at the brilliantly bold Oriental Poppies….. and the aromatic bower of Cecil Brunner Roses outside of the Bunkhouse. Folks coming Memorial Day Weekend will bask in this current bounty of beauty!
Today, Kashaya finally got her portable pizza oven back…. It was burned in one of the fires that ravaged northern California a few years ago. New tires and a trailer wide enough to handle it was part of the process. Now, it’s ensconced above the garden, waiting for the most appropriate place to reside. It’s no longer really portable, but still great for doing pizzas. The thought is that we’ll be able to serve pizza to some smaller groups during the off-season, without having to fire up the big one. More to come!
Judy Chance Hope, a wonderful artist, came out last week to get one of the paintings I purchased from her a few years ago…. so that it could be put in the new exhibit at the Grace Carpenter Hudson Museum in Ukiah: Something’s Happening Here: Artistic Reflections on the Back to the Land Movement (of the 1960s and ‘70s) She’s one of thirty people asked to be a part of the show. Fortunately, she was able to touch up another of her paintings, which had been slightly chipped while in transport.
Art and artists seem to be popping up all over! Ukiah had an “Art in the Gardens” tour last weekend…… Below, you can see a whimsical vignette in the front yard of Spencer Brewer and Esther Siegel, two of the artists on the tour. I do think that we need to create our own Tea Party Fountain here at Emandal. I KNOW we have plenty of things to work with!
The tour was delightful….. so much so, that we’re inviting artists to join us here on the farm in October…. to add to the “Not JUST Cowboy Poetry” day of events! Poetry, music, story-telling…… pie and ice cream eating…… an auction….. AND oodles of art! What fun! If all works out, Judy will be one of the artists exhibiting some of her work here that day.
Strange things crawl into the kitchen throughout the year…. but springtime seems to be the most prolific. Always tiny ants. The banana slug is new…. I don’t think they usually get up as far as the pot sink. It likes damp places….. Always in the basement, assuredly.
Geese and turkey, May, 2023. Alas, no ducks. One wily weasel……