Spring for the honey bee arrives with the first significant source of nectar and pollen: red maple tree blooms. Throughout the winter, with a focus on mere survival, honey bees hunker down and live off of their stores of honey. Here in the northern reaches of the North Carolina Piedmont, they bide their time until late January (climate change has moved this earlier in time) to mid-February and the blossoming of the red maple tree. Much like flipping a switch, the arrival of that first pollen sets a whole series of activities in motion within the hive. The pollen is a protein source and signals that it is now time to start boosting the population. The queen starts to lay, and the workers have a means to deliver vital nutrients to the young bees.

When you look at the photos, notice the yellow pollen packed onto their legs as they fly in. That pale yellow is a blob of red maple pollen. All pollens have their own colors.

Other creatures seem to mark this time as something more significant as well. The days are getting longer, birds are turning around in their migration, and our chickens have started laying their eggs once again.

Hello "Spring!"

July 15, 2022 || Updated July 16, 2022

Rural living can be idyllic: It offers space, seclusion, quiet, fresh air, and is far FAR prettier. And it’s just so much cleaner! Bonus: you are far less likely to experience conflict with one of your neighbors. Often, country life also represents a cheaper lifestyle.

There are a few tradeoffs, though. For one, yardwork may be non-trivial. Your commute may also be rather significant. If you use public transit, you will likely need a car just to get to the route’s starting point. But folks work through that stuff. These are not new problems. The big tradeoff that plagues rural homesteads today is access to high-speed internet. Or the lack thereof. And this lack of quality access is a real drag on rural economies, childhood development, and more.

In the late ’90s, internet access became a necessity. Now, when dial-up was the standard, everyone—rural, suburban, urban—was pretty much on an even playing field. But then high-speed internet arrived. Dial-up was adequate for a short while, but as the speed of data transmission increased, so did the complexity of the websites being served. For a time, the majority of rural America was essentially internet dark.

Some rural residents simply did without. Their kids used resources at school. Adults used resources at libraries, cafes, and their places of employment. Rural folks limped along. For others, the problem has become so acute that they simply gave up and moved instead of fighting through the problem.

Then the pandemic hit. Millions of people who were limping along suddenly found themselves stuck at home with few options. Expensive options, no less.

There are high-speed options, but they are expensive, limited, slower, and often deliver a poor user experience. Until recently, the only real options were: satellite, DSL, and cell—depending on location, sometimes only satellite.

Not only is DSL availability location dependent, but so is the speed. Here, DSL speeds are slower than satellite. Also, DSL is often expensive, especially for the installation.

A cell signal is also location-dependent (cell tower required!). Cell throughput speeds are slower than satellite, and hotspot plans are data capped. At least Verizon’s is (the only option for us). Once that data is exceeded, they slow the data speed to mostly unusable until the next billing cycle.

So, at our house, for the past eight years, the internet has been provided by ViaSat and HughesNet. I (Todd) would describe satellite internet as just barely good enough. The speed was reasonably fast (fast enough). But data consumption was capped: When we ran over our limit (usually on week three for us), the service provider slowed down the data rate to merely painful but not unusable. From 2 a.m. to 8 a.m., the service was not capped at all (woo!). We could also purchase more gigabytes of data for the month, which we often did.

Sometimes I just tried to get all my internet-heavy work done in the wee hours of the morning (those 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. bonus hours could be a lifesaver). We enjoyed no streaming media. (Netflix still delivers entertainment via DVD!!!) Pandora? Youtube videos? Extravagances!

Though satellite internet speeds were decent, the big usability challenge was dealing with latency. Latency is defined as the time it takes for a call-and-response between a router and a satellite before the flow of data can commence. On a single load, many websites will initiate many connections, each requiring a new call-and-response to that satellite way up in the sky. (Just imagine how many requests Google Sheets makes when rendering that spreadsheet for you.)

What this means: Complex websites are slow or sometimes don’t even work. Video-conferencing and voice-over-IP calls can encounter significant delays.

We begged off conference calls at every opportunity. Voice-over-IP phone calls would have a noticeable 3- to 10-seconds of lag between hearing the other person speak and them hearing your response. Painful. I worked in the tech industry for years, where most of my day involved attending phone-in and video-in meetings. I did a lot of listening. I drove to a cafe if I knew I had to be truly engaged.

Eight years of that! Ugh.

Oh, and did I mention that satellite internet is a bit pricey? On average, we spent roughly $225 to $250 per month on sub-par internet.

This past year, we noticed that the Verizon cell signal at our house was most reliable on the second story on the east side. Weak but reliable. Woo-hoo! Cell is slower than satellite, but at least we would not be burdened by that latency issue.

Verizon would not support whole-home cell internet in our area, but they did have a portable dedicated-device hotspot option. Boom! Good enough! Satellite internet service canceled!

With two or more of us using the hotspot at any given moment, it was not very speedy, and sometimes it would overheat and shut down. But it worked! Sadly, Verizon didn’t have a nighttime data grace period. Even with a larger data cap, we always ran out at least 4 or 5 days before the end of the cycle. Painful!

Starlink

. . . Let me introduce you to the new girl in town . . .

On June 25th, after over a year on the waiting list, a black box arrived. It was an antenna and router to enable the Starlink low-earth-orbit satellite service. Starlink is a service provided by SpaceX, one of those new private-sector rocket companies.

The traditional satellite internet services we have been using worked via a directed satellite dish in communication with a satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the Earth.

A Starlink antenna (calling it a dish is a stretch) communicates with a matrix of satellites orbiting around the Earth. But these satellites are only 210+/- miles above our heads. Latency is orders of magnitude improved in comparison, and since there are many satellites, speeds are really darn good.

One big caveat with Starlink is that you need a relatively clear view of the sky in all directions (clear to the north seems to be the priority). That’s not so difficult if you live in the desert, but we live in rural temperate North Carolina, and that means . . . trees; trees everywhere.

For testing purposes, we just stuck the antenna outside on a table on the north side of the house (see the previous photo) and flipped it on.

It worked! And it worked well. Except when it didn’t. Far too many obstructions. Unlike traditional satellite services, the gap between the trees was just not good enough. This antenna had to go on the roof. This initial failure made me nervous, though. The trees surrounding our house are taller than the house—on all sides.

The correct method of mounting the antenna would be to stick it on a long pole (a mast) strapped to one of the third-floor chimneys. (A) This would require a pole, a mount, grounding wire, and a way to strap it to a chimney. And (B) those third-floor chimneys were way WAY up there on a sometimes slippery steep-sloped roof. So, no, we weren’t doing that until we proved the concept.

For round two, I jerry-rigged a wooden platform strapped to the metal roof. I essentially Boy Scouted the sucker to the second-story roof. It wasn’t ideally located, but . . . we remained hopeful. Obstructions included the third story of the house on one side, a tall tree and chimney on the other, and partially-blocking trees north and south.

First of all, I have to say that I was kind of proud of my mounting handiwork. It was meant to be temporary, but I think it could theoretically hold for years, if required.

We turned on the power and . . .

Even with all that obstruction, service was much improved. The Starlink phone app indicated some minor outage every couple of minutes for a second or two or five (micro-outages). Still, the service was usable enough that we ditched the cell hotspot we thought we’d have to use for backup. We experienced the occasional 10+ second outage. This made voice-over-IP and video-conferencing calls sometimes very annoying, but if nothing else changed, this would still be a giant step up from what we had before.

Mast it!

My makeshift platform was a good enough, but temporary, solution. The next step was to mount it to a chimney. I could not safely mount it to a third-story chimney. The second story would have to do. If that wasn’t sufficient, we’d hire someone to take it higher.

We ordered a pipe adapter (took a week), and I researched mounting things on an antenna mast.

I was hoping for 30 feet, but that was utterly unworkable as a solitary dude putting this stuff together and working on a slick metal roof. Instead we chose to use a 10-foot pole (1.25” EMT conduit). We mounted it to the chimney with antenna chimney mounts (they are a thing!). We drove a copper-coated grounding rod into the ground at the base of the chimney. We then strung a grounding wire from the mast (the pole), just under the antenna itself, to the grounding rod.

Ideally, we would have some means to ground the cable between the antenna and the router in the house. Unfortunately, that cable is something unique that I don’t know how to deal with (and I could find nothing helpful on the internet). Instead, we bought a $100 UPS with robust surge protection, and we’ll hope for the best. (Is this the thoughts and prayers version of electrical safety?) If the house generates a surge, the router should be protected. If the surge originates from the antenna . . . Well, it’ll probably be toast. But we are hopeful. And we are optimistic that perhaps the grounding wire will redirect any electrical fury away from the electronics. If lightning strikes it, mind you, everything will be fried regardless.

We mounted the antenna, flipped it on, and WOW! Just ten feet higher than the last mount position, and very nearly all obstructions just disappeared. On the first day we went almost 24 hours without an outage due to an obstruction. We went 18 hours without a noticeable outage of any sort. (We did have a short 3-second outage due to a confused or faulty satellite.)

So. Starlink FOR THE WIN! Let’s just hope this service maintains this use experience for the next several years. In our attempt to get away from traditional satellite internet, we spent hundreds of dollars on the cell hotspot and service and then about twelve hundred dollars setting up the Starlink service (Starlink equipment, antenna mast, mounts and clamps, grounding stuff, and a mesh router). It could have been five-thousand dollars, though, and we would have paid for it. Twelve hundred is nothing to sneeze at for folks on a constrained budget. Still, this service is a game-changer for rural America.

I should note: Elon Musk (the founder and visionary of both Tesla and SpaceX) does not seem to be the greatest person in the world. Maybe his douchebaggery is balanced out by this clear act of goodness. Personally, though, I would eagerly give him a long, lingering, open-mouthed kiss right about now if he asked for it.

We have internet! I think I will listen to a bit of Pandora while I work today: so bougie!

And now, for your pleasure: Outtakes! And a goat!

Lots of folks buy our [pre-packaged cuts of lamb and mutton], but we have one customer who buys a whole sheep per week. As a side hustle, he runs a family catering business (the Marquez family) specializing in authentic backyard Latin American cuisine.

We asked him to bring us a sample, and so he did! On Monday (June 6th), we heard someone toot their horn in our driveway. I (Todd) was just coming in from working outside when I rounded the back of the house. There he stood—a smiling Mr. Marquez—arm outstretched, holding a white plastic bag. I took a peek inside, enveloping my head in the aroma of roasted lamb goodness. Just in time for dinner, we were about to sample his lamb—or in this case, mutton—barbacoa.

We gently mixed in the cilantro and onions and squeezed the lime over top. Bliss! We tried it on both a soft tortilla and naked. Delicious in both cases, but naked, it really emphasized how good it was without the distraction of a carbohydrate filler.

So good!

He's going to bring us some soup next week. They use the rest of the animal to make the soup: bones, tissue, etc., though it is best not to ask for all the details. We look forward to that.

Though we love the samples, we mostly just appreciate someone who respects the animal and the sustenance it provides and the fellowship good food facilitates.

We think the Marquezes only cater to friends and family at the moment, but if you would like to book them to cater for your gathering, we can reach out to them.

We'd be remiss if we didn't guide you to our [lamb/mutton page]. It doesn't provide a fancy shopping cart, but the process is easy enough: Just email us a list of what you want. We'll then send you an invoice and set aside your order, ready for when you come and pick it up.

And just like that, we adopted two goats!

We've been going on and on for years that we needed to add goats to the mix and maybe even a pair of mini-cows so that we more completely grazed our pastures. We even had a name and phone number on a sticky-note mounted to our computer monitor for the last 10 months: Casey the Goat Girl.

Well, two days ago (June 4th), Todd, in a moment of inspiration, snatched the note from the monitor and texted, "So, you got any goats?"

A few hours later, these two cuties joined the sheep in the south pasture.

We know next to nothing about goats, but we'll learn. We're sure they aren't all that different from sheep. We'll still consult with the local vet and make sure we get them on the right vaccine schedule and ensure they get adequate minerals.

Let's meet the goats:

1. They are twins! They were born on February 6th, 2022. Today is their four-month birthday!
2. Both are female (doelings).
3. We now know why baby goats are called kids. When distressed they let out a blood-curdling wail that sounds like a 5-year-old human being tortured. Unnerving.
4. Breed: Boer-Nubian cross—meat and dairy breeds.
5. Yup! They have horns. Fun!
6. Right now they weigh about 40 pounds a piece. Fully grown, they will probably top out at around 200 pounds each. That's a lot of goat!
7. Names? They will each get a number when we ear-tag them. All of our sheep have names as well. Those names just happen to be numbers. :)

On day one, the sheep treated the goats like alien invaders and ran from them. Sheep and goats are cousins, but . . . I suppose it would be similar two what would happen if we stopped off at a high school, opened a door to a school assembly, shoved in a couple of chimpanzees, quickly shut the door, and then ran away. The goats immediately want to join the flock. The sheep ran away from them. It was a circus for the first hour before they all agreed to which corner of the paddock they were allowed to hang out in. One ewe, #41, enforced this with a headbutt if they got too close.

On day two (today), the sheep have shown more tolerance—I mean, come on! They are so cute!!!—and have allowed the goats to hover just outside of the flock. We figure in a week's time, they will just be part of the family.

Welcome to the family, little goats!

On April 24th, one of our hives swarmed (see video here).

Swarming is honey bee reproduction in action. (Really honey bee colony (a super-organism) reproduction in action.) Sometime in the lifecycle of a colony, a consensus triggers a process where maybe half the hive departs, taking the old queen with them. The remaining bees stay behind and rear a new replacement queen who will—once mated, on the wing away from the hive—take over the old digs.

When a swarm departs, they do it in a wildly dramatic cloud (see video). They will then collect on some structure, often 15+ feet in the air (usually a tree branch). This is a staging area. While they wait, scout bees will break away from that cluster and search for a new home to move into that meets their spec.—ideally, someplace safe and dry and usually, surprise surprise, 15+ feet in the air. (Beekeepers manage hives at waist level only for their convenience.)

If we are fortunate, we can sometimes grab a ladder, collect that cluster of bees, and give them a new home. (There is a way to do this without much fuss.)

If we are SUPER fortunate, those scouts will search that same bee yard, find some empty equipment, and move right in. Many beekeepers attempt to take advantage of this behavior and leave empty hives scattered about their bee yards—all set up and ready to be used. We call these designated hives swarm traps. More often than not, though, swarms will bypass this equipment. One of the primary reasons is because, if you recall, that 15+ feet seems to matter to honey bees looking for a new home.

In the spirit of expertly playing the swarm game, the more persistent beekeeper will erect empty boxes in the air at a height honey bees prefer.

Well, here at Tandem Farms (The Carolina Bee Company), we did just that. We erected an empty hive in an old oak tree, about 15 feet or so in the air. Sadly, we constructed this elevated trap after this swarming incident. Of course, there's no guarantee those bees would have picked our equipment to move into anyway, no matter how nice and shiny.

What happened to the swarm? We are not sure. We saw them beginning to cluster in that tree, and then we left for a while so they could settle in peacefully. But when we came to check on them later, they were gone. They either swarmed off to a better staging area, or their scouts already found a new home, or as sometimes happens, perhaps they changed their minds (collective minds) and returned to their old hive. It happens. We took a brief tour of the bee yard, and hive #1 looked rather full (reference the photo of the bearding hive), so maybe that's where they ended up.

Swarming behavior is a fascinating event coordinated through consensus and is rather magical to witness. Maybe the next swarm will accept our invitation to move into a nice clean hive way up in a tree.

#Beekeeping. This frame is 10+ years old & significantly moth damaged. We prepped it for a new hive w/ fresh wax foundation. Our technique, some beekeepers may notice, is slightly different than others: We wire the frame, but use unwired foundation. The cleat is stapled (or nailed) so that it stands vertically.

Answers to some questions . . .

1. Why not plastic foundation or frame? We don't do plastic in the hive. Not for a piece that'se in there more permanently.
2. Why not wired foundation? Messy to clean up later.
3. The vertical cleat? We rotate out wax that is 3 years old or older by cutting out the old, and then putting the frame back in the hive to be rebuilt. That waxy piece of wood helps guide the bees to rebuild w/o foundation.
4. Then why foundation at all? Sometimes we have hives that need a complete reboot (or it's a swarm, or, or ...) and a bunch of frames with foundation gives a great beginning to a young hive.

Days and days of rain. Tree down in the south pasture. (Missed everything! Woot!) Pond overflowing; spillway spillin'. Half the fence is shorted out. Ground a soggy mess. ... Rain then sleet then snow.

We need this precipitation, but man, it makes everything harder.

10% off until September 13th, 2021!

Are you grilling this weekend or the next?

We have freezers full of lamb and mutton: steaks, brats, merguez sausage, and roasts.

[Everything is 10% off], starting today and running until September 13th, 2021.

This is what happens after you just collected a basket full of eggs and the rooster attacks.

As soon as I saw that eight-pound @$#% give me the eye (you chicken people know The Eye), I switched to my tried-and-true defensive posture: I flailed about and shouting things that sounded a lot like "Eek! Eek!"—but manly, of course—at a psychotic bird intent on maiming the human. I'd liked to think the rooster and I reached a stalemate. The eggs, unfortunately, became, oh, so many casualties.

-todd

Published October 25, 2020 || Updated November 2, 2020

Electric fencing is expensive and challenging to maintain

Only the southern half of our property is electrified. The east (our front yard), west (the back-forty), and northern pastures are not. To safely contain our sheep (and protect them from predators), we have had to be creative by using portable fencing and experimenting with different ways of extending the fence current.

Over the years, we have slowly improved the infrastructure of the farm so that more and more pasture is surrounded and subdivided by semi-permanent electrified fencing. Fencing is expensive. And more fencing, especially subdivided fencing, means more gates.

With all this fencing, our little farm requires over twenty gates. But traditional metal fence gates are also expensive and need robust fence posts to support them. We hate digging post holes. Hate. Therefore, in lieu of metal gates, we came up with a fence gating scheme using electrified rope and two-by-twos. Electrified rope is also expensive when compared to other electrified cord options. But a roll of electrified rope can make a lot of gates which are far cheaper than the equivalent metal gates they replace.

Over time, we have added electrified rope gates throughout the farm. The gates are portable, but we prefer to leave gates in place instead of carrying them from one end of the farm to another. We have maybe eight more gates left to build.

As mentioned previously, we had not yet electrified our front yard (the east pasture). Pretty wood-rail fencing surrounds it, but nothing electrical. When running the sheep through the front yard, we would set up portable electric netting to ensure they didn't leak through the rails. What a pain! Additionally, the driveways were wide open (no gates), so those had to be blocked off as well.

Driveway gates: forever on the to-do list

Adding metal gates to the driveway have been forever on our to-do list (for lots of reason, not just for sheep containment). But again, gates cost money, and we'd have to dig post holes. So we kept putting it off.

Then we thought, Why not just use the same gating system we use for the rest of the farm and electrify the front at the same time? Mind you, the design itself is simple, but there was a problem: opening and shutting a rope gate would not be as simple as unlatching a metal gate and swinging it open.

Or so we thought.

A plan comes together

One day, we had a moment of clarity—an epiphany.

Our driveway is a loop with two exits. The fence-lined front yard is about an acre and lies within the loop. Our house sits on the other side at the top.

First: electrify the front yard

We ran one conductive wire (Gallagher Turbo Wire, which we quite like) between the lowest two wooden rails of the front-yard fence. We used a donut insulator on each end and screw-in insulators at each vertical post. Word of advice: drill a pilot hole for each screw-in insulator. It makes everything go faster with less effort.

Note, we considered putting in a high-tensile wire, but with today's modern poly-wire, heck no! We will slowly be ripping out every inch of high-tensile and replacing it with polywire. Sure, it doesn't last forever, but it is relatively cheap to replace and super SUPER easy to fix and manipulate when compared to high-tensile.

Next, we had to connect the loop to the main fence current. The southern pasture brought electricity along the other side of the driveway. So, we ran a heavy insulated wire from the fence, across the driveway, to the interior yard fence. We fence-stapled the wire to the wooden post and then attached it to the interior fence. We also added a cut-off switch to cut off the current right there at the driveway opening.

Next: make the gates and connect it to the grid

We then cut three-and-a-half-foot lengths of treated two-by-twos to serve as gate end-posts and inset a screw eye every eight to ten inches (four screw eyes per two-by-two). Using a cord, we temporarily tie each pole to their respective fence connection points and then thread electric rope (four lines) between them to form the gate. (Electric rope: Zareba Electro-Braid—crazy expensive, but is as easy to manipulate as heavy braided rope.)

Published September 18, 2020

We've been trying to catch a raccoon that sporadically ransacks the barn cat's food and any trash we set outside. Occasionally, we will actually see the raccoon or hear a food bowl being overturned. Most nights, though, the only evidence is an empty bowl—a bowl cleaned of every crumb. Maybe a hole in a trash bag with random bits of this and that strewn about.

Additionally, raccoons are killers. We are sometimes concerned for our aging barn cat as he snoozes away, oblivious to these masked killers slinking by. When he is awake, Diamond (the cat) doesn't even bother to keep a healthy distance. With this blasé look on his face, he will lie there, utterly indifferent, as a raccoon goes to town on his food dish. Most of these raccoons significantly outweigh the cat (I once dispatched a forty-pound raccoon who was killing our chickens). If hungry enough, one of these trash-pandas may look at the cat and see dinner. Not likely (they prefer small prey) but not unheard of. Raccoons are beautiful, but they are not always benign.

And then there is, of course, the threat of rabies. We can vaccinate against rabies, but we can't stop a rabid raccoon from doing bad things to the cat because it has lost its mind due to the virus. This is an unlikely scenario, but rabies can be epidemic in raccoon populations at times.

Raccoons have caused other issues for us in the past. They made a healthy dent in the chicken population, and, over time, they have killed most of our ducks. These are a different category of problems, though, which we address indirectly or we live with.

Ransacked cat food and trash is the current issue. One recent masked visitor has been especially challenging because he—I refer to all of them as 'he'—is both an intermittent visitor and he is super flighty (raccoons are usually rather bold). When he visits, he eats all the food, flips the food and water bowls, and often strews trash hither and thither. And he is a particularly unhealthy looking raccoon. He hasn't bothered the cat yet, but . . .

So, we decided to attempt to trap him. The trap is a nice live-animal trap that we bought at Tractor Supply—a bit pricey at $70.

You've probably already guessed the biggest challenge associated with trapping: It's hard to be selective. We don't want to trap the cat. Plus, there are feral cats in the area who visit from time to time as well. We'd like to keep those around.

There are a couple ways to tackle this problem: (1) Use bait food uninteresting to a cat (fruit, veggies), (2) Let the cats get caught a few times and learn from the experience, or (3) Bring the cat inside for a few nights and hope he knows how to use a litter box. We opted for option three—for Diamond, at least; the feral cats are not approachable.

We brought Diamond inside and set the trap.

At first, he was all excited to be inside with us. He loves humans, and this was the most human thing ever! He nuzzled and clawed and, most importantly, he used the litter box! Woot! But after thirty minutes or so, the novelty wore off and he wanted to be back outside. He wanted to be back outside where the world was without walls and he could be with his "friends" the raccoons, opossums, and feral feline brethren.

That first night, we ignored his angst until he eventually relaxed. Well, he relaxed . . . a little—relaxation interrupted by yowling every few hours. And he learned how to do this really annoying bat bat bat bat bat thing at the bottom of the door, causing it to rattle constantly. That was fun.

Sleep was fitful and we managed to catch . . . the feral cat, DD. Of course. Luckily, DD took his predicament in stride and waited patiently for us to free him. We didn't see him for some days after that, which was convenient.

The next night nothing. Then another night of nothing. We then took a break from this drama for a few days. That was until we noticed the food bowl being wiped out again. We brought the cat back inside.

This time, we caught someone. Not the raccoon—because why achieve your goals so easily?—but an opossum. Now, opossums are more nuisance than anything else. They don't carry rabies, and they are not going to attack a cat. But, they do eat the cat food and they will dig into the trash, though not as dramatically—they don't fling the garbage with abandon like a raccoon does.

We caught the opossum, loaded him up in the truck, and found a sensible spot a couple miles away. I pulled in, opened the truck gate, and the opossum gave me that grimace that only an opossum can muster. (Opossums are interesting: they can be both incredibly adorable and terrifyingly hideous with a mere change of expression.)

I set the cage on the ground and opened the trap-gate. There was a pause in activity—then BOOM!—the opossum flew out of the cage and barrelled into the woods. Opossums are not the fastest creatures in the world, but this one found some motivation.

After I released him, I was thinking: I betcha this spot is where all the local folks release all of the random critters they catch. I betcha these woods are an immigration hotspot. I envision a lot of diversity. Better food and music. More engaging conversation with a more worldly perspective. All the best parties.

I wished him well and drove home. One less opossum on the farm, but a raccoon still lurks—destined for now to haunt my dreams.

Published June 11, 2020

We have raised sheep on this farm for four years. Three of those years each include a month of lambing. A month because we borrow a ram for only one month a year, and from that one ram most eligible females will become pregnant. Five months later ⟶ lambs!

For the next month, we will be checking on the flock every 2 to 3 hours around the clock. It's exhausting, but we prefer to be available in case a young mother and her lamb—or lambs!—need our assistance.

First out of the gate, on June 11th, was ewe #40 with a bouncy baby girl. #40 was a first time mother, but she birthed and parented like an experienced mom. (Yes, we have clueless moms and we also have had bad moms!) In case you are wondering, no we generally don't have names, per se, for the sheep. But their numbers become their names. I can look across at all the sheep and pick out #92, #114, #86, and more. They have their own personalities and quirks. They are their own animals but also proud members of their flock.

Feel free to [Join] our photo album.^* It will chronicle each lamb as they appear. Join us and share in this time of joy and worry and wonder.

————

* NOTE: Google account required to "Join" the album, but not to merely view it.

Published November 28, 2019

NPR (National Public Radio)'s food-news program, The Salt, just posted a great segment that asks the question, "After WWII, Mutton Fell Out Of Favor In The U.S. Can It Make A Comeback?" That's a fantastic question and the article presents a marvelous history lesson, but it brought up a larger question in my mind: is it possible for us—at scale—to bring diversity back to our diets?

To illustrate my point, attempt this little exercise. Go to any grocery store anywhere in the United States. Now, try to buy mutton. Are you still looking? You won't find it. Now, attempt to buy a chicken, one each of: a broiler, a fryer, a roaster, a stewing chicken, and a capon.^* "A what?" you ask. Raise your hand if you are scratching your head. Congratulations, you are most likely under fifty years of age and certainly not alone.

Here's a summary: Every animal you eat is generally a young animal. This is a new practice.

That chicken you ate? Fewer than eight weeks old. Lamb? Six months to a year. Beef? Eighteen months is common. Etc. Oh, and that beef is probably angus and that chicken is probably a cornish cross. Lamb versus mutton; beef versus culled or dairy beef; fryers versus roasting or stewing chickens—these are all distinctions based on age and suited to different cooking techniques and dishes.

Lamb is meat from a youthful sheep (confusingly, a live baby sheep is also called a lamb—not the same). Beef can be anything, but is generally meat from a youthful cow. But mutton is meat from an older sheep, usually older than two, often seven years or older. If you purchase beef marketed as a quarter dairy cow, like my mother used to do, that is an older cow, one that no longer economically produces milk.

Today's typical grocery store chicken is what your grandparents called a broiler. A fryer can be older but is still relatively youthful. A roaster is older yet, and perfect for—you guessed it—roasting. And a stewing chicken is an old chicken, often what they call a "spent hen," usually over the age of two. Each variety of chicken calls for different methods of cooking. Your grandmother would typically make chicken soup from a stewing chicken, not a broiler. Why? Because a broiler is too bland. Open Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and she will call for a roasting chicken for roasts and a stewing chicken for stews. This is no accident.

These distinctions were all common 40 to 50 years ago. Alas, these distinctions have largely gone away. Older animals today become dog food or mixed in with other ingredients and animal parts to become ground or processed meats.

You may be able to find some of these items at specialty stores, groceries that serve ethnic minority and immigrant communities, food districts in large cities, and perhaps some of the high-end grocery stores. You may even have some luck at the farmer's market or from a farmer directly, but even within those markets these distinctions have become increasingly rare.

So, why aren't these varieties on the shelves anymore?

It's not because they are poor cuts of meat. In fact, the opposite. They are generally more flavorful. The real reason is economic: variety is harder to market and not conducive to commoditization and industrialization. And if you take something off the market long enough, a whole generation loses knowledge of that product and the item again becomes harder to market, even in the specialty shops. It's a vicious cycle. We forgot how to cook them; we forgot they even exist. Add a stigma coloring the opinion of a particular meat (read the linked-to article above) and that food variety all but disappears.

How did this happen?

You can thank modern shipping, just-in-time inventory, and the commoditization of agricultural production for the remedialization of your diet. I can eat oranges at any time of the year. The same goes for potatoes, lettuce, apples, avocados, and more. We have a much broader breadth of choices than we had in the past—year round, seven days a week, and sometimes even 24 hours a day. But this is misleading, breadth of choice is different than depth of choice: we have seemingly more choices, but what we really have is more availability—availability at the cost of variety and quality.

When you buy corn, you are buying one or two varieties of corn. When you buy a potato, you have only a few choices. Tomatoes? The same. There are over 1,000 varieties of potatoes in the world, but at your supermarket? What, maybe three? Four? Heck, there are over 500 breeds of chicken in the world and we now only have access to one at the supermarket. Fifty years ago, you had many more choices.

Industrialization of food has dumbed down food. Compound that with a generation of conditioning, and the result is a population that has largely forgotten how unique and amazing the choices they had were. Even small farmers today are forced to sell the same limited varieties because consumers simply won't buy anything else, not enough for the farmers to have it make economic sense. In many ways, our forebears ate so much better than we do today.

Will these foods ever come back?

Tandem Farms has a small flock of egg-laying chickens. When their time comes, we will enjoy chicken soups and stews that are out of this world. And when our sheep hit old age, we look forward to the complex flavor profile that can only be obtained from mutton.

There is a burgeoning movement for better food in the United States, but it would take a huge change for the industry to shift dramatically enough to truly move the needle. It has to at some point anyway due to its inherent destructiveness and associated debt of externalized costs. In the meantime, maybe we'll finally see mutton back on the menu and at the grocery store. That assumes there is anyone left that appreciates (and pays for) nuance and variety in their food choices.

Here's to a better food future. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.