North Star Homestead Farms, LLC

Sometimes farming can throw you little surprises to brighten a day of drudgery tasks.  With the latest thaw, the paths and lanes have been reduced to slush, the grainy snow sliding in rumbling, crumbling sheets off metal roofs (just after you walked by), and the coops are turned to boggy sogginess.  The start of mud season has begun.

After chores were finished, Mom and I tackled the ever-so-lovely task of cleaning out the turkey coop amidst cabin-fever turkey hens and toms.  Since they would be under our watchful supervision, I let the turks out into their snow-laden pen (with its mesh still buried underneath somewhere), and they climbed and clamored like eager school children at recess. 

Scoop the buckets full, load them on the sled, and slop-slop our way to the dump pile for spring spreading.  Then it’s drag them back again and scoop some more.  The sun is shining, and it’s really quite warm out.  We’ve both shed our coats and hats, and a light breeze teases our frizzing hair.

“Ach,” Mom cries, waving her hand by her head as we dump another load of filled buckets onto the pile.  “A fly!  Not a fly already!”

But it was a little bit later as we were back working at the turkey coop, I noticed, “Mom, that’s not a fly.  I think you heard a honey bee, and it’s still in your hair!”

We tease the little, furry creature from her salt-and-pepper tangle, and it crawls about on my finger.  A honeybee!  With all these endless and long spells of twenty-below temperatures, I had written off the colony as frozen solid.  Having kept bees on the farm since 2003, only mild winters had seen colony survival, despite insulating the hive and other precautions.

This last fall, though, our one surviving colony (we lost the second one early in the season due to a bummer queen), had entered the winter strong, full of honey and as much concentrated sugar water as the bees would take as extra feed.  With one deep hive body and two shallows, they had plenty of room to pack it in—and barely enough room to fit all the bees. 

On top of the hive, we place a moisture-reducing system made by Smarter Bee that is built into a shallow hive body.  With a cloth and screen barrier between the hive and the moisture reducer (so the bees are kept safely below), a convex piece of thin metal sheeting acts to collect moisture from the hive that rises through the cloth barrier.  The drips condense in small troughs on each side and then exit the hive through poly tubing.  Holding too much moisture in a hive can lead to an array of diseases and chilling as the water drips back onto the bees, but the moisture reducer helps to alleviate these problems all winter.

We then wrapped the whole kit in pink house insulation, like a big marshmallow, then wrapped that in tar paper (as a wind and moisture barrier as well as the blackness helps capture solar warmth) like a pudgy Christmas package with a notch cut out at the hive entrance.  We wished the bees well, then watched the snow pile high on top and around the back sides.  The sunny days this winter helped keep the south and eastern sides free of snow and the entrance open.

Usually, I make a habit of traipsing out to the hive nearly every week during the winter.  But with all the cold (meaning I didn’t want to have to stay out any longer than necessary due to threat of frost bite) and the deep snow (out there I really would have sunk out of sight), it just didn’t happen.  But when that one little honey bee flew into Mom’s hair, we both knew we had to get out to the hive and see what was happening.

Another beekeeping friend from town had reported his hive had died of the cold way back in January.  I certainly hadn’t any expectations that my one lone hive in the snowbank was going to pull through.  But as we waded through the hip-deep mashed-potato snow to the apiary, our thoughts bounced from hope to dread.  There is no fun and glory in cleaning out a dead hive in the spring, crusted with shattered bee parts and white furry mold growing in the corners.

The bottom entrance had crusted over, and as I worked it free with a twig, there was no activity.  And yet, a few more bees were hovering about.  Where were they coming from?  We scooped away the snow from the top of the hive, pried off the frozen bricks and lid, and then began unwrapping the package.  Beneath the tar paper were all kinds of bees, searching for a way out.  Lifting off the insulation, we found that the snowload had shifted the moisture reducer towards the back just enough for the bees to chew a hole in the front corner of the fabric barrier and climb out the top of the hive.  As we unearthed their home, delighted bees were buzzing everywhere, taking wing after a protracted and cramped winter.

They’re alive!  I couldn’t believe it, just couldn’t.  But if the colony was still alive, they were likely very short on food supplies.  Our last honey harvest in the fall right before preparing the bees for winter had come at a crazy busy time on the farm.  The tub with the honey-laden frames just kept getting shifted from this part of the farm to that, hoping for a moment to extract the liquid gold within.  But that time never materialized.

Now, with bees in need of food, we raced to find that bin, which was exactly enough to fill a super body.  It was also likely that the bees had packed away pollen in the corners of the frames, which is an important part of “bee bread” that is fed to the developing larva.  As we approach the equinox, the queen in the hive will be ramping up her egg laying to build a strong workforce for the first nectar flows.

Of course, you can buy “pollen patties” that are a pollen-colored substitute, and you can also purchase in-hive bee feeders for corn syrup or sugar water, but saving work that the bees had put away of their real and natural foods is by far the best.  And those bees could smell us coming with their honey—offering us a personal, hovering escort.

I took a quick check through the top hive body, and each frame was loaded with bees.  The queen, however, must have been hiding below, but I was concerned about chilling the hive with too much poking and prodding.  On the next really warm day, I will come back for a “peek-a-boo.”  For now, I’m satisfied just knowing that the hive is alive and stocked up with good food.  Hurray for those hearty little bees!  Hopefully, we can make it through to spring.  With all the trails of diseases, mites, and colony collapse that honeybees have been facing, it’s heartening to know that these special creatures on our farm shoulder forward with resilience yet.  See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

The livestock are hungry this morning—always hungry.  The chickens line up at the door, the sheep crowd the gate, the tilapia splash at the surface of their tanks, and the pigs squeal and grunt in complaint.  Obviously, we’re taking too long to feed them, lugging 50-pound sacks from our stash in the garage on the trusty orange sled.  And then there’s at least three bales of hay to lug in the mornings as well, with wooly pushing and shoving, and Belle the guard donkey is more than a little vocal about wanting her share.

The 120 or so laying hens plus 11 ducks snug in the coop eat a bag of feed every day.  Just them!  Through these really cold snaps, the sheep have even eaten their straw bedding, so more must be drug in and scattered.  And then there’s all the water to be hauled about for thirsty lips and beaks and snoots.  Ah for a day when I can convince the animals to haul water for themselves!  But alas, I doubt that’s coming anytime soon.

But all this feed and bedding and water isn’t a one-way trip on the farm.  Oh no, it has to mount to something.  So our menagerie of two and four-legged composting units have been doing their best to make great gardening material for spring.  Ah yes, some folks make a study of wildlife scat, tracing the tracks of bobcat and raccoon, but here are some musings on the qualities of barnyard manures.  Given it’s March, let’s try them in limericks.

It was down in horse apple holler,

Much too cold to have any waller.

The donkey did bray,

For she wanted more hay,

To make her pack rise even taller.

The farmer went in with the scoop,

For to shovel out some of the poop.

It rolled and it tumbled,

And the farmer she mumbled,

For it threw her back for a loop.

The sheep were all bunched like a herd,

They‘re so good at making their turds.

The dog thinks they’re kibbles,

She loved to get nibbles,

But the goat says that that’s for the birds.

The chickens are known for their droppings,

It coats all the bedding like toppings.

Please watch your head,

Or you’ll grimace with dread,

When you hear that next sound of ploppings.

The ducks they just love to make messes,

With icicles stuck to their tresses.

They can make you a lake,

With just one ducky shake,

And leave the technique to your guesses.

The pigs wander out with a totter,

They really would like some more fodder.

But their pile is so high,

They’ll look you in the eye,

And it steams away since it’s hotter.

We’ve a pile outside of the barn,

We thought it would do much less harm.

But the fragrance is clear,

If you’re anywhere near,

Though the garden will think it’s a charm.

And it’s down in horse apple holler,

I’ll lead the way, you can foller.

As the bedding piles deep,

Mucking work is a heap,

And the volume makes you feel much smaller!

Well, guess I’ll have to wrap this up somewhere and bundle up for chores.  Our little friendly manure makers are going to be hungry and thirsty again.  If you’re on a farm (or grew up on one), I suspect you remember those mucking days well!  It’s certainly nobody’s favorite, though a clean coop filled with fresh wood shavings is a lovely sight (and smell, in comparison with what came before).

And how do we notice the first signs of spring on the farm?  Well, the bedding pack thawing out is a good one, and the barnyard becoming a slippery, muddy mess.  But for now, let’s hope it stays frozen just a little longer.  I’ve got snow to shovel first!  See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

Bundled in 17 pounds of boots, insulated pants, down coat, hat, gloves, and face scarf, my glasses iced over by steamy breath, facing winter chores can become daunting even before leaving the back door.

External faucets are frozen closed, so we fill five-gallon buckets in the utility sink with warm water for the pigs, lifting them high over the lip of the sink, then trundling them out to the orange sled waiting outside.  That hearty, toboggan-long sled sure does get a workout in wintertime, hauling water, hay, feed, fodder, and wood this way and that along our paths and trails across the barnyard.

These paths are packed tightly where we’ve trodden them down for months, but should a stray foot wander off—poof—you’ve sunk in above your knee.  This is especially hazardous when the trails have drifted over and it’s hard to know exactly where that curve in the path used to be.  It is equally obvious when you’ve guessed incorrectly.

Shoveling has been a daily practice for chores this winter.  As rigorous as it can be, I wonder that some form of shoveling isn’t featured at the Olympics.  The bend, the scoop, the throw…and then the tamping and scraping for the sticky snow that won’t let go of the shovel.  There’s the deck, the paths, the stoops in front of the garages, and a long stretch in front of the barn to keep the banks at bay.  Either the land has risen or the barn was always built on land a little downhill from parts of the barnyard, and spring flooding can be a real issue.  Every year, we hope for a slow melt that will allow the snows to sink gracefully into the aquifer rather than running in a torrent down the gravel road, washing out the culvert, or pooling like a lake inside the barn.  While I’m not quite ready for spring and its mounting workload, a little break from the snow and bitter cold would be welcome.

Shovel, shovel, shovel.  The high tunnel where we raise vining tomato plants in the summer is half buried in a drift.  I can only see the top portion of the door.  But with the huge pre-Birkie storm on the way, we had to make room for the new snow to be able to slide off the top and not continue to crush the arching structure.  Just wading out to the high tunnel was hip-deep in places, past the row of wind-breaking spruces sheltering mounds of dismembered pinecone tidbits that the squirrels have left.

It’s tricky shoveling out a plastic-film sided greenhouse.  Dig along the sides and the snow still lingering on the top slips and slides and flops down in your trench, so you get to shovel it out again.  And it’s soooooo easy to poke a hole in the side with the corner of the scoop, just as you hit a chunk of ice that refuses to give way.  We’ll have a few nicks to patch in the spring, but at least the snow has a place to go, rather than collapsing our precious growing structure.

Drifts on rooftops have grown dangerously heavy—two feet deep in places!  In the news are featured stories of barn and outbuildings collapsing under the tremendous weight.  Borrowing a roof rake from a neighbor, we take turns chopping and scraping, trying to make a dent in the snowload.  The long and rambling woodshed (originally used to store horse-drawn farm machinery because it was easy to back into) was the first on the list. 

There was no chance at a sudden rush of releasing snow as happens on the south side of the barn roof—rumbling and thundering and smashing in an avalanche against the side of the machine shed beside it.  So it was chop, chop and chop, chop at the drift above, wading through the snow.  The stacking pile below now leaves but a modest gap between the roofline and the ground!  The woodshed is very nearly just a tunnel!  Seriously, it’s looking rather like a polar expedition around here, rather than a farm.

My other running joke lately is that we’re farming in the trenches.  Veritable high-sided louge tracks for the sled are guarded by great mounds of snow banks.  Sometimes it’s hard to know where Mom or Kara are in the farmyard because you can’t see over the sides of the trenches, even though the packed trails raise my shoulders higher than the top of the five-foot woven wire chicken fence.

Just a few days ago, chores turned into an experience of quicksand.  It was evening and quite dark except for the brilliant pin-pricks of stars above.  I entered the frosty-sided chicken coop to sadly find that one of my ladies had died (likely in a fight with another hen over nesting box territory…sometimes freaky things can happen with chickens).  I carefully wrapped her in a feed sack and endeavored to take her out to the old pump house for safe keeping until we could dispose of her properly.

The pump house still has the old hand pump in it but the hand-dug well collapsed years ago thanks to a raucous population of woodchucks.  Long past its days as a milk house, we use the shed to store garden tools, bins, extra boxes, and odds and ends (there always seems to be an endless supply of odds and ends on a farm!).  With my poor deceased chicken wrapped in a feed sack in hand, I faced the silver-sided pump house.  Between me and my destination lay the cliff of snow shoveled away from the front of the barn.  It seemed like rock climbing gear might be necessary, but I bravely embarked up the face, over the edge, and then sank nearly out of sight into the soft drift on the other side.

Hollering for help was to no avail, for the rest of the crew was well off at the Red Barn with belloring rams and the donkey.  Would they hear my snow-muffled cries?  Nope.  So now what?  My left leg twisted behind me, my right leg straight down to the waist in fluff, my arms holding the chicken, this was feeling like a predicament.  I tried to push with one hand against the snow, but it was so soft it too only sunk deep without resistance.  What if I simply disappeared without a trace?  How long would it take someone to find me?

I set the chicken aside with a poof of white, icy fluff and tried rolling on my back, then from side to side, in an effort to pack down some of the snow.  What I really needed was a set of snowshoes, but those were quite a ways away…all the way back at the house.  So, my mind raced, how could I make instant snowshoes to get out of this drowning mess?  It’s amazing the odd, scary, and funny things you mind can think up when you’re completely stuck in a snowbank.

Managing to pull one knee underneath me, I braced all of my left lower leg and foot into one long knee-to-toe “foot,” then drug my right knee out of the drift.  One bigfoot step, drag the bag of chicken, the next bigfoot step, drag the bag of chicken.  The process was awkward, to say the least, but I managed to reach the shed (thankfully the door opened inward), deposit my package, and wade back to the safety of the shoveled walk, plopping down panting.

Mom and Kara rounded the bend with a sled full of hay bales, their water buckets clanging.  “What has been taking you so long?”

Well, I tell you, this has sure been a winter for extreme chores.  And yes, Farmstead Creamery is shoveled out too, so you can always come on over for fresh greens, eggs, pastured meats, delicious bakery goods, and more.  See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

Up in the frozen tundra of this year’s Wisconsin winter, there’s a micro-climate of lush and green, sheltered beneath arches of steel supporting strong but delicate plastic film—a flexing skin that allows the light to enter but holds back the snow and cold.  The land of aquaponics flourishing below, with tilapia swimming in their tanks and fresh greens reaching for the sun, is now well into its second year of production on our farm.

The clank of the door latch in the morning excites the first tank of fish, which glide to the surface and splash playfully.  “Breakfast, we want breakfast!”  The morning sunshine is sparkling on the water, and the air is moist and rich with oxygen—a stark change from the cold, snappy-dry environment outside.

Lately, we’ve been spending considerable time in the aquaponics greenhouse, tending to fish and plants, yes, but also because of building and starting new projects within the protective plastic walls as well.  Investing in such a heated space to allow for local, natural, and bio-secure foods to be grown right here all year has been a major financial leap for us, which means that every corner and cranny is ripe with the possibility for adding something that will grow more food.

Clay pots neatly tucked under the edge of the table-high NFT (Nutrient Film Technology) channels sport vigorous bushes of thyme, parsley, sage, lavender, cilantro, and edible violas.  Other pots commanding sunny locations hold thick-stemmed tomato plants that have grown chest-high.   Several times each day, I get to play “honey bee” with a vibrating pollination wand that shakes the clusters of canary-yellow blossoms.  Already the labors are showing there merit as a few little green tomatoes are beginning to form!  This is February—somebody pinch me!

Starting last summer, our Media Bed System (which utilizes the solid nutrients from the fish) began sludging up with too much material, flooding the beds and pulling down their side walls in a cascade of water and clay BBs that rushed across the cement floor towards the drain.  After a few relapses of this catastrophe, we knew that this piece of the system required an overhaul.

Following weeks and weeks of washing the clay pebbles by the colander-fulls and stocking the nutrient rich water in five-gallon jugs for the garden in spring, we were able to modify the side walls of the media beds, return the washed pebbles, and begin growing crunchy radishes, peppery arugula, and juicy beets again.

But it was apparent that the reservoir of solid-rich fish water siphoned for the media beds could serve a much larger growing area.  Eager to expand the winter tomato, pepper, and brassica production, we applied creative engineering with PVC pipe and hanging-basket brackets to rig a platform and irrigation structure for a new Dutch Bucket system along the east wall walkway.  Customarily used in hydroponic production (which employs chemical fertilizers rather than our tilapia friends), Dutch Buckets are a series of square, black pails filled with growing media.  Water drips in from above and then exits through a pipe below, allowing excess water to return to the reservoir to be recycled. 

With 30 new mini-pots to plant, we’re trying heirloom tomatoes, broccoli raab, Napa cabbage, kale, green and red peppers, and trellising cucumbers.  After a few hiccups (overflowing buckets, plugged drain spigots, fish scales in the water line), our new system holds vigorous and healthy plants eager to outdo their potted neighbors.  At times it seems you can watch them grow!  While the project is still in its experimental phase, already we are looking around our space, wondering where to expand with another length of Dutch Buckets.  Maybe over here would be a great spot for kohlrabi!

Our fodder-growing system has also been a happy success.  Sprouting wheatgrass from spring wheat for the chickens, ducks, and turkeys not only augmented their diets all year but also improved their behavior and health.  During butchering last year, we noticed phenomenally fewer heart and liver problems amongst the Cornish-cross chickens and standard white turkeys (both of which, because they are bred to grow fast, can often suffer in these areas).  Their skin was healthy and well-colored, there was more uniformity of size, and their insides smelled sweet and fresh—like fodder.

This has spurred us to increase our fodder-growing operation so that our fun new Kunekune pigs as well as our beloved sheep can enjoy this nutrient-dense feed all year as well.  Again using creative engineering, a good deal of PVC glue, and a mobile wire shelving system, we’re growing from our original 12 trays to an additional 30.  Stacked in levels of five trays across, the little spring wheat shoots reach for the sky, happy to turn water and sunlight into tasty, homegrown feed for healthy, happy livestock.

Sprouts are also delicious and healthy for people as well, which bring us to our third major new project in the greenhouse this winter.  Eventually, we can consign some of the fodder trays for sprouting, but for starters we’re learning the trade in a couple of seedling trays with a light layer of crunchy, white vermiculite.  To start the adventure, we chose the dwarf gray sugar pea.

The instructions said that a standard seedling tray would require two cups of seed (yes, sprouting does require quite a volume of seed), soaked in water overnight before planting.  Well, those seeds loved their water bath, and they swelled…and swelled…and swelled to bursting.  They puffed up so much that there was no way two cups were going to fit into one tray!  We grabbed a second tray and some more vermiculite and split the bucket’s worth in half.  There’s always a learning curve in farming.

Diligently misting with the sprayer hose, I watched over two weeks as white tendrils reached down into the medium, pushing the peas upwards.  Then from the same exit, little white nubbins began to reach upwards.  Slowly, the nubbins turned to green, then to leaves, then to leaves with stems, and then the addition of mini curling tendrils.  They smell fresh and sweet, like a springtime garden.  Now five-and-a-half inches tall, they’re just perfect for harvesting for this week’s CSA shares.  And they taste just like pea pods, perfect for salads, sandwiches, stir fries, and more!

It’s deliciously exciting in the aquaponics greenhouse this year, planting, harvesting, tending to the fish, but also expanding the operation in new and exciting ways.  Missing fresh greens from your garden this winter?  Come on over to Farmstead Creamery to pick up a tasty piece of the new project we’ve been sprouting in the greenhouse.  See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

February is the time of year when an eager band of Northland College students take the snowy trails down from Ashland to join us for three Sundays of our “Sustainable Foodie:  Making a Meal, Making a Life” wellness class, which features preparing and sharing a meal together each week based on the theme of building healthy food skills. 

For the first class, we experienced “a meal in comparisons,” where after a lengthy farm tour and discussions about the value of local foods systems, we made a side-by-side trial for the accoutrements to a roast turkey dinner (featuring a pastured turkey from our farm).  The students split into two teams, each preparing the same dish using from-the-farm ingredients vs. processed supermarket ingredients. 

An aquaponics lettuce salad with fresh radishes, beet greens, broccoli, and organic carrots sat across the counter from iceberg lettuce with limp cucumber, pale hydroponic tomato, and bleached baby carrots.  From-our-soil potatoes, riced and mashed by hand, were pitted against “Idaho Spuds” from flakes out of a box.  From-scratch apple cranberry sauce from our apples and local cranberries stared down Musselman pale applesauce (which we dressed up with a little cinnamon to make it even remotely tasty), and still-a-little-warm homemade chocolate chip cookies met pre-packaged “chocolate-flavored chip” cookies from the store.

As we sat together and thoughtfully enjoyed the meal in courses, everyone had to take at least some of each team’s potatoes or applesauce or salad or cookies and compare their taste, texture, smell, mouth-feel, and overall appeal side-by-side. So often the pre-processed foods are chemically enhanced with “natural and artificial flavors,” MSG (mono sodium glutamate), and emulsifiers of all sorts to trick our brains into thinking that the food is good or that we like eating it…and that we want more! 

But when you place the pretender next to the real, whole food straight from earth to table, the mask falls away and the metallic aftertaste in the flaked potatoes, the grainy, gritty bitterness of the canned applesauce, the lifeless chlorine smell of the white salad, and the gummy rubberiness of the cookie are both starkly apparent and rather revolting.  How sad, we reflected, that some people consider these things to be good food and never have the chance to taste the succulent pastured turkey, the vibrantly green aquaponics salad, the spicy tang of the applesauce, the creamy fluff of the potatoes, or the soft but crispy ecstasy of the cookie when made from scratch fresh off the farm.

So, there arises the question of how do we break away from these addictive but false processed foods that are so ubiquitous to modern life?  This is not only a dilemma for contemporary college students with busy class schedules and limited cooking equipment and skills but also for families with demanding work schedules and afterschool activity lists that keep everyone on the go.  These are the challenges we tackle in class two.

First, we have to start by reclaiming our kitchens.  Pre-processed foods are advertised to make life easier, take the work out of cooking.  But that also means that we lose control—especially over what we’re eating.  Processed foods are chuck full of preservatives, emulsifiers, additives, colorants (plus even more unpronounceable ingredients to preserve the colorants), fillers, flavorants, texture conditioners, and more.  And while all of these additives have been approved for human consumption “at safe levels,” many are still quite harmful, including triggering cancer development.

One of the exercises we have the students complete in the second class is to bring in a food wrapper from something they ate that week—a wrapper that contains an ingredient list.  As each student reads their granola bar, peanut butter, Hostess Cake, or bag of chips ingredients, I’m whirring away on my laptop Googling any item that stumps us.  What’s soy lecithin, tocopherol, or sodium acid pyrophospate?  Some turn out not so bad (like acacia gum, which comes from the sap of a tree) but others are downright terrifying.

Here’s an example from one student’s wrapper.  TBHQ (Tertiary Butylhydroquinone), a preservative made from butane, is widely used in the food and cosmetic industry.  According to www.naturalnews.com:

“The FDA allows amounts of up to 0.02% of the total oils in food to be TBHQ. This may not sound like a lot, but it does tend to make one wonder why there needs to be a limit on the amount if it is apparently a 'harmless additive.' Mind you, anything which derives its origins from butane could hardly be classified as safe, no matter how small the dose.

“Consuming high doses (between 1 and 4 grams) of TBHQ can cause nausea, delirium, collapse, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), and vomiting. There are also suggestions that it may lead to hyperactivity in children as well as asthma, rhinitis and dermatitis. It may also further aggravate ADHD symptoms and cause restlessness. Long term, high doses of TBHQ in laboratory animals have shown a tendency for them to develop cancerous precursors in their stomachs, as well as cause DNA damage to them. It is also suggested that it may be responsible for affecting estrogen levels in women.”

Ok, takeaway message?  Let’s reclaim our kitchens.  And that’s exactly what we did with our six Northland students this last Sunday.  After crock-potting last week’s turkey, we picked the meat clean and used the delicious broth to make Gypsy soup, chopping and peeling carrots, sweet potatoes, peppers, and onions, as well as including a jar of our own home-canned tomatoes from the garden.  Mixed with cancer-fighting spices like tumeric, the fragrant smell filled the class space.

We dived into making our own bread, churning our own butter, and canning our own jam.  We dried fresh herbs from the greenhouse, cinnamon-sugar dipped apple slices, and turned some of the left-over homemade applesauce into fruit leather, sprinkled with coconut shavings.  We froze extra chopped onion and detopped tomatoes for next week’s lasagna, and we baked and Foley food-milled fresh pumpkins for next week’s pie.  We even made our own miniature batch of gelato from scratch to serve on our from-scratch apple-cranberry fruit crumble!

It was enough food for an army (or at least a very hungry troop of college students), and not only were our labors full of sensory delights—the zesty cinnamon and nutmeg, the sizzling onions and garlic, the tangy kale salad, and the succulent lightly golden butter, but it made everything taste all the more special because of our care and attention to every detail.  And if any of this sounds pretty delectable right now, here’s one of the recipes we used to get you started in the kitchen this week.

English Fruit Crumble

1 1/2 pounds fruit (whatever is in season, apples, cranberries, blueberries, peaches, rhubarb etc.)

Sugar to taste, depending on fruit

1 cup flour (alternative flours are delicious here too!)

1 tsp. mixed spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, etc., depending on what you think sounds tasty with the fruit)

1 stick (4 oz.) butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 oz. chopped walnuts or almonds

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Layer fruit in pie dish and sprinkle with desired amount of sugar.  Cut the butter into the flour and spices, then mix in brown sugar and nuts.  Sprinkle in thick layer over fruit.  Bake 30-40 minutes, until the top if browning and the fruit is bubbly and cooked through.  Serve hot with ice cream or yogurt (especially if it ends up tasting like it could have used a bit more sugar) or cold over oatmeal is fabulous as well.

***

But how to crack the nut of the busy life issue?  Yes, we all have our days when there just isn’t much time to prepare and enjoy a meal, but there are also many traditional food skills—canning, freezing, drying, etc.—where we can bank food time on slow days to make life as a sustainable foodie easier on the hectic days.  It’s also a great time to gather together for those large “putting up the harvest” tasks.  No TBHQ for me please, I’m heading to the kitchen.  See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

I’m imagining some fat, brown, furry rodent, all snug and cuddled in its warm little burrow, curled into a comfy circle of slumber.  Then an entourage of persons wearing top hats arrive with pomp and ceremony, dig the poor fellow out of his hole, and proclaim across the news whether or not the unsuspecting creature has seen its shadow.

The sun is shining!  Oh dear, six more weeks of winter!

Considering last year’s weather patterns, when an 18-inch snow dump pummeled the farm in mid-May, this sounds like we’d be getting off easy.  Let’s see, six weeks would take us not even to the end of March.  Does this sound terribly plausible, given this frigid and snowy winter?  I’m not holding my breath.  Besides, did anyone actually ask the groundhog if he had bothered to look at his shadow?

Equally, it could have been noticed by any the ceremonial folks in top hats that the trees, the cars, or they themselves were casting shadows, and there was hardly any need to bother a sleepy, rotund rodent with the whole affair.  What did it matter to the groundhog?  If they’re anything like the wood chucks that used to sit all fat and sassy in the barn door, they’re smart enough to come out when spring has officially arrived all on their own, without any particular human meteorological proclamation.  And in the meantime, they know exactly where you store your feed…

But winter isn’t entirely a season for moaning and groaning about how long we have to go before the earth warms, the snow melts, and the grass needs mowing again.  Personally, I’m enjoying every day that chicken chores do not include being attacked by a perilous swarm of mosquitoes, awaiting wood ticks, or biting gnats!  It’s the little things like this that sometimes become forgotten in the endless hours of shoveling.

But if you’re still stuck in a mood of doom and gloom over the groundhog’s shadow-seeing exploits, here’s a folk tale about animals in wintertime to bring a bit of cheer.

How Bear Got His Short Tail

Of course, there are lots of stories about Bear.  That’s because Bear was really rather vain.  Everywhere he went, Bear was showing off his big, long, bushy, black tail.  “See!” demanded Bear.  “Don’t you like my tail?!” 

The other animals cowered away, nodding, “Oh yes, Mr. Bear, we love your tail.  It’s the best tail in the whole forest.”  That’s because they knew that brother Bear would get very angry if they didn’t agree, no matter what their personal opinion on tails might be.

But Fox had had quite enough of Bear’s antics.  She too had a long, bushy tail, all sleek and curving with a white tip.  Of course, hers was really the best tail of all, but there was no telling that to Bear.  One of these days, he was going to need to learn his lesson for being so prideful.

It was wintertime when Fox made her plan.  Down to the lake she went with rod and reel, and after cutting a hole in the ice of the lake, she fished most of the morning.  She fished and fished and fished until she had a whole stringerful of graceful, sleek northern and perch and walleye.  Stashing her tackle, she sauntered back up the bank of the lake, humming a pleasing tune to herself.

Bear just happened to be passing by, and the pungent smell of fresh fish caught his attention.  “Fox, say Fox, how did you get all those lovely fish, I say?”

“With my tail,” she grinned, blinking her long, foxy lashes.

“With your tail?”  Bear’s lips were dripping.  Those fish looked so delicious.  With great force of self-will, he just barely held back from swiping the whole lot away from Fox.

She dangled the stringer, teasingly.  “It’s easy, really.  I’m surprised at you, Bear, what with your long and illustrious tail, that you don’t already know how to fish this way.”

“Um, uh, well…”  Bear was trying to hide his ignorance on the subject.  “Maybe you could remind me.  I’m sure it’s just the winter sleepiness that has made the trick slip my mind.”

“Well,” Fox began, speaking low so as not to spoil the secret on other small ears in the forest.  “Take that big claw of yours and cut a nice hole in the ice, big enough so your tail can fit through.  Then slip your tail down in that hole and wiggle just the tip, real gentle.  The fish will think it’s bait, and they’ll bite your tail.  It will hurt just a little bit, but when you feel them biting, pull out your tail, and you’ll have a fish!”

Bear was so excited, he didn’t even bother to thank Fox.  Down the banks of the lake he tumbled, until his big, black form skidded out onto the ice.  “Ha ha!” he chuckled to himself.  How silly of Fox to give away her fishing secrets.  If Fox could catch a stringer full of fish in just a morning, why, he would work all day and catch twice as many—no three times as many fish as she!  Why, with his wondrous tail (the best in the whole forest), how could the fish resist?

He took that big claw of his and cut a circle in the ice, just as Fox had said, then sidled backwards and dropped that big, black tail into the hole.  The water was COLD, oh it was COLD!  But Bear gritted his teeth and twitched that tail ever so gentle.  “Ouch!” he yelped, then covered his mouth, for he mustn’t spoil this new secret he had learned.  That must have been a fish bite.  Should he pull his tail out now?  No!  He should wait for another one—ouch—and another one—ouch—and another one.  Surely, if he just waited long enough, his entire tail would be covered in fish, and he’d have them all to eat at once!  The thought pleased Bear very much indeed.

But when Bear finally decided the pull in the catch, he found himself stuck.  That tail wouldn’t come out!  He pulled and tugged and pulled and tugged.  Surely, this must be a lot of fish indeed!  They must be plugging up the hole in the ice and not coming through!  Straining even harder, Bear tried one last time and them, POP, found himself face-first in a snowbank.

All the forest animals began to howl with laughter because Fox had told them to come to the edge of the woods and see.  And when Bear looked behind him, instead of finding the ice covered in fresh fish, there was his tail, frozen solid into the lake. 

Horrified with embarrassment over the loss of his tail and being so foolishly taken by Fox’s story, Bear ran deep into the woods to hide.  And that is how Bear got his short tail.  But remember not to ask Bear to share this story because he still hides in shame each winter in remembrance of the day Fox tricked him so.

***

Oh groundhog, stay in the warm little burrow and wait until spring.  We humans, in the meantime, will keep on shoveling and telling stories about our wild animal friends.  See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

I remember the first day I met Meg—black as the northern black bears, square of face and jowl, glistening.  Her year-old nut brown Labrador eyes looked right through me.  Her wagging tongue looked to be at least a mile long.

It had been a while since Grandma and Grandpa’s previous dog, Honey (with her curling golden locks) had passed, and we as yet had no pets in our house.  Meg was eager yet timid, still adjusting to her new home from a previous life with rambunctious small children who weren’t the right environment for a dog at the time.

I remember petting her short, waxy fur—best suited for dipping in and out of the lake or shedding snow like water off a duck’s back—leaving my hand sticky and a little brown.  How odd.  Now my hand smelled like dog and felt greasy.  I went to the sink to wash it off.

Grandpa laughed, “You’ll have to get use to that, I’m afraid.”  There were more than a few things to get used to with Meg.

Just as every person has her quirks, so do our beloved dogs.  This is true for talents as well.  For Meg, her crowning glory was her nose.  I’m certain that, with the proper training, she would have been an excellent bomb sniffer, drug detector, or survivor finder.  Taking Meg on a walk was an exercise in keeping your arm attached to your body.  Rabbit track?  Tug!!!  Signs of another dog?  Pull!!! 

Often, that nose got Meg into trouble.  No garbage can or sack of groceries was safe—anywhere!  Either lock it in another room or put it up high (really high) or you’d be picking it back up more than once.  Don’t even leave the pan of brownies near the front edge of the counter…at least not during Meg’s younger and more ambulatory years.

But when that nose of hers found the dead porcupine in the woods…well, that was not a happy day for Meg.  Quills in the nose, whimpering, you think she might have learned.  But no, that scent beckoned like Bali Hai, and the next morning she returned with more trophy quills and stench of decay.  So Grandpa went trundling out to try to find the carcass and move it farther away.  But the next day—voila, that nose had found the porcupine again!  So we buried the poor thing, may it rest in peace. 

And yet, for years, on Grandpa’s morning walks, she would still have to check that spot just in case.  You never know when something good and stinky might turn up, when you’re a dog.

Meg was really our first farm dog, and she took her job of monitoring the property seriously.  Announcing the arrival and departure of vehicles was one of her specialties, even phantom vehicles.  There was also the most important task of monitoring the wild animals too—deer, rabbits, and squirrels in particular.  She would sit for hours under the trees in the farmyard, holding the scolding red pine squirrels to their positions, dodging the occasional hurled pine cone.  Perhaps Meg in all her supreme blackness thought this was a siege, and surely someday she would win.

“Come down you rascals and fight like a dog!”

In true Labrador style, Meg also loved the water.  A little creek runs through the farm, which is a tributary to the nearby Hay Creek that eventually connects to the Chippewa Flowage.  By mid summer, unless there have been recent rain, there isn’t much to see but marshland.  But in springtime the water rushes and gushes under (and occasionally over) a culvert in the road.  Meg knew exactly where the banks of the lane sloped down by the culvert to the creek.

Summer can be incredibly hot for a black dog.  It just really isn’t fair.  And that water called and beckoned like a Greek Siren.  And a few hours later, here would come Meg, as slippery as a newly minted coin, dripping and shaking and smelling like lakebottom and weeds.  “No coming into the house!” was Grandma’s high command, “Until someone gives that dog a bath!”  What, more water?  As far as Meg was concerned, there was no problem with this sentence.

The first fences on our farm weren’t for the rabbits, or the deer.  They were for Meg.  Everything was worth a good grab, especially if it felt anything close to tug-of-war for her big, slobbery mouth.  Randomly ambling by one of the spreading maples in the lawn, without missing a step Meg would bite off a hunk of bark the size of a fist and chew it up, leaving the bits to trail out the sides of her mouth as she went.  Mmmm, doggie dental floss with a daily dose of insoluble fiber.

Ah, but the garden was too tempting.  Sweet corn was ever so fun to grab and rip from the earth.  Those were easy, especially when the soil was damp.  But tomato plants were even more fun because that was a real tussle!  But the humans caught on to this game and put up a fence around their horticultural labors, and that was the end of pulling out the garden for fun.  Bummer.  Well, long grass could do in a pinch, as well.

Meg, of course, was fond of attention.  Not in the style of being dressed up, no, that held sour memories of her life before our family.  But she loved being petted.  As far as Meg was concerned, you could forget the chores or the garden or anything else and pet her all day!  But the more you petted, the farther she would inch away from you.  First she’d lean a bit.  Then she’d shuffle her feet over or lay down.

“Meh-eh-eg,” Grandpa would scold.  “My arm doesn’t reach that far.”  Meg would look back at him longingly, then with an internal “oh yeah, that’s right,” skooch back closer for a while before slowly leaning and moving away again.  Maybe it was one of her many games with us on the farm.  Or maybe she thought that one of these days we’d grow stretchy arms, just to be able to pet her better.

Meg passed this morning on her big doggie pillow, still black and shiny, in a position of rest and peace at the age of 15.  We will miss her very much but we remember her fondly and with a few good laughs as our first farm dog.  This week, take some time to share your memories of favorite canines past.  They touch our lives and leave behind footprints on our hearts.  See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

Have a passion for animals and plants?  Wondering if local and sustainable agriculture might be an ideal lifestyle for you?  Looking to stay active and be outdoors this summer?  Want to build skills in the farm-to-table movement?  If these ideas appeal to you, then a summer internship at North Star Homestead Farms, LLC might be an exciting opportunity for you.

Tucked in the boundaries of the Chequamegon National Forest in northern Wisconsin, North Star Homestead Farms is a model representative of small-scale, intensive, sustainable, humane, and wholesome agricultural practices.  Our pursuits include pasture raised poultry, sheep, and hogs, as well as a large market garden for CSA and Farmer’s Markets, honeybees, fruit production, herbs, aquaponics tilapia and produce, and a fully-licensed Farmstead Creamery & Café (which includes food processing, bakery, grocery, and dairy plant).  This year, we are considering three positions, two focusing on agricultural production and livestock and the third focusing on the farm-to-table movement, though each will have overlapping duties.

Our focus is on building community, connecting people with the land, maintaining transparency, and giving great service.  Owned and operated by three enterprising women, North Star Homestead Farms, LLC offers a constructive environment for personal growth, learning, teamwork, and full immersion in the everyday rigor of farm living.

2014 is going to be a busy season at the farm, and we are in search of eager hands and positive attitudes to help make this season successful.  While previous farm or garden experience isn’t necessary, we’d love to hear your story and why you may be interested in being a part of our farm’s enterprise.  We are looking for interns who are available for the full summer season (May/June through August/September), though we are flexible for extenuating circumstances, such as beginning or ending college semesters.  Due to changing labor laws, applicants must be 18 years of age or older and a US Citizen.  We hold an Annual Intern Scholarship Dinner near the end of the summer season, but the real value you will receive from this experience is learning-by-doing—building real knowledge and skills in this exciting food and cultural movement.

Accommodating rooms are available in our renovated farm house, and meals will be shared with the Berlage women.  Our goal is to help you have a fully integrated experience of homestead living.  In return, we expect our interns to work eagerly alongside us, to listen to our council and advice, and to practice responsibility, self motivation, and grace and courtesy.  Small scale, localized food production offers an environment to gain personal skills that can serve you in any field, including problem solving, public interface, teamwork, leadership, work ethic, and meaningful goals.

We hope that the opportunities available to summer interns at North Star Homestead Farms, LLC are exciting for you, and we would love to talk with you further and introduce you to life on the farm.  Please contact us at the above information to receive an internship application, and we are of course happy to take any questions you may have.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Laura, Kara, and Ann Berlage, North Star Homestead Farms, LLC

It’s that time of year when I find myself eyeball deep in receipts, invoices, cash register slips, and scribbled notes—making sense of the mess of bookkeeping for a complex and diversified farming operation.  Spending hours upon hours with Excel spreadsheets and an accordion file is far down my list of favorite farm tasks.  Heck, I might even take cleaning the chicken coop over this job!

But just like cleaning the chicken coop is making order out of mess, and just as having fresh bedding and sweet-smelling air is important to the health of the chickens, so too is having organized accounting at the end of the year important to the overall health of the farm as a family enterprise. 

Let’s be perfectly honest.  Farming is a hard way to earn a living these days.  I think (I hope) that most folks are aware of this fact.  So few Americans are currently engaged in farming as their main income source (somewhere less than half of a percent of the population) that this is no longer an occupational category in census materials.  Instead, I find myself glumped into the amorphous conglomerate of “self employed.”  How ironic that what was once “a nation of farmers” no longer sees this way of life as a viable constituency.

There are many factors which have led to this situation.  To tell them all would take far more words than this article could hold, but here are a few key points especially worth mentioning and mulling over as we enter into this New Year.

Firstly, as late as the 1920’s and 30’s, Americans, like most Europeans, were accustomed to paying 30% of their expendable income on food.  Much of this food was prepared at home from raw ingredients, which had to be mixed, chopped, baked, boiled, kneaded, cured, and such in the family kitchen.  All this changed with the industrialization of the food system, fueled by technologies developed to feed soldiers during WWII.

Suddenly, there were box mixes and canned soups, powdered potatoes and eggs, and so many other “labor saving devices and options,” which began the onslaught of processed foods that separate the consumer from the original, raw foods produced on farms.  Remember, this was all supposed to make life easier for families.  That was good, right?  Science was going to fix all our problems, feed the world, and drive away the specter of Great Depression hunger and want.

The industrialization process was also fueled by another wartime obsession along these lines—boosting production.  From research-driven hybridization and fertilization programs to Genetically Modified Organisms, the drive to “feed the world” has been used to threaten smaller family farms to “Get Big or Get Out.”  Many got out, leaving behind the agrarian heritage they’d worked so hard to build.

With fewer people farming, agriculture became more mechanized, which meant that even fewer people were needed to keep larger acreage in production (it’s a chase-the-tail process).  Excess production, along with government subsidies, continued through the decades to artificially drive down food prices.  While Europeans continue to expect to pay 30% of their expendable income on food for the family, Americans have grown accustomed to paying 5%.

Maybe you think that’s great.  Many of the people I talk to at Farmer’s Market or at Farmstead think so too.  But who is picking up that 25% remainder of the bill?  Subsidies are part of the answer, which come out in your taxes.  However, it’s the big corporate farms (which are sometimes being run as sideline operations by even bigger companies in order to benefit from tax write-offs) that gain the most from the system.  It doesn’t take long for the whole rigmarole to start sounding like Big Oil.

But farmers pick up most of the tab.  There’s a joke among farmers that goes something like this:  a farmer wins the lottery for a million dollars.  The news crews swarm around his little place, hoping for a word.  One of them stuffs a microphone into the farmer’s face and asks, “So, what do you plan to do with all the money?”  The farmer looks at the reporter as if this were the silliest question he’d ever heard.  “Why, keep farming until it runs out, of course.”

Every agricultural newspaper I read tells of someone having an auction—selling the cows, the machinery, all the bits and pieces that made up their lives as toilers of the land.  Even with one spouse working “off the farm” for extra income and health insurance, they’re still strapped with debt, exhausted, and have just plain given up.  The barn is falling apart, built by great-grandpa’s hands, and there’s no hope of fixing it up.  Perhaps they’ll sell the wood for picture frames to help pay off a loan.  This, my friends, is the legacy of our country’s luxury of 5%.

“But why does local and organic cost so much more?” people ask me over and over again.  If I had a dollar for each time I’ve had to soldier this comment, perhaps I could lower the prices, but the truth is that I don’t receive any subsidies.  I don’t want to be in loads of debt, with a barn falling to pieces and the auctioneer coming because I have to sell it all and lose the farm.  If we want to keep our farmers in our community as dignified individuals who give their lives as stewards of the land and animals in their care, then we have to be honest about how we price our food.

Just in the news today, there is a terrible drought in California.  In order to have enough water for the population’s needs, water meant for irrigating agriculture is being diverted.  A hierarchy of priority has been set, preserving water to maintain the health of tree crops (a long-term investment in almonds, apples, pears, peaches, oranges, cherries, etc.), while the first to have the irrigation pumps turned off will be lettuces.  Already there is talk of rising food prices nation-wide as the biggest produce-growing area of the nation buckles down in the face of raging drought.  Oh how inconvenient for everyone else!  Whatever shall we do!

There are two potential outcomes from this scenario that I hope will transpire.  One is that a greater portion of the population will take the issues of Global Climate Change more seriously because as ecosystems and weather patterns change, this will equally threaten our food supply.  Secondly, as food prices rise nationwide, I hope that people will look around and say, “You know, maybe it makes just as much sense to spend my food dollar locally, rather than just at the supermarket.  That way, I am investing in maintaining and growing a vibrant food network right here where I live, rather than depending on having everything shipped in from someplace else.”

In the end, “you always get what you pay for.”  Taking an honest look at pricing also involves keeping in mind one’s personal influence as a consumer.  Where do you want your food dollar to go?  Do you want it to encourage a convoluted agribusiness system that pushes out the small-scale, sustainably-minded agrarian family?  Or is having these family farms as part of our community and landscape important to you?  If this is the first time you’ve had a chance to work this issue over, I applaud you for reading my thoughts to their current conclusion.  And I hope that we may have a more informed discussion on the price of local and organic when we see you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

So, last week, we all nearly froze to death.  And yes, I had been hoping for something a little warmer—something above zero.  But temperatures hovering around 30 degrees, while nice for the winter athletes in the area, is an utter messiness on the farm.

The donkey’s winter pen must be cleaned up each day with one of those handy, red, slotted mucking rakes like a kitty litter scooper on steroids.  The “donkey apples” are dry, clearly defined, and fairly easy to swipe up, shake the good bedding free, and dump into a wheelbarrow outside the pen.

The sheep use a deep-pack winter bedding system, where we keep adding layers of straw or old hay on top of the soiled bedding.  The entire mass slowly begins to compost below, offering a cushy, warm surface for the sheep to lounge upon.  In spring, this wonderful pack of manure and roughage is spread on gardens and hayfields to improve soil fertility and organic matter.

But the poultry situation is another story altogether.  Through the cold spell, the messy, wet-ish, chicken “droppings” freeze in cakes as I haul in fresh layers of wood shavings and straw to help keep little bird feet warm and dry.  But when that January thaw comes, all that frozen pack melts into a pungently odiferous swamp that oozes and goozes around your boots, threatening to mire you entirely!  Adding more bedding on top, at this point, is quite fruitless, so there is nothing to be done but to clean the whole thing out and start with fresh bedding.

In the summer, this means backing up the manure spreader hitched to the tractor, piling the beading on top, and driving away to spread the rich nutrients on the hayfields or pasture.  But in winter, the door to the shed where the manure spreader sleeps is piled high with snow, and the tractor will only be hopelessly floundered and stuck in the deep snow outside the chicken coop.  So really, that mid-winter cleaning with mechanical assist is a pipedream, at least on our farm.

Instead, it’s time for some real high-tech equipment:  shovels, ice chippers, five-gallon buckets, and wheelbarrows.  We scope out the barnyard, surveying the right place for the winter manure pile—out of the way of the snow plow but a good spot for loading into the spreader come spring, preferably not too far away from the chicken coop but also not where it will become a drainage problem come the big snow melt.

We settle on a corner of the plowed space between the Red Barn and a green storage shed, uphill of the mini lake that appears each spring behind the turkey coop.  Last year, in desperation, we had tried dragging the soiled bedding just outside the chicken coop door into the yard, but the ensuing ode-du-chicken that lasted until the ground hardened enough to take it away was less then appreciated.  This spot is certainly farther away but hopefully better suited as a holding ground for the day’s labors.

Little winding trails connect the plowed path to the turkey and then the chicken coop—just wide enough for walking with a filled and dripping waterer but not quite wide enough for the wheelbarrows.  We tug and pull the two-wheeled, yellow beast with red handles through the slightly mushy snow to the door of the coop.  The exhaust fan has been running all day and last night too, but it’s still not keeping up with the melting frost from the walls.

Working with old metal scoop shovels and our trusty ice chopper, we fill the five-gallon buckets with soggy, sticky bedding the color of milk chocolate, then empty the buckets into the wheelbarrow.  Too wide to fit through the chicken coop door, it waits patiently outside to bear the load.

As we chip and scoop away, I wonder how many loads of bedding and bags of feed I’ve hauled in here since the last time the coop needed cleaning.  Over a foot thick in places, we are hardly two feet into the doorway of the coop when it’s time to empty the wheelbarrow.  I grasp the handles and push with my full body while Mom clutches the rim and pulls from the front.  We mire down first to the left and then the right as a wheel sinks off the trodden-down path.  Ooh, this is going to be fun…ha ha.

Grumpy, mid-winter chickens are less than obliging to move out of our way as we trudge back for a second load.  The White Pekin ducks, who are overwintering with the chickens this year to avoid any season two of the bobcat attack, hurry outside and into the snow, flapping and quacking in delight at the warmed temperatures.  We’ve been doing our best to accommodate their ducky needs through the winter, but their penchant for spilling water has absolutely sloshed the bedding in places.

When the bedding stayed froze in the cold, this wasn’t too much of a problem.  But now with the thaw, the brown-gray goop and blocks of ice mounds are treacherous as well as nasty, and it all has to go.  Mom takes five wheelbarrow loads, while I take six or seven into the darkening afternoon, until we have finally cleaned out the first half of the coop.  Realizing that we had neither the light nor the strength to finish the job that day, we traipsed a path to the chopper box (which holds the fresh bedding from the local saw mill).

I carefully ease myself inside, between the tines and auger that power the unloading process for big jobs like barn cleanings.  Here, I attack the still half-frozen bank of wood shavings with a hoe and kick them towards the outlet, where Mom waits with the wheelbarrow below.  Even though they are difficult to maneuver in the snow, where would we be without wheel barrows?

As we work, it becomes apparent that 12 loads of litter were hauled out of the coop for the same amount of floor space that now only takes two-and-a-half loads to cover with fresh bedding.  Already, the air quality in the coop is improving as the ladies scratch at the light-golden shavings all nice and dry for their scaly feet.  Right away, their moods improve as they strut about.  The younger girls with the ducks on the other half of the divided coop stare through the chicken wire with envy.

“That’s not fair, what about us?”

But it’s dark and damp and our arms, shoulders, and legs are worn out for the night.  Guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow afternoon, thanks to the January thaw?  Well, we knew it would come around sometime.  At least the chicken coop will smell much better when we see you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it’s colder than colder than cold outside today.  Schools are canceled across the state and even in Chicago, eight hours driving time to the south.  A pure arctic blast sweeps across the Northland, plummeting temperatures so low they kill the outdoor digital thermometer—never to rise from the grave again.  Why they sell such a wimpy model up here, who knows!

Even though it’s too cold for the school kids to venture outside, I still have chores to do.  Bundling up for 50-below wind-chill weather is no small task, layering on 17 pounds of boots, insulated pants, down coat, headband, hat, scarf, and the new chopper mittens I got for Christmas.  It only takes 15 minutes for skin to be frost bitten in this weather, so I peer through a mere slit in my downy attire, like a medieval knight armed against the warring weather.

Alternately, life inside the heated aquaponics greenhouse (when the sun is shining and the eager green plants offer their mid-winter oxygen high) sits snug and steaming in the morning sun.  Shuffling about with a watering can or bending to pull a head of fresh lettuce in this little micro-climate seems like a blissful heaven compared to the frigid world between my back door and the chicken coop.

Our winding, trudged-down trails make navigating the farm an interesting endeavor, especially when the winds drift them over in places.  Accidentally stepping off the trail as my glasses fog over from steamy breath, I find myself in the less-than-amusing predicament of sinking in over my knee. 

Yes, I remind myself, I like Wisconsin winters…really I do.  Every type of weather has to be good for something, right?  How about surviving this cold means no flea beetles attacking the broccoli this summer, ok?  No cucumber bugs?  No Colorado potato beetles?  How about no ticks?  I’d take that as a fair exchange for freezing my eyelashes together while doing chores the first week in January.

But you know it’s getting bad when the hairs in your nose freeze together too, beneath your scarf!  Inside the non-insulated chicken coop, though, it’s nearly 20 degrees (above zero), due to the 130 little warm, feathery bodies inside, south-facing windows, and the bright sunshine today.  At 42 BTUs per chicken, the ladies are helping keep each other warm.  But I notice that the heated waterer is being cantankerous, its rim frozen solid, which means I get to lug the beast to the farm house bathtub to thaw it out…again.

Yes, I tell myself, winter has good qualities.  I actually get to have some sleep because the sun sets before ten o’clock in the evening.  I’m not being eaten alive by mosquitoes.  There are no weeds to pull.  And I’m not making hay in 90-degree mugginess.  Yes, I remind myself, this is an improvement.  Can you feel the enthusiasm before it freezes over?

The ice building up on the inside of my polar fleece scarf is becoming suffocating.  Goodness, it’s crazy cold out here today.  I can tell by the biting westerly wind that it’s best to dash between buildings rather than stay out long—or at least when you can.  But now we have to jump-start the car again because the battery died in the cold.  Oh goodness, where is a warm dog when you need one!

But none of the dogs are eager to stay outside long.  They hop on three legs, then two.  Our little dog Sophie wonders if she can hop back to the house on one leg, her paws are so cold.  They’d much rather curl up in their soft doggie beds on the heated basement floor.  I can’t blame them, but the chores have to get done sometime.

The sheep have frosty noses, with a light dusting of ice crystals adorning to the edges of their warm wooly coats, just as it clings in frosty tendrils on the wayward wisps of hair escaping around the sides of my face.  In the distance, I can hear the trees popping in the forest, the last bits of sap expanding and splitting the wood from within. 

And here I am, just a medium-sized mammal, floundering around in the snow, bundled up because I haven’t much fur, lugging a half-frozen chicken waterer.  This must be some form of madness!  I’m keeping sub-tropical birds in a little wooden building in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin’s winter—the harshest ever since 1996!  If this crazy cold keeps up much longer, we’ll be watching out for the edge of the oncoming glacier!!!  (Don’t worry, glaciers move rather slow, so you should be able to stay ahead of it.)

But once inside, all warmed by the wood stove with a steaming mug of hot chocolate in hand, the glistening snowiness in the sunshine outside still seems like a magical fairy world.  And out of that ice-blue sky, tiny snowflakes are falling from nowhere, drifting and dancing lazily in the westerly winds.  A chickadee darts to and from the feeder, happy for the sustenance, while the cat watches from within the safety of the window.  The tip of her furry tail twitches, keeping time with her feline thoughts.

But it won’t be long before the sun begins to set, and I’ll pile on the bundle of protective clothing to face this crazy cold for evening chores.  Wasn’t I just out there?  Be safe, stay warm, and hopefully things will be a little bit warmer when we see you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

Farming can have its moments of drudgery:  mucking barns, cleaning chicken coops, weeding the garden, mulching the potato patch—the sorts of projects that make our summer interns grumble and groan.  And then there are the tastefully unpleasant tasks, like picking through the odiferous rotting potatoes in the basement.  But farming is far from all muck and grime, with a constant supply of transitions and seasonal changes that help to keep the agrarian lifestyle sprinkled with joy.

These little moments are seldom planned—you are going to have fun NOW, so you better enjoy it!  It might be bursting into a Broadway number in the middle of the weed patch with slightly altered lyrics to voice your plight beneath the hot summer sun.  It might be dancing in the kitchen while the fiddle plays in the dining hall during a Harvest Dinner and Concert night, despite the days of meticulous preparation and beeping timers announcing their need for culinary attention.

It might be a random bedding fight after cleaning the lamb barn, irresistibly crunching through the autumn leaf piles raked up in the yard, or making up voices for baby chicks as they explore their new world, “Ohh, what’s this over here?  It’s shiny.  Should I peck it?”  Having a good laugh, despite all the pressures and mounting to-do list, can be the best joy therapy amidst the rigors of farm living.

This holiday season, with all the family that journeyed across the country to come and stay at the farm, we took several days off from the usual Creamery & Café schedule to relax by the fire, share stories, play games, and laugh.  There’s the worn-out old Sorry game and beloved card games, but this year I shared a new game relayed by a friend.  You’re welcome to try it with your family too.  Having a group of five or more people makes this much more fun.

Telephone Pictionary

You don’t need a board, dice, or an hour glass.  What you need are pens or pencils and folded strips of paper.  Just like the kid’s game of telephone (where a phrase is whispered from ear to ear until it reaches the original speaker, usually altered), Telephone Pictionary involves passing along a message that flip-flops from text to image and back to text as it circles the room.

The first person writes a simple sentence on the piece of paper.  This sentence could be anything from “The squirrel ran up the tree” to “My dog likes to eat treats.”  Keep the ideas fairly simple and straightforward.  Then pass the paper onto the next person in the circle.  This person reads the sentence, folds the paper over so that the text is hidden, and draws their pictorial rendition of that sentence.  This is then passed onto the third person, who observed the picture, folds the paper again, and writes what she believes is the sentence that the picture represents.  The fourth person then gets to draw the new sentence. 

Keep passing the piece along until it returns to the original sentence writer or you run out of paper.  You can even play, as we did, where everyone starts with a piece of paper and their own sentence, so that multiple Telephone Pictionary threads are circling at the same time.  As the project progresses, bellylaughs are sure to ensue—especially when you unfold the thread and see how the sentences and pictures changed as they were passed along!  Who cares if you think you can’t draw; the point is to have a good time with friends and family, enjoying the little moments together.

***

Sometimes life can try to tear you down or leave you discouraged in your hopes and endeavors, but it’s always good to take a step back and find joy in the little moments—the smell of baking holiday cookies, the antics of the family dog or cat, or the flitting eagerness of little birds at the feeder outside the window.

The New Year is soon upon us, and with it the promise of a fresh start, new projects, and plans for another growing season.  This holiday, and throughout the year, take time to find joy in the little moments and share them with others.  Best wishes for you and yours in the coming year, and maybe we’ll see you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

At Farmstead Creamery, we’ve been hosting open studio wreathmaking classes, whether for a lively family with a small troop of children or for friends gathering for a fun afternoon.  The freshly harvested balsam and white pine boughs fragrance the room as we trim the sprigs into palm-sized pieces.  We laugh as we wrestle with florist wire, sticky fingers, and prickly branches.  Working clockwise around the crimped wire base, with a few tips of the trade, our old-fashioned wreaths are forming.

Making wreaths during the holiday season is a tradition most ancient.  The wreath, as a circle, is a shape for unending continuation (rather like the infinity sign is to the sciences), a symbol that winter is part of the turning of the year.  The greenery of the pine not only scents our dwelling with the distinctive piney-freshness that immediately conjures Christmas tree memories but also is there to remind us that spring will return and all the world shall be green again.

Ribbons tied into bows, glittery bobbles, and antique ornaments provide the finishing touches to our creations, which now adorn the doorways of homes and cottages with Christmas cheer.  Already, I have one hanging below the light of the farmhouse porch, waiting to greet traveling relatives upon their arrival.  It’s little things like making and hanging wreaths, rather than canned holiday tunes playing in a shopping center, that bring back the best of Christmas memories.

The baking and sharing of homemade cookies are also intertwined with the smells and tastes of the season.  The whir of the electric mixer as it creams butter and sugar is a sure sign that oven-hot treats will soon appear.  Creamy thumbprints with minty frosting in green or blue cool beside cocoa-rich chocolate crinkles, dusted with powdered sugar.  Almond-infused spritz cookies in the shapes of trees, wreaths, hearts, camels, and Scottie dogs await their sprinkles and silver-ball eyes.

A house that smells like cookies is an irresistible invitation.  The savory peanut butter blossoms with Hershey’s kisses pressed into the middle, or peppermint white chocolate bark are some more favorites.  Lately, Kara has been making truffles, stirring the fudge on the stove diligently, cooling, then meticulously cutting.  When it’s time for dipping each piece into smooth chocolate and decorating their tops, it’s quite an assembly operation.  All the while, soft holiday music plays in the background—old carols, traditional favorites.  We sing along as we work in the kitchen.

While I’ve grown too old for Santa Claus to visit anymore (the fellow is booked so solid these days), I still remember the Christmas I was determined to see Santa at work.  At least I wanted to figure out how he came down the chimney!  An eager and imaginative eight-year-old, my plans were laid very carefully.

This was before we had moved up to the farm, and our house at that time had a lofted part of the stairway that looked down onto the living room, with its fireplace and accorded knitted stockings in cheery greens and reds.  Mom and Dad were downstairs, doing whatever Moms and Dads do when the children are supposed to be in bed.  Five-year-old Kara was in on my reconnaissance plans, but she had fallen asleep.

I was lying in bed, wide awake, listening for the sleigh bells of the reindeer that would soon alight on our roof.  I waited…and waited…and waited.  It seemed an utter eternity.  Well, maybe the roof was so well-insulated, I couldn’t hear the bells.  Maybe the reindeer didn’t get bells this year, so they would be stealthier.  Anyway, I didn’t want to miss Santa by waiting too long.

Sliding out the side of the bed, I crept on hands and knees towards the hall that led to the stairs.  The carpet was quiet, and I knew all the squeaky spots in the floor.  Carefully, carefully, I crept down the hall to the first rungs in the rail overlooking the livingroom.  Mom and Dad were still talking and doing the dishes in the kitchen below, where they couldn’t see me peeking.  But the stocking were flat…really flat.  I was too soon for Santa.

With the same utmost precaution, I slithered back to my room at the very end of the hall and slunk into bed.  Again I waited.  Maybe Santa really does know if you’re asleep or not.  I stared at the ceiling, at the snow falling outside my window…and then I woke up to Christmas morning.  I had totally missed Santa!  But he had come anyway, despite my intent to be mischievous.

I also remember the magic of the glowing Christmas tree in the evening—the colorful lights glinting off antique and family ornaments of birds, angels, snowflakes, icicles, and more.  The presents lovingly wrapped beneath were often made by hand.  These days, we get terribly practical with our Christmas gifts to each other—insulated work pants, new leather gloves, or a fresh pair of barn boots.  Sometimes, if the old ones have worn out beyond repair, the Christmas gifts are pressed into service before the holiday and without the formalities of wrapping paper!  Ah well, the chores still have to be done, even on holidays.

This Christmas season (or Chanukah or Ramadan or Solstice), take time to share a special memory from your childhood.  Enjoy a steaming hot cider by the fire, bring Christmas cookies to a helping neighbor, hang a wreath on your front door, and listen for the tinkling sound of Santa’s sleigh in the winter night’s sky.  Blessings of the season to you and yours, and we’ll see you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

Some jobs just gotta get done on the farm, whether you like them or not.  Cleaning the chicken coop must be pretty high on the list, along with butchering, but loading pigs or sheep are near the top of the charts as well.

Now, you may be thinking, “Oh no, not the cute little lambs!”  But they’re not very little anymore—try 130 pounds (we know because we lifted them up onto the hanging scale last night!) of teenaged male sheepness.  They’re bossy, nosy, and naughty, and all they want to think about are the cute girls next door (sound familiar?).  After keeping a new young breeding ram, it’s time for the rest to go before they cause more trouble and burn up the precious winter store of hay.

At least we have loading hogs down to a science—bring the trailer up to the pen the day before so they can grow accustomed to it, build a small catch pen to keep them closer, and lure them with food, water, and kitchen goodies.  But this same use of motivators doesn’t work with loading cantankerous teenaged sheep.

To begin with, our lambs are ready in November or December, when there is too much snow and ice (especially this year) to bring the Featherlight trailer very close to the barn.  This means we’ll have to catch each sheep, loop on a rope harness, and lead it to the trailer, with a detour to the hanging scale.  Sounds simple enough, in theory.

But these sheep have never been to the county fair, halter trained, or handled regularly.  They’re in their natural state—curious but wary.  It’s dark out already (late-afternoon, this time of year), and we’re bundled up in farm coats with glowing headlamps on our foreheads.  I hold fast the gate while Mom and Kara crowd the sheep into the corner and snag three.  With the halters on snug, the lambs begin a jig, pulling, jumping, and tussling.  A black-and-white speckled faced ram lamb named “Bandit” decides to fight the halter by pouncing, rearing up on his hind legs.

“It’s bucking broncos, who needs rodeo or Monday Night Football, when you can wrestle sheep?!”  It’s pulling and tussling out through the gate and into the deep snow.  My white-faced lamb decides to be especially stubborn and lay down.  “Come on, please!”  He wrinkles up his nose, as if to say, “I like routine, and this is not routine.  I’m not going anywhere.”

I’m still struggle with coaxing, pushing, teasing, as Mom and Kara head away down the path to the trailer with their charges.  “See, you’re friends are leaving you!”  Then, without warning, the lamb charges up and I’m running behind like a musher, trying to keep up.  Then plop, he lays down again.  “If anyone wants a live nativity scene, they’re going to have to set it up right here because this one’s not going anywhere!”  The wooly beast gives me a disgruntled look, snow sticking to his sides and legs like powdered sugar.  I’m sure that I don’t look much better.

Now it’s time to weigh the lambs, so that we know the sizes that are being sent to the butcher, catalogued by ear tag number.  This involves tucking a sling under the sheep’s belly, with strings attached to the top in loops.  The scale is hanging from the ceiling, with a hook on the bottom with a tough spring to record the weight.  Kara takes the front end, and Mom takes the back, while I’m in charge of hooking the sling to the scale.  It’s amazing, though, how long sheep legs can be, so we have to lift the lamb to the level of our shoulders—a kicking, squiggling, displeased lamb.

“132 pounds” Kara hollers, “Woah!”  The lamb is slipping forward on the scale, front feet touching the floor.  It’s mottled face bug-eyed like “I’m a sheep, I don’t want to fly!”  After rebalancing, we have our number, and gently let the lamb back down to the ground.  The sheep in the pen next door are half-amused, half-upset to be disturbed by this charade.  What happened to their lovely, quiet evening?

Now it’s time to head back to the lamb barn for another round of catching.  This time I’m handed Waldo, the first lamb of the season.  Fat and sassy, Waldo was his mother’s only lamb, which meant he got lots of milk.  I pull and I tug, but he’s not going anywhere.  Oh no, I’ve got two feet, and he’s got four, and he knows it.  “Kara!  He won’t come!”  Kara wrestles her lamb over and ties the harness to the barn door, then trundles back.  Taking the leash, Waldo perks up and follows right along, trot trot.  Guess I wasn’t his favorite human, little tart.

“You know,” Kara comments as we flounder about in the deep snow, sometimes pushing, sometimes pulling.  “I heard this story about how in Asia they’ve had skis longer than anywhere else in the world, and that they would nail horse hide to the bottom for traction up hills.  They skied with one pole and a lasso, which they would use to rope elk.  They’d hang onto the rope, and be dragged through the mountains, until the elk tired and they could kill it for food.  But now, I guess they do this as a sport.”

She shouldn’t have given the sheep any ideas.  Mom’s lamb bolted, “Laura, catch the rope!”  I grab it, one leather glove goes flying, then the sheep swerves to the side and I’m laying on the ground, being pulled across the barnyard with a face full of snow.  “Hold one, I’m coming!”

It was something like three hours later that all 20 lambs were safely tucked into their trailer hotel for the night.  This morning, Kara drove them off to the processor.  It’s a sad day on the farm, but it’s part of the cycle of life.  This way, there will be room for new little ones in the spring.

Do you enjoy lamb?  Grass-fed lamb is delicious and rather close to venison.  Unfortunately, the American palate was turned away from “lamb” during WWII when servicemen were fed copious amounts of mutton.  But you can be an adventuresome locavore and give lamb a second chance with this delicious holiday recipe.

Holiday Lamb Meat Balls with Yogurt

1 pound ground lamb

1/4 cup finely chopped white onion

1 Tbs. finely chopped fresh mint (or 1 tsp. dried)

1 Tbs. finely chopped fresh cilantro (or 1 tsp. dried)

1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1 tsp. ground coriander

Salt to taste

1/2 tsp. ground cumin

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. fresh ground black pepper

For the yogurt

7 ounces whole milk Greek yogurt

2 tsp. finely chopped fresh cilantro (or 2/3 tsp. dried)

2 tsp. finely chopped fresh mint (or 2/3 tsp. dried)

1 tsp. ground cumin

Zest of 1 lemon, minced

Heat oven to 375 degrees, with wire rack in middle.  Combine all meatball ingredients and mix well with your hands.  Form 30 balls (about 2 tsp. each) and place on a baking sheet.  Bake until they are no longer pink in the middle, about 15 minutes.  Meanwhile, combine all yogurt ingredients in a small bowl.  Keep yogurt chilled until serving (can be prepared in advance).  Lamb makes a delicious and healthy appetizer, especially when baked, because it’s lower in fat!  Enjoy

***

I’m still a bit stiff and sore, but at least that’s one more task to check off the list for this year.  See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com

It’s a Monday—our day that Farmstead Creamery is closed—which means it’s time for all those outside chores that have stacked up all week.  The chicken coop needs cleaning, the snowload supports in the high tunnel greenhouse need installing, and the hay elevator needs to be tucked away in the shed.

But when the weather report comes through that it’s bound to start snowing today and keep snowing all through Wednesday (with accumulations up to 18 inches), there’s another important item that bumps up to the top of the “needs to happen today” chart:  firewood.

Firewood is an integral part of Northwoods culture.  Some folks still heat exclusively with wood, while others (like on our farm) augment with fireplaces or efficient wood stoves.  Also on our list this year is the wood-fired pizza oven we hope to install at Farmstead Creamery in time for summer, which will need its own supply of seasoned, split wood for burning.

Storing all that firewood can be its own adventure, and many folks have been creative with tarps, lean-tos, sheds, or even just stacks between pine trees in the yard.  On our farm, the original machine shed (designed with one long side open for ease of backing horse-drawn sickles, rakes, and other equipment) serves as a roomy woodshed.  Over the years, the building has settled a bit—so watch your head.  The relatively neat stacks are in orderly, German-farmer fashion with the oldest logs on one side and the newest on the other, so you can remember which pile to pull from first when loading the wheel barrel.

Even logs cut as dead and fallen material from the acres of forest behind the barn still need a good year or two to cure and dry, so even when there’s a nice supply of firewood in the shed, it’s always good practice to head on out in the fall for more.  Gun season is over, the snow is coming shortly (already the flakes are beginning to fall from a clouded sky), so there’s no time like the present.

Chainsaws are another part of Northwoods culture, whirring away in the woods with a haunting echo.  Grandpa has a chain saw, but the vibrations are hard on our small hands—so firewood day includes enlisting the help of a chainsaw-savvy friend.  Today, it’s our neighbor down the way Bryan, pulling up in his white pickup as we hitch the old farm truck to the beater wood trailer and pump up the tires.  Kara has scouted a patch of fallen and standing dead hardwoods on the edge of the southern hay field, and off we go.

A few crows are cawing, but otherwise the woods it quiet as the snow blows in from the field.  The branches stand barren, clawing towards the gray sky.  The dusky-green pines wait patiently, their waxy needles immune to the damp cold of the afternoon.  Bryan and Kara head along a deer path into the grove, scouting out potential burning material.  Mom and I have the illustrious job of carrying out their doing—piling the maple, oak, popple, and ironwood into the trailer and back of the truck.  Thunk, thunk, the logs drop in.

We’re far enough into the woods that this involved a goodly bit of walking.  The old adage, “He who cuts his own wood is twice warmed” comes to mind as we unzip coats and hang hats on branches.  The snow is wet, and soon are we—slip sliding on our beaten-down trail as the logs begin to fill the sagging old trailer.

We keep at it—Bryan and Kara sawing and turning the logs, throwing them into piles, while Mom and I traipse back and forth with arms full—for three hours, until the trailer is so full the wheels squeak and the back end of the truck hatch can barely close.  This looks like a good haul!  Ah, but think of the task it must have been, back in the days when firewood was collected with hand axes and bucksaws…it must have been a monumental, never-ending task to keep the family warm.

That night, after cleaning the chicken coop, we unloaded the trailer by headlamp before the poor old shocks gave way, leaving five nicely stacked piles in the yard for the family’s Christmas wood-splitting party.  We’re sore and tired and can hardly lift our feet anymore, but it feels good to have one more piece of the list checked off for the year—just in time.  The snow is falling heavy now, and we’ll be in for a good dose of shoveling in the morning.

Being a woodcutter was a full-time profession in the Middle Ages, with forest lands carefully maintained.  In such a profession, if was important to know which woods served best to warm a home or castle, which is commemorated in this working song from the era.  You can listen to this song on my new Christmas CD release “Season of Delight” at www.heartistry.com 

Oak logs will warm you well, that are old and dry

Logs of pine will sweetly smell, but the sparks will fly

Birch logs will burn too fast, chestnut scarce at all, sir

And hawthorn logs are known to last, that are cut down in the fall, sir

Surely you will find, there’s none compare with the hardwood logs

That are cut in wintertime, sir.

Holly logs will burn like wax, you can burn them green

Elm logs burn like smoldering flax, with no flames to be seen

Beech logs for wintertime, yule logs as well, sir

Green alder logs it is a crime, for any man to sell, sir

Surely you will find, there’s none compare with the hardwood logs

That are cut in wintertime, sir.

Pear logs and apple logs, they will scent your room

Cherry logs across the dogs, smell like flowers in bloom

But ash logs, smooth and gray, buy them green or old, sir

And pile up all that come your way, for they’re worth their weight in gold, sir

Surely you will find, there’s none compare with the hardwood logs

That are cut in wintertime, sir.

Surely you will find, there’s none compare with the hardwood logs

That are cut in wintertime.

Have you stored away your firewood this year?  Amidst the snows of winter, it will feel good to have the woodshed full, the woodstove filled with the golden glow of a warming fire, and the promise of wood-fired pizzas during the busy days of summer.  See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery & Café. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com