North Star Homestead Farms, LLC

Let’s be honest, holes happen on farms.  I always get holes in my jeans from making hay—throwing bales, stacking, climbing, crawling.  There’s a sand-strewn hole just under the garage foundation where the thirteen-lined ground squirrels have taken up residence.  And there are all the quirky knotholes in the walls of the barn, where the light shines in and casts speckles and streaks in the morning.

There are holes in my chore boots, right where they fold when I walk, that lets in the morning dew and splattering rain, dampening the tops of my socks.  So much for keeping me warm and dry…but I still haven’t taken the time to replace them.  Seems like you just get something broke in when the holes start appearing.

Our intern Sam found the hole in the pair of thick, blue, rubber gloves used for dunking the chickens in the scalding tank during butchering.  Now and then, she’d have to pour out the hot water that had collected inside.  And, of course, there’s always the holes worn into garden gloves from weeding and transplanting, with sandy grit impacted under my fingernails or the sticky greenness from handling tomato plants. 

Yup, it seems that some things have trouble holding up to farm work.  Last summer, a particularly pointy rock managed to put two holes in one of the truck tires.  At first, it looked like a nail, but the fix-it garage saved the dagger-shaped stone after extraction for us to see.  What luck it was indeed to run over such a treasure wrong-side-up.  We actually kept the little bugger, to show when telling the story to family, but also to quarantine it from reappearing on the driveway!

Every Saturday during farmer’s market season, I load up the car with bakery, jams, produce, gelato, and other farm goodies.  The fold-up canopy rests on top, along with the tables and bakery bins.  Our first canopy, which lasted 10 years of active duty, had a pretty forest green and white striped top with a center peak.  The case that slipped over the top was equally striped, like a big Cat-in-the-Hat chapeau, minus the brim.  Well, as the 10 years were getting on, the case first wrinkled, then wore out at the corners, then tore down the seam, then simply disintegrated. 

Holes worn at the corner intersections of the canopy began to leak, so the poor thing was demoted from farmer’s market duty to chicken butchering shelter.  A few more years of limping the well-loved structure along, and UV degradation left the top with little pin-holes everywhere that dripped rain like a fine sieve.  But still, being thrifty, we kept the thing until at last all the aluminum bracing broke at the hinges and the canopy refused to open anymore.  That doesn’t make the structure terribly useful.

The newer, white canopy has since passed the “death of the case” phase, and lately I’ve noticed a few holes where the corners rub in packing.  So we start the saga again!

If there’s a hole in your bug net hat, the skeeders and the gnats will find it.  Please don’t tell me there’s a hole in my beekeeping suit!  If there’s a tear in your rain jacket, the water will seep in.  If there’s a hole in the fence, the pigs know about it, and if there’s a hollowed out hole in your winter squash, the voles got there first!  Holes, holes, holes, where do they all come from!?

There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza dear Liza

There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza a hole.

Almost all of Kara’s favorite farm shirts have holes in them somewhere.  One of my sweatshirts has some interesting holes from being in the compost pile for nearly a year.  It must have been laying in the bed of the utility golf cart when someone piled a bunch of weeds on top without noticing, dumping the whole load.  I looked everywhere for that blue sweatshirt!  Then, one day in spring, there it was on the pile, with the quack grass punching up through.  It cleaned up alright, though bleached in wavy streaks by the sun, with all the new holes.  Battle worn, perhaps, is an apt description.

But some holes aren’t funny at all.  I remember one day back when we were first restoring the farm, and I was just a little bean pole of a pre-teen.  Historically, it was customary for farmer’s to simply throw unwanted items into piles just outside the barnyard.  We’ve found three such piles on the farm, which we’ve cleaned up and hauled away over the years.  One was filled with old wheels, medicine bottles, a toy pistol, the sole of a shoe, and bent sickle bars, but the one where our first chicken coop was going was the old boards, rusty nails, bent shingles, and broken glass type.

We threw the big pieces onto the red trailer by hand and scooped up the small bits with shovels and rakes.  I remember picking nails and picking nails from the dirt, and even still the chickens continue to scratch up odd objects to this day—remnants of trash heap archaeology.  But at last, we were fully loaded and heading off to the dump.

I can’t tell you how many times I was warned to be careful about the broken glass.  Again, we had thrown off the big chunks and scooped away at the small pieces, but there weren’t enough shovels to go around, so Grandpa was kicking at the pile to help it along.  He didn’t say anything, but when we got home, he calmly asked Mom to look at his foot.  A piece of glass had sliced through his leather boot, right into the side of his foot!  And he had driven home that way!  It was a messy cleanup job to take care of that hole, so be warned.

But perhaps the happiest holes on the farm involve food.  There’s the hole sliced in the top of a pie crust, to let out the steam and watch for bubbly doneness.  There’s the hole made in the top of the mashed potatoes on your plate to hold the butter or homemade gravy.  And there’s the hole in the middle of the bagel or fresh pretzel, which I guess is there just to be there.  So yes, while most holes are bothersome, a few on the farm are just for fun.  Watch out for holes!  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 takes a brave soul to decide to spend an entire summer on a farm out in the middle of the Chequamegon National Forest that’s run by three (possibly eccentric) ladies.  Of course, there’ll be plenty to do (!!!), lots of great fresh food (another !!!, especially since that includes gelato), and fresh air.  But it’s still a brave proposition and an adventure that young folks who intern on our farm have chosen to plunge into like taking a cannonball splash into Lake Superior.

Immersion learning is another name for it, right here in the living laboratory of our diversified homestead farm.

This year, our intern adventurers are Jacob Schultz from Northland College in Ashland, WI and Sam Harrington from Green Mountain College in Vermont—both sustainable ag majors.  Jake jumped in during spring break in April, returning in June just after the PBS filming.  Sam arrived earlier in June, just in time for piglets.  Both, alas and alack, are leaving us this week to return to their lives and coursework.

Last night around the dinner table after a day of butchering chickens, we were sharing stories and laughing over the summer’s accomplishments and moments of havoc.  Here are some of the memorable points Sam and Jake recalled:

Jake:  The day the lamb Junco was born, since he had both hypothermia and hypoglycemia.  We worked on him for five hours, warming on the block heater and giving electrolyte shots and enemas.  We were so exhausted, but Junco pulled through.  He had to be a bottle lamb because he was away from his mother too long after birth, but now you can’t hardly pick him out from the crowd. 

Sam:  Holding down the chicken tractors in the sudden storm that whipped up the evening after the PBS filming until Laura could pound in the T-posts to stake them down.  Then it was the treetops ripping off and landing right next to my bedroom window, ach!

Jake:  The long drive to pick up the colony of honeybees, only to come back and find out the queen was dead!  Then later having the chance to work the hives and see the colonies established and progressing.  Also, knowing that the bees liked me much better than some of the previous interns.

Sam:  Getting to be there when the piglets were born and sitting with Agatha when she was so friendly right before farrowing.  Then there was the one piglet I had to birth myself because Kara stepped away for a moment. 

Jake:  Being dragged off to splash in the mud puddles with Sam.  And the snakes.

Sam:  Ach, the snakes in the hay bales!  [Sam doesn’t like snakes…that’s an understatement]  I had to look at every side of every bale because it seemed like nearly half of them had snakes stuck in them, and then Jake had to pull them out.

Jake:  Yup, at least the chickens liked to eat them.  Throw the snake in the pen, and it was gone.

Sam:  And of course you got to make beer [one of Sam’s talents, which she shared with us this summer].  I kept telling you I make the best beer in the world.  And now you know for real.

Jake:  And seeing the aquaponics was really cool.  Everything from catching and filleting the big fish to introducing the new shipment of little fish.  And planting and harvesting in the greenhouse was awesome…way better than all the weed pulling in the garden.

Sam:  Ooh, but don’t forget tie-dye!  I really wanted to tie-dye Jake’s socks, but I resisted.  We still have to get our tie-dye Tuesday picture together, to go along with “chicken dish Tuesday.”

Jake:  Yeah, there’s been a lot of dishes, and a lot of great food too.  I’ve really loved the food, and the gelato.  That peanut butter gelato is awesome.

Sam:  I never ate so many pancakes in my life, or pizza!  Or pigeon either, never had pigeon before.  I’m still proud that I got it, though.

Jake:  How about the maggots in the back end of the truck, after we got rid of the garbage that one hot day.  At first we thought it was saw dust, but it wasn’t.  It was tons and tons of maggots.  I had to get them out with the power washer, and I was hunched over in the back, spraying, and there was no getting around it by to spray in an arc and get splashed with them.  I went as fast as I could, but it was no use.  The maggots went flying everywhere.

Sam:  Kara and I were the midnight milkers.  But Kara kept falling asleep, so she needed me to keep talking to her.  No matter what we did, we always got stuck milking late, and I’d still be there, cleaning up.  But then, I don’t think I’ve ever met a farmer that got enough sleep.

You can hear more of our interns’ stories this Thursday the 14^th at our Annual Intern Scholarship Dinner (in tandem with Pizza Farm Night from 5:00 to 8:00 pm).  We’ll be joined by Tom Draughon and the South Shore Mountain Boys (bluegrass), a slideshow of images from the summer, and more!  All proceeds go towards scholarships for Sam and Jake, and it’s our way to celebrate the dedication and accomplishments of these fine young people who chose to spend their summer on the farm.

Are memories of summertime on a friend or relative’s farm part of your storybag?  It’s high season in the garden, the pizza oven is fired up, and maybe we’ll see you down on the farm before our handy helpers head off to school.

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

It happens.  No matter how harmoniously you try to farm with nature, some critters have it in for you.  If it’s not ravens running off with baby chickens, it’s the bobcat slaughtering your ducks.  If it’s not the rabbits in the pea patch, it’s the voles climbing the tomato plants to eat three times their body weight every day.  If it’s not the robins gorging in the raspberry patch, it’s the tent caterpillars in your apple tree.

Each year has its own challenges with pesky critters.  One year, the voles may be driving you crazy—running off with your mousetraps, escaping the dog, digging tunnels everywhere, hollowing out your melons and squashes.  The next year, you’ll hardly see a vole but the ground squirrels seem to be everywhere—tunneling under the garage, marauding the chicken feed, and shredding everything related to paper.

And then there’s woodchucks digging caverns under the barn, juvenile Bald Eagles terrorizing the chickens in their tractor pens, or coyotes howling in the night, spooking the newly-weaned lambs.  Goodness, you might even find a snapping turtle caught in the pig pen!

Sometimes, we do our best to live with/around the critters.  We’ve certainly raised a good crop of robins this year with the raspberries because the patch is too sprawled to cover with bird netting anymore.  But sometimes these unwanted guests on the farm call for an all-out-war.  I’m sorry if it doesn’t seem neighborly, but this is not a wildlife farm.  Go live in the woods, be merry, and prosper.  But if you start messing with my farm, watch out!

For years, back when we were mostly just visiting the farm as a getaway, woodchucks lived in the barn.  One particular fat and sassy fellow (or lady, I can’t be sure) perched on an open door in the hay loft, basking in the morning sun, surveying the realm.  Yet, while woodchucks have their own sort of charm (I suppose), their damages to the property outweighed their quaintness. 

While Grandpa took care of the woodchuck population after they collapsed the original hand-dug well in the pump house, restoring the north wing of the barn back to a working dairy shone a new light on the plunder.  Punching through the old stone-infused cement to see that the footings were solid, giant caverns were exposed that had to be filled, lest the whole wing should crack and cave in.  Wouldn’t that be an unpleasant experience in the middle of milking!  A considerable amount of concrete (and funds) went into those holes to make amends from the reign of the farm’s woodchucks.

So, when a teenaged woodchuck decided to move into the red barn early this summer, this was no laughing matter.  We’d been woodchuck-free for at least ten years.  This invader was certainly not welcome!  After finding his hole and watching the little nose pop in and out from under pallets of hay, we made a plan to catch “Charlie” the woodchuck.

Using cement blocks to form a chute outside the hole, we baited a rabbit live trap with peanut butter.  But we were concerned that, since Charlie had more length than a rabbit, he’d be able to get out after triggering the trap.  So we threaded a stick through at the very back and smeared the peanut butter on that.  This was set at the opening of the cement block chute.  And then we left Charlie alone.

“I don’t think we’re going to catch it,” our intern Jake mused.  “I don’t even know if woodchucks like peanut butter.”

But the next morning, when Jake peered around the corner of the barn and called in excitement, “We’ve got him!” it appeared that peanut butter was the right answer.  In fact, Charlie seemed to like it so much that he’d eaten well into the stick as well.  Later, Grandpa took Charlie for a ride out into the forest.

But the latest unwanted guest on the farm was a pigeon.  Over the years, we’ve worked hard to keep the farm pigeon-free, since they are renowned carriers of diseases for livestock.  Pigeons like farms, there’s usually feed to be found somewhere, and barns offer adequate protection from predators.  But take a stroll at any feed mill or in a city, and you can see that there isn’t any threat to the global pigeon population.

Usually, we try scare tactics first, involving rocks, the dog, screaming, and chasing.  Sometimes this is enough to convince the pigeon in question that our farm is no place to stay.  Other times, it isn’t.

About two weeks ago, a white-headed pigeon began appearing on the farm, mostly ranging for spilled chicken feed behind the tractors.  We’d chase after it, but the next day it would be back.  We’d throw sticks and rocks, and still it came back.  Lena would chase it for hours, but the little bugger just wasn’t learning.  It was a pretty thing, for a pigeon, but it was going to have to go.  No thank you fowl cholera, coccidiosis, or avian flu.

So we scrounged up Grandpa’s old 22 and waited for the bird’s imminent return. 

“There he is, on the roof!”  We had just finished picking the black currant bushes by our house when Jake noticed the speckled bird eyeing us from the top of our chalet.  Then came the pursuit, off the roof, out in the field, back to the roof, back to the field, over the barnyard.

It was our intern Sam who caught a wing-shot, and they brought the captive home.  And there came the end of the pigeon’s story, though we did eat its breast in a stir fry for dinner since no one had the heart to waste it.  None of us really wanted to kill the bird if we didn’t have to, but prevention is the first line of defense in maintaining livestock health, which is much more important than entertaining an unwanted guest.

But now chores have returned to normal, with a watchful eye for the marauding creatures that know when you’re not looking.  Hopefully, we’ll keep them at bay for another season.  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