Strawberry Plants

Everything is growing, growing, growing on the farm.  These are the lovely little strawberry plants that have grown up from the crowns that were planted.  I love how sharp looking the leaves are, and how fuzzy the stems are.  It’s an interesting contrast that shows up really well with the lighting in these pictures.

My mouth is already watering just thinking about the delicious red berries those jagged leaves will be hiding.  I am definitely looking forward to that part of the season.  Any particular fruits or veggies you are particularly looking forward to this coming season?

Linking up to (almost) Wordless Wednesday Project Alicia, WW Live and Love Outloud, Tina’s Wordless Wednesday, Naptime Momtog, and Create With Joy.

Cat Profile: Lilah

When I last left off on my kitty adoption story, Shelby had completely melted my heart.  I had found her on PetFinder, sought her out, and she was going to be all mine.  So how does Lilah come into the picture?  How did she end up cuddled up on my bed?

The shelter I was getting Shelby from is a no-kill shelter, and at that point in the year they were absolutely overwhelmed with the number of cats and kittens they had taken in.  Because of this, they were offering a buy one, get one free offer on all their cats.  Actually it was a buy one, get as many as you want free!  And they were pushing hard for me to take on another cat.

(Those Eyes!)

As a future veterinarian and armchair animal behaviorist, I knew it wasn’t the worst idea in the world.  I was going to be busy and wanted to make sure my little kitty had enough stimulation and entertainment when I wasn’t around.  I also knew the easiest way to have your cats get along was to get them young, at the same time, and ideally be related (siblings, mother/child).  So just for fun I asked to see Shelby’s siblings.

Shelby had quite a few brothers, but only one sister named Katara.  I thought she was unbelievably adorable and fell for her dark tail and back, and her ears that were both perfectly split into buff and grey.  Although she wasn’t unbelievably friendly she was one of the most laidback little kittens I have met.  She was very happy to chill in the visiting room, and I ended up giving The Boy a pleading look of helplessness.  He was my last resort for only having one cat.

He just looked at me for a little bit, shrugged his shoulders, and said “Two cats isn’t really any more work than one…”  And so, both Shelby and Katara ended up in my cat carrier.  I filled out my check, signed the forms, and then they were both mine.

I am SO thankful for the push to get these two sisters.  They play CONSTANTLY, sleep together, get into trouble together, and I love them both dearly.  Lilah is one of the loviest lap cats and she is also more brave than her sister.  She is the only one I have convinced to wear the harness and go outside, and she loves it!  The only thing she loves more is food, she is definitely my little glutton.

I wouldn’t have done it any other way.

You Capture: Lines

After seeing wonderful pictures week after week from Eden Hills Blog, I decided that I would take a stab at some of these photo challenges.  Especially this summer, since I won’t be in school and will be spending lots of time on the farm taking lovely snapshots.  This is my first week, but I really enjoyed looking for photos that captured the theme this week:

Lines

Organic vegetable farms are just full of lines. I thought this pea trellis was a perfect example as there are lines virtually everywhere you look.  Rows of peas growing more of less vertically and a grid of trellis as well.  This is also my first attempt at editing some pictures with Picasa and overall I am amazed at what you can do with this free editing program.  I like it a lot better than iPhoto, but haven’t worked out all the kinks quite yet.

Rows and rows of Kale.  I love how curly the leaves are, and so far they are holding up well against the cold then warm then cold then warm weather.  I couldn’t decide if the green or the purple kale was more photogenic, so I took pictures of both.

And we can’t forget about the Swiss Chard, can we?  Everything looks so nice and clean… hopefully the weeds don’t start invading at least for a little while.  This land had been used in a corn/soybean rotation for quite a while, and so the soil has a long ways to go to get back to optimal health.  But for now, that means no weeds for us!

I’m looking forward to participating in the challenge as much as possible, hope you enjoyed my first attempt.

Farmer in the Rye

This is some of the prettiest manure you will ever see.  The Boy has been using Rye as a green manure on the farm, along with the chickens and the goats.  This particular chunk of rye, however, is going to be cut and baled and used to mulch other parts of the farm.

Isn’t he cute?  I owe a lot of knowledge I have gained as well as the passion I have for sustainable agriculture to him.  I like to think that our meeting was a mixture of my curiosity and serendipity all scrambled together.  A very fortunate crossing of paths that I give thanks for on a regular basis.

My roommate and I were both (relatively, in my case) recently single, bored, and possessed way too much energy.  Naturally this led to the mutual dare to join a free and popular dating site in the hopes of collecting some hilarious stories, meeting some interesting guys, and getting a few free dinners.  Hilarity ensued as an onslaught of endearing, terrifying, or simply awkward messages flooded our inboxes.

Roommate was a bit bolder, or perhaps a bit more anxious to get a free meal, and ended up going on quite a few random dates.  This included a physics TA, a computer science professor, and a smattering of random undergrads.  Eventually she did end up meeting a chemistry TA and mutual affection developed.  Last I heard they were in a long distance relationship while he finished up his masters and she went off to veterinary school… so this mutual dare turned out to be a pretty excellent choice for all parties involved.

I, on the other hand, felt that I was too awkward of a first-dater to just go at random.  I have enough stories for days about my first date interactions, so my gut told me to wait.  Eventually, while doing some general creeping on the site during class, I found there was a guy a few years older than me starting up an organic vegetable farm in my hometown.

I was fresh off the high of taking some environmental studies classes and switching majors to Dairy Science.  I was surprised and almost borderline irritated that I didn’t know about this, as our town is not very big at all.  And he was cute!  Why did I not know about his existence until just then?  But despite my initial intrigue, I held back having watched too many episodes of TV where the girl meets the guy from the internet and horrible things happened.

Instead I proceeded to pour over his profile in an effort to see if I could figure out “who he was” in our town.  He seemed too good to be true… Tall, has a farm, plays ultimate frisbee, ballroom dances.  He had to be making at least some of it up. I happened to be taking a beginner ballroom dance class for college credit, and we needed to go to a few evening dances.  Wouldn’t you know it… the boy I had been internet stalking was actually at the ballroom dancing event I was at!

You would think, then, that I would ask him to dance, we would chat, and then live happily ever after.  Instead, I felt weird about the fact that I knew all of his hobbies, his occupation, and where he lived… so I just waited until I got home and then compulsively sent him a message.  I asked him where exactly his farm was (5 minutes from where I grew up!) and what he thought of Michael Pollan.   After a bit of messaging back and forth he asked me to go for a walk, and the rest is history.

50 Things Your Vet Won’t Tell You

50 Things Your Vet Won’t Tell You | Reader’s Digest

To keep you updated on what else is floating around the internet, I found this article.  Although a lot of the quotes are just silly, snarky, or weird… I did find a few that really resonated with me:

“We know when you’re twisting the facts. If your dog has a five-pound tumor hanging from his skin, please don’t tell me it wasn’t there yesterday.”  Yeah, this happens a lot.  I understand when you have an animal that you see every day you don’t necessary see gradual progressions.  However people definitely do lie about when something first appeared, whether it is a tumor, a limp, or a skin condition.  No one wants to seem like the bad guy, but it is much harder to diagnose and treat something if you don’t know how long it has been going on.

“Here’s a pet peeve: owners who don’t want to pay for diagnostic tests but then cop an attitude because you don’t know what’s wrong with the animal. Since you wouldn’t let me do the blood work or X-rays, how the heck do you expect me to know?”  This one I have only observed a few times, but it was extremely frustrating each time.  We have a lot of tools in our toolbox, and although a physical exam and history are valuable tools they definitely need to be supplemented by other diagnostics.  You will save time/money/heartache in the long run if you get it right the first time.

“Behavior issues are the No. 1 cause of pet re-homing, euthanasia, and death. Yet, because it’s not medical, most of us don’t learn much about that in veterinary school.” I am hoping that this is something that is starting to change.  Although so far I haven’t had any official in-school lessons on behavioral problems, we have a wonderful Behavior Club that has invited speakers in to speak during lunch as well as having a behavior conference earlier in the semester.  Since I teach obedience classes, behavior is a topic near and dear to my heart and I believe that a lot of veterinarians could spend more time and effort educating themselves and their clients.

“If we wanted to go into it for the money, we’d have become human doctors.” and “Most vets put themselves through 8 to 12 years of school and have huge student debts. We love animals and want to help them. Most of us start our day early, finish late, and are available for emergencies.” Although I like to think that most human doctors don’t go into the profession for the money, I certainly know that veterinary students don’t.  Most of us have a passion for animals, science, learning, and having a flexible career path.  Even though a lot of sacrifices have to be made, I am still incredibly glad that I have decided on (and got accepted into) the profession I did.

So tell me, what did you think of the article?  Did any of the quotes strike a chord with you, or make you want to ask follow up questions?

Rainy First Market

So Sunday was not the best farmer’s market opening day I have ever participated in.  We got to be there for about an hour before torrential downpour and thunderstorming began.  But despite that, the farmer’s market is still one of my favorite activities.  I may be an introvert, but nothing brings me out of my shell like people who also care about food, plants, animals, and eating delicious food!

Since I started undergrad, I have worked more or less consistently at one farmer’s market or another.  First, it was at the big downtown market for a small organic dairy that sold cheese, beef, and chicken.  Now, I spend most Sunday mornings with The Boy at a smaller market trying my best to answer people’s questions about his plants, veggies, and now eggs (Just got the egg room approved! Whoo!)

Selling at the market taught me a lot about myself and about other people.  It was (and is) my first job in which I did a lot of interaction with people/the public.  I have worked a lot of different jobs during my 21 years on earth, but they mostly revolved around animal caretaking.  I got a little bit of experience working as a receptionist for the veterinary clinic I was at, but most of the time I was back in the kennels feeding, exercising, and poop-scooping.

The Farmer’s Market was a wonderful place to learn customer service skills.  The majority of people are kind, patient, and interested in what you are selling.  They ask questions and genuinely care about the answers, and often times will engaged me in conversations and made connections for me.  I expanded my vocabulary and could now explain the differences (sort of?) between organic, certified organic, grass-fed, humanely raised, etc.  And my interaction with the wonderful farmers who owned the stand only encouraged my enthusiasm.

However I also learned a lot about people.  People from all walks of life would come to the downtown farmers market and buy things.  Everyone had a different combination of buys, different questions, different agendas.  What amazed me was how much these people cared about what they were eating, and how they tried to be informed.  Unfortunately a lot of the information people get is snippets, or only part of the picture.  They hear that trans fats are bad, and CLAs in grassfed beef are good… but no one explained that CLAs are trans fats.  They hear about CAFOs with high grain diets for their beef cattle, so they only want 100% grass fed even though a small portion of grain towards the end of development (grain finishing) can be perfectly healthy for the animal and the consumer.

What I appreciate about a farmer’s market is the ability to explain why you farm the way you farm to the people you are selling to.  All the small farmers I have worked with and talked to have put a borderline insane amount of thought into choosing what they do with their land and the plants/animals upon it.  What works for you may not work for your neighbors, and the market is an amazing opportunity to educate people and reaffirm the choices for your own farm.

Cat Profile: Shelby

I figured since my crazy cat lady post went over so well, I might as well do a profile on each of my girls so you can get to know them better.  This one right here, her name is Shelby

It all started with this picture on petfinder.org.  I was toying with the idea of getting a cat ever since I discovered I had been accepted to veterinary school.  I knew I was probably going to be unable to undertake a dog with my erratic schedule, but I had a lot of love to give and I was moving into a 3 story house that allowed animals.  So I just started casually browsing to see if anyone caught my eye.

I knew I wanted a female cat.  I knew I wanted to get her from a shelter.  and I also knew that I wanted her to be past litter box training stage, but still young so that I could build a good long life with her.  I really admire people who adopt older cats, but I felt that if I was going to make a 20 year commitment to an animal… I was going to get exactly what I wanted.  I am not going to lie, I was very particular about what I wanted her to look like too.  I have always loved dilute torties and dilute calicos, because they aren’t that many and I love the buff with the grey and the white.

So when I saw these pictures of Shelby (I kept her name, it just fit her perfectly…) I was powerless to resist.  Especially this last one, doesn’t she just look both terrified and cranky?  She totally stole my heart, so I emailed the shelter right away.  They told me that she had an eye infection they would deal with but they would let me know as soon as she was available.  I showed everyone I knew the pictures of her, already smitten without knowing a thing about her.

Finally, they emailed to let me know she was available and I set up a time to go visit the shelter and meet her.  She was extremely ornery and unhappy to see me and spent the entire time hiding under a chair hissing at me.  Too bad she also looked super adorable while raising hell, so I was not deterred.  Although in my daydreams I imagined her galloping towards me and jumping into my open embrace, I could deal with some pre-adoption drama.

At one point, when The Boy and I were sitting on the floor next to the hissing chair, I decided to go for it and pick her up.  She proceeded to curl into the world’s smallest kitten ball and then went silent.  After roughly 30 seconds she started purring loudly into my arms.  My heart stopped and I knew that she was the girl for me.

I want to stop there so I don’t get into Lilah’s role in the story.  Despite our rough start, and hiding under the dresser for the first 3 days we were home, Shelby has been the most fantastic cat one could ask for.  She’s smart, quirky, quiet, cuddly, and always entertaining.  She’s got me wrapped around her finger, but never takes me for granted.