Wayward Spark

Pollination at Radke’s Blueberries

May 23, 2013 · 3 comments

This spring, Henry agreed to pollinate at Radke’s Blueberries, hands down the best U-pick blueberry farm in the Corvallis area if not the entire world (read more about the place here). Blueberry growers generally contract with beekeepers to drop off two or more hives per acre during bloom time. Having honeybees on hand ensures widespread pollination and a good fruit set.

Bumblebees are highly effective blueberry pollinators, even better than honeybees, but commercial blueberry farms often have large fields with only bits of bumblebee habitat around the fringes, and that scale limits the reach of bumblebee foragers and increases the need to bring in honeybees. Radke’s Blueberries, however, in not a particularly big operation, less than ten acres, and Ed Radke is keenly aware of the local bumblebee population, realizing their value as pollinators.

Henry hasn’t taken on too many local pollination contracts because there are some drawbacks (read more here), but Radkes are super nice folks, the location is easily accessible, the farm is surrounded by diverse honeybee habitat with both gardens and natural areas, and the job doesn’t require a large number of hives.

Henry brought out bees to Radke’s on April 14 and picked them up after the bushes were done blooming on May 15.

At this time of year, Henry checks on all his hives, including the ones at Radke’s, weekly. He opens a hive and makes sure it’s “queenright” (with a laying queen). He surveys the queen’s laying patterns and evaluates her for future use as broodstock. If necessary, he’ll boost weaker colonies with frames of brood from another hive, or he’ll requeen a hive if the current queen is failing for some reason. He inspects the pollen and nectar stores and scrapes comb from between the top and bottom boxes. He also looks for signs of swarm preparations and takes necessary steps to prevent swarming.

A “pollination unit” (a hive that’s strong enough to be rented on a pollination contract) for blueberries should have at least 14 frames that are covered with bees and a healthy amount of brood. Henry’s honeybee management program includes tending both small hives (spring swarms or splits) and larger hives (overwintered colonies, most of which got a head start on summer working almonds in California earlier this year). He has a good number of his hives spread out in isolated areas of the coast range to take advantage of good foraging habitat and controlled mating opportunities. His program only leaves a few dozen strong hives for local pollination, so Henry can be fairly selective about who he wants to work with.

One of the hives at Radke’s did swarm under surprising circumstances, but overall, Henry has kept swarming to a minimum this year.

After an early spring build up of worker populations, this time of year is seriously busy for honeybees. There is a lot of nectar and pollen to be had, and workers do their best to take advantage of the bounty. The queens are laying like crazy, and drones are out and about breeding any virgin queens they can find.

Workers carry the abundance of nectar back to the hive and pass it off to “transfer bees” who deposit it into cells. As the cells fill up, the bees cure the nectar by warming it with their own body vibrations, which expends energy and heat, and they simultaneously fan the cells to blow moist air out of the hive. Henry’s hives have a hole in each box instead of just an entrance at the bottom to provide more exit points for fanned air. When the nectar has concentrated sufficiently into honey, it gets capped and stored for later.

I imagine the honey-making process is much like maple sugaring except all that “boiling” is done by body movement. They say it takes about 40 gallons of maple sap to produce one gallon of maple syrup, and I’d assume the ratio of nectar to honey is something similar (though variable for different species).

Starting this year, Henry’s been covering each top box on his hives with a layer of canvas. This canvas acts as an inner cover without adding any height to palletized (migratory) hives, and it prevents the bees from gluing down the lids to the top bars of the frames with burr comb. The lines of orangey-yellow stuff are made from deliciously perfumed propolis.

The pollen stores seen in the open cells comes in all shades of colors including bright red.

The color variation in the bees themselves is a product of different genetics within a single colony. On her mating flight, a queen will usually mate multiple times, and she can store semen for egg fertilization from a dozen or more drones.

Ed Radke warned Henry about resident skunks that were likely to prey on vulnerable bee hives. Skunks will often just sit in front of a hive, gobbling up individual bees as they fly in or out of the box, and in that way, they can devastate worker populations. To prevent this kind of predation, Henry DIYed skunk deterrents by doubling pieces of welded wire and lodging the middle section into the gap at the bottom board. Any skunk that tried to lunge at exiting bees would get poked in the face or belly. In the month that the hives were there, Henry didn’t have any trouble with skunks.

Henry uses his old horseshoeing truck as his mobile beekeeping rig when he drives around doing hive maintenance at his bee yards scattered across in three counties. He transports palletized hives with our larger flatbed truck.

From the looks of things, Radke’s Blueberries will have a whole lot of good fruit starting in July, and you can be sure that I’ll be there early and often, picking way more than my fill. We are down to our last couple bags of frozen blueberries from last summer, so I sure am looking forward to fresh fruit season.

For more information about Radke’s Blueberries, follow them on Facebook or call (541) 753-5680.

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Rhubarb-Raspberry Pie baked in a barbecue

May 17, 2013 · 4 comments

I made a pie the other day, rhubarb-raspberry because the rhubarb patch is really going crazy right now. I can always harvest some for my mom to sell at the Corvallis Saturday Farmers’ Market, but I like rhubarb as much as the next girl, so our little family is keeping up with the bounty pretty well so far this spring.

Maybe this is sacrilegious to say, but I prefer my rhubarb mixed up with sweeter berries for a somewhat mellower flavor. This time I added frozen raspberries that I U-picked last summer at Childers’ Raspberry Farm. I also added the juice and zest of a meyer lemon because in my opinion, the rhubarb flavor is heightened with a hit of citrus. I don’t have a real recipe for this pie, which is totally mean of me, but it went a little something like this:

a double Flakey Rye Crust (from 101 Cookbooks)

chunked up rhubarb (more)

raspberries (less)

juice and zest of a meyer lemon (or other citrus like an orange)

a good amount of sugar

a bit of flour

You gotta start the crust ahead of time, but the filling is a breeze to throw together. Roll it out, load everything into a cast iron skillet, and bake it (with some sort of heat barrier below the skillet) in a preheated barbecue set to medium for about an hour or until the juices really start flowing.

I think the best part of baking a pie in my barbecue is the fact that sticky berry juice can spill all over, and I don’t have to clean it up. I just let it burn off the next time I bake something.

a few links from around the interwebs…

In the wake of the garment factory tragedy in Bangladesh, I heard an interview on NPR with the founder and CEO of Everlane, a clothing company based in LA. I actually own several Everlane T shirts already, but I’m ready to buy a bunch more now. All their clothes are produced in a factory here in the US, often with cotton grown and processed in the US as well. On top of being one of the most social responsible clothing companies out there, their shirts are also really nice, comfortable, and relatively inexpensive. You should buy something from them.

I’m pretty proud of Minnesotans this week.

I really want to make it to one of Cyril’s (in Portland) cheese club events. Friends of mine went last month and had a great time. The next one is coming up on Wednesday, but I’m going to miss it. boo.

I had a chance to flip through a beautiful issue of Gather Journal when I stayed at Anne‘s house a few months back. Gather just won a James Beard award, and I think it may be time for me to buy a subscription.

I’ve been reading Anne Lamont’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life in fits and spurts. It’s really funny and really inspiring, a good read for pretty much anyone who dabbles in or is serious about writing. As much as I love blogging, I hope to someday get back to more carefully composed writing, and around that time, I will have to read Bird by Bird a second time.

The farmers behind Adaptive Seeds are really good folks, and now there’s a nice little video introducing Sarah, Andrew, and their farm. Order some seeds from them now to sow for fall-harvested crops.

Henry’s cousin, Ellie, and her boyfriend, Luke, (who have appeared on Wayward Spark here and here) are hiking the Pacific Crest Trail this summer. Ellie’s documenting their adventure on her blog that’s been super interesting so far.

Happy weekend to all! xoxo

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Milking Season 2013

May 14, 2013 · 9 comments

My 2013 milking season is shaping up to be somewhat different that the past six years of milking goats. It’s been complicated by a few different factors, but mainly a little goat creature named Bow.

My system before this year was to leave the kids with the mom full time for a month, allowing them free access to nurse whenever they wanted or whenever mom would let them. After a month, I would separate the kids at night, milk mom in the morning, and let them be together during the day. In this way, everyone always seemed to get enough to eat, and I got at least half of the total milk produced after they’d grown up a bit.

Because she rejected him, I was letting Bow nurse on Minnie three times a day, but I never knew exactly how much milk he was actually getting. In the beginning, he would nurse for a while and then lose interest, indicating that he was full, but since I got back from New York, he seemed to want to nurse and nurse without ever acting satiated. I wasn’t sure if he was just being greedy, or he was truly hungry. At a month old, he was eating a fair amount of grass and forage as well as the grain I offered that supposedly helps develop a young kid’s rumen, but a month-old kid still needs a good bit of milk to grow in a healthy way.

I had planned on starting to milk Minnie as soon as I got home from vacation, but I was feeling lazy, so I put it off for a few days. After scrubbing and sanitizing all my equipment, I did a little test run one evening. Minnie had been out with Teela, and Bow had nursed on her a few hours earlier, but I figured I could get at least enough milk to make biscuits for dinner. I only got a little over a cup. That was when I realized that Bow really wasn’t getting enough to eat, and I had to make some kind of change.

I separated the kids that night and milked Minnie out in the morning. She produced about seven cups of milk, and I somewhat reluctantly poured three cups into a bottle and got Bow to drink from it for the first time. He seemed so happy to get a good portion of milk, and Minnie seemed happy that she didn’t have to stand for him to nurse. I was slightly less happy because I was watching my hard earned milk disappear, but I figured it was in Bow’s best interest, so I tried not to worry about it. I still let him nurse again in the afternoon and evening (against Minnie’s will), and we did the same thing the next day, too.

Here’s the thing. I love goats. They are fun and funny with great personalities. BUT I didn’t get into raising goats just to watch them frolic about. I’m in it for the milk and then the yogurt, cheese, and other dairy products. The other thing is that after doing some reading and thinking, I came to the conclusion that Bow needed to be getting more milk. When standing side by side with his sister, he was noticeably thinner (even though he started out bigger), and he acted hungry all the time.

So I made the decision to switch him to milk replacer. I’ve been feeding him four cups of prepared milk replacer twice a day, and I’ve been keeping all of Minnie’s milk for myself.

A few thoughts about milk replacer…

Feeding twice a day is logistically a lot easier than three times a day, and it’s pretty clear that he’s big enough now to handle two larger feedings instead of three smaller ones.

Minnie has been pretty mellow during milking, a lot mellower than when I would let Bow nurse while she’d try to kick him off even with her feet tied down.

Bow gets to eat pretty much as much as he wants, and he seems more satisfied then when he was only getting the dregs of whatever was left behind in Minnie’s udder after his hungry sister had been there first.

I think the fact that I first gave him a bottle of real goat milk and then switched to milk replacer helped him acclimate to sucking on a bottle better than just offering him milk replacer. It was actually easier to get him to take it than I had feared.

I’m getting six to eight cups of milk a day that I can use for anything I want.

Even though I have zero experience bottle feeding any kind of creature (human or caprine), I can see the appeal of formula. It’s pretty darn easy. That said, it’s also know to be less sub-par when compared to mama’s milk. I’m using a brand called Save-A-Kid, which I appreciate for being goat specific, something that can be hard to find, but I know it’s probably not as nutritious as Minnie’s fresh milk. I’m having a bit of “Mom Guilt” about not giving him the best of the best (actually saving the best of the best for myself), but I’ve put in quite a bit of work with the little guy, and I know he got his colostrum and several weeks of the good stuff, so I’m living with my decision as easily as I can.

The milk replacer is probably going to cost me $10-$15 a week, which isn’t a huge amount but is significant. I think many folks when faced with the cost and hassle of feeding a wether would simply decide he wasn’t worth and get rid of him. I don’t necessarily think that’s the wrong decision, but it’s not the right decision for me. We’re here now, doing what we’re doing, and I think everything will work out just fine.

a few more thoughts/observations…

One side of Minnie’s udder is way bigger and more productive than the other side. I’ve seen this before to a lesser degree, but it’s still pretty weird. Please excuse the goat porn, but I had to include a couple photos. Strangely enough, last year, Minnie had an unbalanced udder as well, but it was the opposite from this year. I’m not sure what all I can do to “fix” it other than milking every day.

Minnie also seems to alternate between heavy milk days and light days. One day she’ll deliver a full half gallon of milk, but the next, I’ll only get a quart and a half. This is something I’ve noticed in other milking does before as well.

I’ve already made batches of yogurt and cheese as well as goat milk-centric crepes and popovers. I love the fact that taking a winter break from milking makes me so much more excited about homegrown dairy products every spring.

Going through the whole process of making sure Bow’s had enough to eat this past month has been a total pain, but I lived through the experience. It’s even got me thinking about the possibility of milking my doe and bottle feeding all the kids next year. Bottle-fed babies sure do come out sweet. I guess I have a year to consider it.

If you’re new to this blog and want to learn more about my milking routine and dairy practices, there’s a lot more information in the “Animal Husbandry-Goats” and “Dairy” categories found in the sidebar.

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Adventures: New York

May 10, 2013 · 21 comments

I have so so many thoughts about my trip to New York and so so few photos (37 total, including a bunch of duplicates). I had planned on taking a bajillion pictures, but then I got there and realized that I didn’t really want to. Partly because everyone is photographing everything constantly, and I didn’t really want to be that person. Partly because it was really sunny a lot of the time, and I didn’t think my photos would come out well. Partly because I didn’t think my photos would capture the reality of what I was seeing, or they would capture too much reality (i.e. parked cars, garbage, ugly street signs) when in my mind, I was able to filter a lot of that noise out and just see the beauty of the buildings and the people. But mostly, I decided that I just wanted to be present, which sounds totally new-agey but is somehow true for this occasion. So if you want gorgeous New York photos, you’re going to have to find them elsewhere.

I left on a Friday night and arrived at JFK around 6 am Saturday morning. I had hoped to sleep on the plane, but that didn’t really happen, so I was a little rough around the edges that day. Because JetBlue gives you one checked bag for free, I decided to pack a bunch of cutting boards to give away, so I had to lug around two big, heavy duffle bags and a small backpack. My plan was to take the subway from the airport to my Airbnb in Brooklyn, and after a false start (riding the AirTrain around in circles for a while), I made it to the Howard Beach subway station. I knew the AirTrain had its own fare separate from the regular subway fees, but there were a few flustering minutes of me paying the AirTrain fee and then trying to use the same card unsuccessfully to get on the regular subway while several transit employees were staring at me and shaking their heads like I was a total idiot. I did finally figure things out, though I paid an extra $10 for a card when I really wanted an unlimited week pass. Thankfully, that was the most embarrassed and confused moment of the whole trip.

By the time I got to the Airbnb (on Union Ave. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn), my arms were about to fall off, and my hands literally were developing blisters from carrying around those stupid heavy bags. I checked in okay (more on the Airbnb in a while), and then took off on the L train for the Union Square Greenmarket.

At Union Square, I had a prearranged meeting with Lisa (@woodshedcoffee on Instagram) and her three-year-old son. Lisa is a farmer, but she and her husband recently gave up their own farm in rural Virginia and moved to New York state to work on Keith’s Farm in Orange County. Lisa and I have been talking farms/goats/kids/blogs for over a year on Instagram and Facebook, so it was really fun to meet her. We walked around the Greenmarket (definitely nice but not as impressive as, say, the Portland Saturday farmers’ market at this time of year) and hung out in this amazing playground at Union Square while her kid ran around doing his kid thing.

After a while, Lisa and I parted ways because she was off to another engagement, so I headed uptown to explore. I tried to get lunch at the Shake Shack, but it was a beautiful day and the line was absurdly long, so I decided it wasn’t worth it. I did a little shopping in the area (bought some cheap sunglasses and earrings at the street fair on 8th Ave. and a shirt at H & M) and wandered around taking in the sights.

Eventually, I made it to The High Line that I’d heard so much about, but Saturday afternoon + beautiful sunny weather meant it was so crowded. I walked most of it, and it was fine, but I think that’s the point when I realized that I really didn’t come to New York to see parks and nature; I’ve got plenty of that at home. I’d much rather experience crowded sidewalks and subway cars than a park with throngs of people funneling through. The High Line was the first and last touristy thing I did on my trip, and that was just fine with me.

I met up with Lisa again for a great pizza dinner near Tompkin’s Square Park. My iphone’s battery died during dinner, so I had to make it to the subway station and back to my Airbnb room without any digital assistance. It worked out fine, but after that, I was kind of paranoid about charging my phone at any opportunity, so I wouldn’t be stuck without it.

I have to admit that at the end of the day on Saturday I was pretty homesick. I think the combination of sleep deprivation, crazy busy Manhattan, and spending time with Lisa’s cute kid left me wondering what the heck I was doing there so far from home on such a self-indulgent vacation.

After a good night’s sleep, I woke up on Sunday refreshed and totally stoked about being on vacation. I had great coffee and a perfect pastry at Blue Bottle Coffee, which is a really really pretty and hip place to spend an early morning hour. (Nearly every place I ate was on Nicole Franzen‘s “My New York” list. I so appreciated her recommendations.) I strolled through the Williamsburg Flea and was tempted to buy a bunch of stuff that I didn’t need. Then through the power of Instagram, I found out Amelie (ameliemancini on Instagram) was just a block away, so we found each other and had a great chat on a bench by the East River. Amelie sells her quirky cool linocut prints at the Williamsburg Flea every weekend (as well as online), so we got to talk about online retail vs. craft fairs, booth setup, what brought her to New York (from France), and lots of other stuff.

After a long walk around Greenpoint, I headed back to Williamsburg for lunch at Saltie. Saltie was another place on Nicole Franzen‘s list. It’s tiny, and there’s a board on the wall that lists the names of the sandwiches, but unfortunately, the names (“Scuttlebutt”, “Spanish Armada”, “Balmy”, etc.) are not particularly descriptive of what’s in them. I stared at the list for a while and then decided, ‘what the heck’. I’m just going to order something with no idea what’s on it and see what happens. I chose the “Clean Slate”, which I thought sounded reminiscent of cleansing or vegetarian something, and that turned out to be exactly what it was and exactly what I wanted: naan with hummus, quinoa, beets, and a whole pile of pickled vegetables.

Sunday evening, I walked back to Greenpoint to meet up with Amy (emersonmerrick on Instagram) and Anne (anne_parker on Instagram) at Amy’s gorgeous florist studio. I’d met Anne before in Portland, but she happened to be visiting New York at the same time as me, and she’s good friends with Amy, who I’d only communicated with on Instagram. We drank wine and ate pie and talked and talked for a couple hours before finally going out to eat great tacos at a Mexican restaurant in Greenpoint. Amy is a hoot, by the way, at least as interesting as she seems to be in her online presence, and Anne is someone I feel strangely drawn to and connected with even though we’ve only known each other for a short time. I took the train back to Williamsburg at 10:30 pm without incident.

On Monday, I had vague plans to take an epic walk around Brooklyn, but I woke up to a drizzly rain. I bought a newspaper just for the crossword and then got coffee and a pastry at Bakeri, which I think was my favorite of the places I ate breakfast in New York. Bakeri is very casual, cute, comfortable, and not a bit snobby. I was sort of at a loss for what to do that day, so I said a little prayer to the Instagram gods, took a photo of my breakfast, and put out a call for Brooklynites to come hang out with me.

Clair (clamlab on Instagram) was the first to chime in, so we agreed to meet up at Roebling Tea Room. Over tea, we discussed Clair’s beautiful ceramics and how she’s able to make it work in high-pressure, über-expensive New York, and she schooled me on the politics and finances of gentrification and hipsterification in different Brooklyn neighborhoods. I first saw Clair’s name when she was an Etsy Featured Seller a while back, and once again, I was pleasantly surprised that she was even warmer in person that I could have expected. I’m so glad we had a chance to connect.

Next, I headed south for a late lunch at Diner with two florists Taylor (foxfodderfarm on Instagram) and Brittany (brittanyasch on Instagram). I follow these two on Instagram, but mostly they post photos of flowers, so I really didn’t know anything about their personal lives. They, however, seemed really excited to meet me and talk goats, farms, etc., so I somewhat reluctantly agreed. I had a bit of a weird blind-date moment, walking in and scoping everyone out because I didn’t know what Taylor and Brittany looked like, but as soon as we sat down, all that awkwardness dissolved, and we started talking like old friends. Over a great burger and fries, I told all sorts of old personal stories, and they shared floristing tales and the whys behind moving to New York. A couple hours later, there were hugs and promises to meet again, maybe in Portland, maybe in New York.

That night, I was still pretty full from lunch, so I decided to just walk around in the heart of Williamsburg. Eventually, I bought a big piece of chocolate cake from a bakery, sat on a bench by the water, and ate the whole thing. That’s what vacation is all about, right?

Tuesday turned out to be my biggest walking day of the whole trip. I started with coffee and a croissant at Toby’s Estate in Williamsburg. Toby’s was a little on the coffee snobbish/expensive side for my preferences, but it all tasted good, so I wasn’t too put off. From there, I headed south and then west through Hasidic and industrial areas to Brooklyn Heights. All of my great grandparents on my mom’s side were Jewish immigrants from various Eastern European countries who came first to New York and then eventually San Francisco. I don’t have family or a whole lot of connection to the Jewish community in New York, but there was something kind of interesting about passing through and seeing it with my own eyes. It was a little less interesting when I almost got run over by a yeshiva school bus running a red light, but still…

From Brooklyn Heights, I kept walking south through Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens, window shopping and taking in the sights of Smith Street. Lunch was juice and a good sandwich at Smith Canteen.

Before I flew to New York, I scheduled an appointment to tour the Etsy office in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Etsy has been such a huge influence on the course of my life in the past few years, that I figured it would be a good idea to see the place and meet the people that make things happen if I was already going to be in the neighborhood. I’m not exactly sure what I was hoping for in that afternoon meeting, but what I got was pretty disappointing, actually the biggest letdown of the whole trip.

First let me say, though, that the Etsy office is pretty gorgeous. Warm wood floors, stunning views, and friendly work stations made the place very inviting. I was happy to be physically present in the office, but what I was most interested in was connecting with the people, being asked for feedback, learning about what the Etsy employees were doing to improve my experience as a seller, and possibly being let in on some secrets or tools still in the development phase. Instead, I got a tour with a heavy emphasis on incomprehensible inside jokes, quirky/ironic/narwal-themed artwork purchased from Etsy sellers to decorate the office, and a general sense of ‘Look how cool we are! Aren’t we just the hippest hipster thing that ever existed?’. It is nice to know that Etsy is supportive of (some) artists, but when my guide started talking about all the custom furniture being built for them and all the fancy aesthetic upgrades they’ve made to the space, all I can think about is how expensive that must be and how that has seemingly no baring on my experience as a seller. I’m glad that Etsy employees have a nice environment in which to work, but I’d almost rather hear about their generous health insurance benefits than learn the details of how they commissioned the Austin Knitting Guild to knit a giant cozy for the ductwork in the office (no joke).

Eventually, my guides asked if I had any questions, and as respectfully as I could muster, I launched into a mini version of some of my concerns and struggles with the current state of Etsy and my Etsy shop. I sort of think that took them by surprise, and they weren’t all that sympathetic to my case. I do realize that the Etsy staff is working on what they think is for the greater good of Etsy corporate and the majority of sellers and customers, and I fully support that, but it seems like some Etsy employees may have overlooked the fact that particular new features on Etsy and the new organization of the Etsy community may not be good for some individual sellers such as myself. The tour was over in less than an hour, and I was left with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

I have to say that since I got home, I sent a follow up email to Etsy employee Cheyne, and she responded with a few tips for boosting my shop’s relevancy, and I’ve emailed back and forth a couple times with Alison about some opportunities. Both of these women seem super nice and supportive, so I don’t want to write off Etsy as a whole just yet.

I was pretty exhausted from all of the day’s walking, so I took the G train back to Williamsburg in the late afternoon. That night I went out for pizza at Best Pizza (which I’d heard so many good things about but wasn’t super impressed by), and then I rode the J train just for fun over the Williamsburg Bridge and back to take in the views.

On Wednesday morning, I took the L train into the city and met up with Liza (lizalubell on Instagram) at Buvette in the West Village. Liza and I talked goats, florist pricing, growing up in Manhattan, owning a flower shop in Portland, and more over americanos and miniature croissants with butter and raspberry jam.

In the afternoon, I walked from Williamsburg to Greenpoint for a prearranged lunch at Yossy‘s beautiful apartment (yossyarefi on Instagram) with Amelie and Ariele (arielealasko on Instagram). Yossy had cooked up a pretty amazing spread of grain salad, beets, bread with dips, and watermelon lemonade followed by buckwheat strawberry shortcakes. Ariele brought over her super cute new dog, and we spent the afternoon chatting about rescuing dogs, DIY upgrades to rented New York apartments, international shipping rates, and the weather.

Later that evening when I was sitting around at the Airbnb, I realized that I had forgotten to give Yossy the several pounds of rhubarb I had picked from our garden and carried all the across the country. I pulled it out of the fridge, got a quick piece of pizza at Sal’s Pizzeria (which was cheap, greasy, and delicious), and then took the train back to Yossy‘s apartment in Greenpoint to drop off the rhubarb. I was glad to have an extra opportunity to get an insider’s perspective on freelance photography and writing from someone as nice and honest as Yossy. You can now see two different recipes that Yossy created with my rhubarb here and here.

Thursday was my last day in New York. I woke up early and headed to Manhattan to meet up with Camille B. (camillebecerra on Instagram) for breakfast at The City Bakery. Camille recommended that I get a pretzel croissant, and I’m so happy I did. It was amazingly crusty, salty, flakey, and buttery. Camile was a gem (and it’s not too often that I meet another Camille). I didn’t know if we would have anything to talk about, but somehow two hours flew by.

My last scheduled date of the trip was short but special. I walked over to NYU to meet the amazing Lily (lilystockman on Instagram) in her painting studio. Lily was just the character I expected her to be: warm, funny, witty, and honest. We sipped iced coffee and gazed at New York’s oldest wisteria in full bloom out her studio window. (She’s got a photo of it on Instagram.)

After a quick hug on the L train as Lily hopped out at her stop, I was on my own for a few hours before I had to get to the airport. I bought another sandwich at Saltie and ate it sitting on a bench in East River Park. Thankfully, I had less to pack and carry on the way home, but taking the subway back to the airport was stressful, though not problematic. After plane to airport shuttle to car, I rolled into my very own driveway around 3:00 Friday morning.

a few more random thoughts…

The Airbnb where I stayed was awesome. It was a little less private than I had imagined (because I guess I didn’t really understand the concept of a railroad apartment and the fact that my room would be in the middle), but the two women living there were super nice and easy going, so I wasn’t all that worried about having lots of alone time. It was clean and comfortable with lots of light. The closest subway station was only a few blocks away, and all of the notable sights, coffee shops, stores, and restaurants of Williamsburg were within easy walking distance. You can see the listing for the place here, and if you have reason to stay in Brooklyn, you should definitely consider it.

I brought two comfortable pairs of shoes on my trip (these and these in purple), but after two days in New York, I decided to buy a pair of Minnetonka moccasins (in navy blue), and they were absolutely the best for walking a million miles a day. I think I saw them originally on A Cup of Jo, and they were truly perfect for the rest of my vacation. And they’re relatively cheap, which I can appreciate.

I do not understand dog culture in New York at all. It all reminds me of Ira Glass’s story about Piney.

Many of my conversations with Brooklynites involved a lot of label-dropping like “artisan” this and “local” that, but at some point when everything was described as organic/reclaimed/sustainable/salvaged/free-range/wildcrafted/natural/grass fed/shade grown/fair trade/eco friendly/blah/blah/blah, I just got really turned off. I’m honestly glad that they’re trying to live more sustainably (whatever that means), but after a while, the use of so many buzz words indicates to me that either people are too far removed from the source of their food or their stuff, and they just really don’t know where it comes from, or they do know, and they’re way too excited about that. Maybe I’m just being cynical…

New York is dirty, really dirty, but you won’t catch me complaining about all that trash on the streets. I’m certainly no fan of garbage, but I do like the fact that people see the consequences of that kind of population density, and they’re constrained in their consumption by physical and financial limitations. In my head, I keep comparing New York to my recent stay in Southern California’s resort town of La Quinta. This might be a huge overgeneralization, but it seems to me that people in Southern California live in a culture of conspicuous consumption with big cars and big houses and lots of stuff, but (at least in some areas) they don’t face the consequences of that overconsumption. In La Quinta, crews of (probably underpaid) workers sweep in overnight, trimming gardens and picking up litter in a way that seems to simply erase any trace of human excess. In New York, the mess is there whether you like it or not. Also the fact that everyone’s apartments are so tiny prevents people from accumulating a ton of stuff. (I love Erin’s Life in a Tiny Apartment series on her blog.) Sure, it’s still easy to spend a lot of money on food, drinks, entertainment, and such, but a lot of those dollars go to local businesses and actual people performing those services instead of to giant corporations and overseas factory owners.

I think every American should travel to New York City at least once in his or her lifetime. Just being there for a short while helps explain so much about American culture including food, fashion, movies, music, ideas, etc. I don’t want to give New Yorkers too much credit and say that every trend comes directly from New York, but it’s widely know that a whole lot of them do. Even for a country bumpkin like me with seemingly no connection to that part of the world, I realized that so many little things make more sense now, and I have to admit that I even feel a little bit ahead of the curve now that I’m back in small town Oregon.

I was never once concerned about my personal safety. My biggest worry was that I would do something to make myself look stupid, but that didn’t happen too often.

I’m usually pretty shy about meeting new people, but somehow in New York I was able to act so completely out of character that I initiated meetings with no less than 13 near-total strangers. At one point when I was talking to Taylor and Brittany, I told them, “I’m not really a very outgoing person,” and they literally laughed at me. I’m not sure how I pulled it off, but maybe this newfound sociability will stick.

Overall, I had a fabulously good time. Except for the first day, I wasn’t homesick at all, especially because I kept checking in with Henry and my mom, and they told me that my kids were doing fine and barely even missed me. I’m not sure when the next time I’ll be going on another solo adventure will be, but this one was just exactly what I needed. Thanks, New York! xoxo

I feel really ridiculous and narcissistic for thinking that anyone cares enough to read this whole beastly post, but maybe I wrote it more for myself than anyone else. whatever.

In other news, you can find my pickled beet recipe on Food in Jars, and I was quoted in this article in The Atlantic because I once named a goat after a public radio host (though the actual story is a little more subtle that it’s made out to be in the article).

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Goat Kid Update

April 26, 2013 · 3 comments

Okay, where did we leave off? One stillborn goat baby, one kid with white muscle disease, and ongoing issues with rejection by mama. Well, things are better by now, but still kinda complicated.

Bow’s legs have completely straightened out, and he’s walking (running, jumping, frolicking) just fine now. It took about two days for the Bo-Se to kick in all the way and unfurl his legs. That seemed slow at the time, but 24 hours is what it says on the package, so I guess I was just being impatient. Supposedly you can give a second selenium booster shot three weeks after the first if necessary, but I don’t think he needs it. As I suspected, the whole white muscle disease ordeal was unpleasant and looked awful, but it was easy to treat and doesn’t seem to have any lasting effects. Next year, I’ll probably give the booster to my pregnant doe as a preventative measure.

nubian goat kid nursing // Wayward Spark

The thing that hasn’t improved in three weeks, however, is Mama Minnie’s rejection of Bow. For the first week or so, I kept hoping that Minnie would take him back or that he was secretly nursing while I wasn’t watching. I love our little goat barn for a million different reasons, but the one thing it’s not good for is observing goat behavior without interrupting. The act of being in the barn has been know to alter their natural habits, so I could never be sure who was or wasn’t nursing while I wasn’t out there. Because I didn’t have any firm evidence that he was eating on his own, I continued to pull Minnie out three times a day and let Bow nurse while her legs were restrained. After a while, it finally became clear that Minnie was preventing him from nursing while they were on their own by kicking him off every time he tried. Eventually he stopped trying and just began to wait until I put her on lockdown and let him eat freely.

And that’s been our system up till now.

Normally by this time, the kids would be pretty much on their own, and I’d only have to feed mom twice a day. The extra effort of the lockdown feedings and the extra inconvenience of the midday feeding is making my life more complicated, but there is one big perk to the job: the fact that Bow loves me. I have never had a goat kid this friendly before. Every time I crouch down near him, he runs into my arms, and every time I leave him in the barn, he cries (just a little bit). He still cuddles with his sister Teela (who’s doing just fine), and Minnie is nice to him, but at this point, I’m functionally his mama. He’s even started following me on little walks, which has always been a ridiculous (unrealized) goat fantasy of mine.

Another thing that needs to happen in the early life of goat kids is disbudding, the act of burning the nubbins that would eventually produce horns on both male and female goats. In years past, Henry has disbudded our kids at home, but the procedure is extremely unpleasant for both goats and people. This year, I decided that it would make the most sense to take the kids in to the OSU Veterinary Teaching Hospital to have the job done by a professional.

The only other time I’ve taken an animal into the vets at OSU, it was an emergency situation, so this time, it was kind of nice to walk in with two cute kids without any traumatic health issues. We saw Dr. Vanegas, the same vet who performed Bella’s successful C-section. When I explained that we were in to disbud three-week old goat kids, Dr. Vanegas shook his head. He explained to me that disbudding wasn’t an option at that point, which brings us to…

**Lesson Four (for those of you following along): Disbudding should be done in the first week of life. Any later and the success rate of the procedure declines significantly, leading to scurs or whole horn growth. I knew we were pushing the limit at three weeks old because I could feel the little horn bumps protruding, but I didn’t realize we were already too late.

With disbudding off the table, Dr. Vanegas informed me that the best plan of action would be dehorning. I’ve heard about how gruesome dehorning can be when performed on goats will fully formed horns, but Dr. Vanegas reassured me that it wouldn’t be too bad, so I agreed. This is how it went down…

Dr. Vanegas, assisted by two fourth-year veterinary students, sedated the kid and shaved the area around the budding horns. He made a semi-circular incision around half of the bud area and then inserted a wire saw into the cut and pulled it back and forth until a quarter-sized flap of skin with a bit of bone popped off. After that, a hot cauterizing tool similar to a disbudding iron was applied to the area to seal the wound and kill any lingering horn growth cells. The students performed the same steps on the second bud, and then the kid was given an injection to wake her up again.

Honestly, I think the dehorning procedure was almost easier on everyone involved than disbudding because the kids were sedated and not awake, screaming bloody murder. The wound areas look similar to disbudding wounds, and even though they were a little weepy in the first few hours, they’re all dried up now and starting to heal over.

I spent over an hour at the OSU vet hospital, and in that time, I got several really good tidbits of information about general goat health. Dr. Vanegas also noticed that the kids had lice, so he gave me enough medication to treat the whole herd. The visit cost me a grand total of $60. So worth it. I love that place.

I’m leaving tonight for almost a week in New York. Henry is going to take on morning and evening goat chores, and my mom signed up to come in the middle of the day to make sure Bow gets lunch. It’s kind of a lot for me to ask of them, but I sure do appreciate their efforts.

When I get back, I’m planning on starting to milk Minnie once a day, but I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to work with Bow’s feedings. Do I let him nurse before I milk or let him clean up when I’m almost done? Should I train him to bottle feed? What would be better for him or more convenient for me? This is new territory for me, so I’ve still got some things to work out.

This is the last you’ll hear from me for at least a week cuz I’m not bringing my laptop to NYC. You can always keep track of me on Instagram, though. I hope you are getting some of this glorious weather that we’ve been having here in Oregon. Take care!

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Pastured Laying Hens and Lots of Eggs at Provenance Farm

April 21, 2013 · 5 comments

Have you seen that Portlandia clip where the über sensitive restaurant goers ask way too many questions about the origin of the chicken on the menu? It’s absurd, right? Except, as Rachel Prickett, owner of Provenance Farm, knows all too well, it’s not really that far from reality. She used to have her cell phone number on every carton of Provenance Farm eggs, and she’d get random calls from customers standing in the refrigerator section of Portland-area natural food stores, asking about her the lives of her chickens. Were they pastured? Were they fed a vegetarian diet? Were they happy? The thing is, though, Rachel is exactly the kind of chicken farmer that those very particular customers are seeking, and her hens, for the most part, are living the good life.

Rachel has about 200 laying hens pecking around the pasture at her farm in Philomath, Oregon. They’re contained in a parcel of pasture by an electrified netting fence. The mesh itself is enough to keep the chickens in, but the “hot” aspect serves to keep predators out. Rachel rotates the pen, chickens, and structures around the field, moving them about once a week year round, so the birds are always on real green grass with plenty of bugs and worms to peck and space to stretch their wings.

There are two hoop-house structures in the pen, one containing nesting boxes and the other with roosts and feeders. The chickens are free to retire under cover to eat, sleep, lay eggs, or simply get out of the rain. Rachel and her husband Keith designed these structures to comfortably house a large number of birds, allowing everyone free-choice access to the hen scratch that Rachel feeds every morning as well as uncrowded roosting space.

Most of the laying hens in the flock are ‘Golden Comet’, a breed known for starting to lay at a young age, producing beautiful brown eggs, and being color sexable right after hatching (meaning farmers can order exclusively females). In addition to those reddish brown ladies, Rachel also bought a batch of straight run chicks from Erica at Woven Woods. Some of those chicks grew up to be roosters that will be butchered with Rachel’s first spring batch of ‘Cornish Cross’ meat birds in a couple weeks. Others grew up to be productive laying hens of all colors and patterns.

Currently the flock includes just one ‘Silkie’ rooster, a breed prized by some cultures as a delicacy because of its black skin and bones. Rachel spent some time asking around of chefs at the Portland restaurants that buy her meat chickens to see if there was any interest in these specialty birds. Because of the enthusiastic response, she ordered 30 ‘Silkie’ chicks that will arrive on the farm soon.

Laying hens are relatively low maintenance compared to the broiler chickens, steers, and lambs that Rachel also raises, but even so, she’s out doing laying hen chores twice a day every day. She feeds every morning and then comes out again every evening to collect the day’s eggs. Every visit she looks for evidence of predator intrusion, makes sure the fence is hot, checks the flow of the automatic waterer, and inspects the general health and well being of the flock.

Last year, Rachel was having some problems with chickens sleeping in the nesting boxes, which encouraged egg pecking and produced unnecessarily soiled eggs. Like any good farmer, she learned from her mistakes, so when new chickens were delivered as chicks last July, she put them out to pasture with only the roosting house for shelter and didn’t move the nest boxes into the pen until about a week before they were due to start laying in December. By that time, the chickens already had their routine of sleeping on the roosts, so they started using new-to-them nest boxes exclusively for laying eggs. Problem solved.

There are plenty of nest boxes to go around, but as any chicken owners knows, the hens prefer to lay where someone else has already laid.

Rachel’s 200 laying hens produce approximately 180 eggs every day.

In the late fall when the hens have outlived their most productive months, they will be butchered and sold around the Willamette Valley to restaurants as stewing chickens.

Every evening, Rachel transports the day’s eggs from the field back to the walk-in cooler and washing facility.

‘Golden Comet’ hens lay fairly uniform brown eggs, but the other breeds add a bit of variety to the collection. Even before washing, the eggs are fairly clean.

Most days, Rachel carries her egg baskets straight into the walk-in cooler, but once a week, she runs all the stored eggs through the egg washer. A commercial egg washer is something of a miracle for anyone who’s used to washing eggs by hand. Rachel starts off by rinsing the baskets of eggs.

The wet eggs are loaded by hand into a conveyer trough.

One by one, they’re picked up by brackets and moved into a miniature carwash-like chamber where they’re sprayed with hot water mixed with a sanitizing solution and swept clean by a series of loose brushes.

After washing, the eggs are blown dry, and then they appear at the other end of the machine where they’re ejected from the conveyer belt onto a padded table. If the operator prefers to use them, bars can be added to separate eggs by weight grades (jumbo, large, etc.).

Rachel visually inspects each egg as she packs them into cartons. Every batch will have the occasional cracked egg, double yolker, or other inconsistency. These rejects go home to Rachel and Keith’s own kitchen.

Rachel is smart enough to know that she needs to prioritize her time toward the tasks that require her expert knowledge and experience, and if she has opportunities to streamline less skilled parts of the business, she should take advantage of them. At some point in the future, she may hire on an employee (other than her husband Keith) to help with fairly simple but time-consuming chores like egg washing, but for now, she just tries to be as efficient as possible.

When she was first starting out, Rachel used to spend at least an hour a day washing eggs in her kitchen sink. She didn’t complain about the task. She just considered it part of her farm life until the day she met Fritz Lonsway (at a Grange meeting), and he offered to let her rent his egg washer. That was a real turning point in Rachel’s career as a farmer. Instead of an hour a day, her egg washing duties shrunk to less than two hours a week.

As per USDA guidelines, each carton is stamped with an expiration date, six weeks out from the wash date (if kept in the refrigerator), and all the cartons get a label with the farm’s name and contact info as well as basic instructions for storing and cooking eggs.

Rachel used to keep almost five times as many laying hens but has cut back this year to allow her to focus more on quality over quantity of all her animals and animal products. Demand for her eggs has pretty much always exceeded supply, and she used to deliver eggs to numerous locales in Eugene, Corvallis, and the Portland area, but all that driving around every week started to really drag her down, and being off the farm so much made her reevaluate her priorities. With fewer eggs, she’s moved toward keeping it local, and now she sells 50-70 dozen per week from the egg refrigerator at Provenance Farm (32897 Fern Rd.) in Philomath, a few dozen to Two Tarts Bakery in Portland, and the rest go to First Alternative Natural Foods Co-op in Corvallis.

You can learn a little more about Provenance Farm’s pastured broiler chicken program in this archived Wayward Spark post. Thanks, Rachel, for showing us your operation!

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Bigleaf Maple Flowers

April 20, 2013 · 2 comments

A fairly well know food blogger (up for a Saveur award this spring) posted a photo on Instagram the other day. There was a mason jar full of budding twigs with lobed leaves and dangling flowers. The caption read, ‘Just picked these honeys out back. No idea what they are!’

I took one look at the photo and knew exactly what they were, bigleaf maple flowers, so I chimed in with the ID. Her response,’Oh, thanks. I didn’t realize maple flowered.’

So now you know. Maples do flower. The end.

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Talkin’ Shop (and business)

April 17, 2013 · 20 comments

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for a while, but I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. I’m still not sure, but since I have a tendency to sometimes overshare, I’m going for it. I’ll be pulling back the curtain a little bit on my business Red Onion Woodworks. If you only want “Happy! Pretty! Fluffy!”, then I suggest you just scroll through and look at the photos. If you want a little bit of reality and wonky shop talk, keep reading…

The gem of an idea that eventually became Red Onion Woodworks surfaced in the spring of 2006. I had two part-time jobs, one apprenticing in Henry’s parents’ custom woodworking shop and the other doing odd jobs and ranch chores for Stu and Carol Hemphill. Working for Henry’s parents, I had a Karate Kid-esque experience, learning the particulars of each unfamiliar machine and tool by repeating tasks over and over and over. Henry’s parents were methodical in their lessons and were unfazed by my clumsiness and inexperience. I learned so much in the time I labored in that shop. Working for Stu was completely different but life-changing as well. We spent a huge amount of time outdoors, splitting firewood or sorting and cleaning up entire barns full of lumber that Stu had milled over the years. Having never worked with wood before, I certainly got a crash course on the material with those two jobs.

After a few months of working for Stu, it became clear to me that he needed a retail outlet for his inventory of mostly natural edge lumber, so I turned to what I knew best for a solution: the farmers’ market. I had worked at the local farmers’ market pretty much every Saturday for previous six years, and even before that, my mom had been selling her wares there since the year I was born, so I was pretty familiar with the scene. Lumber was not something I’d seen before (or since) at the market, but I figured it was a local agricultural product, and when I pitched my idea to the market board, they were quite pleased with it.

I spent a good deal of time prepping the booth. With Henry’s dad’s help, I built a rack to hold upright lumber and a display board with samples of the different species of wood Stu had for sale. I rounded up tablecloths and makeshift tables, and I designed a pretty nice price sheet/flyer. At some point during this process, Henry’s late grandma (sweetest woman in the world) handed me a little clipping from some fancy schmancy (now defunct) magazine. It showed a cutting board made from a single piece of wood with one natural edge and large hanging hole. I decided to make a similar board as an example of a project that potential customers could DIY with the wood I was selling. Henry’s dad helped a little to turn that design into reality, but really, it wasn’t rocket science.

During the summer of 2006, I set up my lumber booth at the Corvallis Farmers’ Market every weekend, and every weekend, (in addition to the million stories people told me about wood in their garage and the million times people went around the booth sniffing things) I was asked the same question, “How much for the cutting board?” The farmers’ market association has pretty strict rules against selling crafts, and I didn’t want to sell my sample board anyway, so I held onto it, but the wheels in my head started to turn.

That summer, I got married, and a few months later, I was pregnant. Any vague plans I had for a career were shuffled onto the back burner. Levi was born in 2007, and Charlotte came into the world in 2009. For most of three years, I was “just” a stay-at-home mom, and let me tell you, I was starting to go crazy. I know other stay-at-home moms who truly love the job, and I totally respect that, but I felt isolated, bored, and mentally soft. I was not happy, but when I’d broach the subject of returning to the working world to Henry, he’d simply ask, “Well, what do you want to do?” and I would have no answer. It made no sense for me to go out and get a minimum-wage job just for the sake of having a job, so instead I waited for inspiration to strike and opportunities to present themselves.

And then I found Etsy, a magical place on the internet where individual sellers and customers could connect. I had never forgotten the enthusiastic response to that one cutting board I’d made years before, so it didn’t take long before I was convinced that Etsy was my golden ticket to success in business.

I planned and prepared for months before I uploaded the first items to my Etsy site (when Charlotte was just 9 months old). Henry’s brother let me borrow a few tools and gave me advice about which other tools to buy. Henry’s dad helped me come up with a production model for making boards. Henry found wood for me to use. My parents babysat a lot and let me fill up my old bedroom with tools, lumber, inventory, and the stuff one needs to run a small business. No one, I repeat, NO ONE believed that my business would be profitable, but they humored me, maybe because they thought I needed a hobby or something. I, however, knew in my bones that this thing was going to work.

And it did work. I made my first sale within a week. A few months later, I was accepted into a (at the time) powerhouse Etsy team, and shortly after that I was chosen to be an Etsy featured seller, which catapulted my business to a whole new level whether I was ready for it or not. The next year, one of my boards was featured in the December issue of Sunset magazine, and things went crazy. I had nothing but unconditional love for Etsy and all the opportunities it brought my way.

2012 was a little bit different (read: less profitable) for several reasons. First off, I had another job that took up some of my “free” time and a lot of my brain. I had a hard time maintaining my priorities (Red Onion Woodworks, my contract work for Gathering Together Farm, this blog, volunteer duties at the Marys River Grange and my home/farm life), and I got confused about which was the most satisfying, most lucrative, most good-for-my-future, or most good-for-my-family. It was too much of a good thing, and my business definitely suffered because of my inattentiveness.

There were some big changes on Etsy, too. The search function switched from organizing by “recency” (like craigslist where the newest stuff comes up first) to “relevancy” (where supposedly the stuff you’ll want comes up first). Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried to game the algorithm, my boards kept falling farther and farther back. In a search for “cutting board” (pretty much the only search term potential customers use to find my boards), the first board of mine comes up on page 20, and when was the last time you made it to page 20 when looking for something online? Yeah, never. I thought so.

In the early months of my time on Etsy, one of my favorite aspects of selling was the community of sellers, particularly the Etsy team I used to belong to. I relied on the that team tremendously for several reasons. First of all, the group of 70+ Etsy sellers communicated actively through a Google Group, and they passed along some of the most valuable business advice I’ve ever received. We also committed to creating a certain quota of Etsy treasuries per month, which as a result, gave all of us regular exposure on Etsy’s home page among other places. My team members were the first folks I ever felt connected to that I’d never met face to face before. I never before imagined that I’d be the type of person to “meet” people on the internet, but it happened, and I liked it.

The power of my Etsy team, however, began to dissolve. Over time, the number of treasury-centric teams on Etsy multiplied, and the number of treasuries being put together grew exponentially. At the same time, some of the more experienced members of my team left and took their wisdom with them. The hours I was putting into building treasuries seemed more and more wasteful, so I reluctantly quit the team and more or less dropped out of the Etsy community.

Etsy was the first place where I connected to folks on the internet, but after a while a found other avenues for meeting people online. I started this blog, I began to read other people’s blogs, and I joined Instagram. These online spaces have opened up small and large communities for me. When I go to New York at the end of the month, I’m hoping to meet at least six different people that I first encountered on Instagram, and I am so excited about it. The point is, Etsy is not the center of my online universe anymore (though I’m still connected to many of my Etsy friends through Instagram and blogging), and I’m okay with that even if it some potentially negative consequences for my business. On the flip side, this blog and my connections to moderately influential folks has upped the exposure of Red Onion Woodworks. I wouldn’t say an exceptionally large number of my blog readers or Instagram followers have actually purchased boards from me (and that’s okay), but it’s helped.

At the beginning of 2013, I was fired up to revive my business. I ordered supplies, I spent days working on new boards, and I started pitching my product around to bloggers. I felt like I was doing everything right, but what I heard back in response was…for the most part…silence. January and March were the two worst sales months in my three-year history on Etsy, and April isn’t shaping up to be much better.

As it stands now, I have a pretty full inventory of products in my shop. Those products are at least as good as they’ve ever been, and the product photos are a million times better than when I started out. My packaging, though still not fancy, is better, and my customer service is more or less the same as it’s always been.

What’s different is that everyone and their dog is selling a version of a natural edge cutting board. When I started on Etsy, my boards were not only unique to Etsy, but there was almost nothing like them anywhere on the internet. I think the fact that customers, bloggers, and Etsy employees alike had never seen anything like what I was offering had a lot to do with my early success even if my product photos weren’t that great. (Gray Works Design and Herriot Grace were launched around the same time as Red Onion Woodworks. I have tremendous respect for both companies, and although I’m sometimes aggravated by the competition, I swear up and down that I never copied either one.) I think I got in just at the exact right time when the market was primed to love my product. Now, however, the market is fairly saturated, and my little shop is being buried by hundreds of other vendors and thousands of other boards. I could spend five times as many hours and five times as much money on marketing my products, but that’s not really what I want to do, and I don’t think my business would be much more profitable because of it. I really had it easy for so long (even though I was pretty clueless in the beginning), but I think this new landscape is just the reality of online retail.

I knew this day would come eventually, and I’m discouraged but not that sad. I’ve always insisted on keeping my overhead extremely low, and though that strategy has been less than ideal or efficient at times, it’s also meant that I had no debts, and if I had to shut things down without any warning, I’d just own a few nice tools that I could use for other projects.

I’m also in SUCH a different (figurative) place right now than I was when I started my business almost three years ago. I have more friends and more hobbies, and my kids are no longer tiny, constantly needy babies. I don’t NEED my business to be the defining characteristic of my identity other than my status as a mother. And let me just say that even if it dwindles to nothing eventually, Red Onion Woodworks has been more successful than I ever could have imagined, financially, socially, educationally, self-esteem-ily, and door-opening-ly. I’m still actively selling on Etsy and moving along with things, but I’m also rustling up some freelance writing gigs as well.

I have over a hundred finished boards in stock, a pretty significant stack of unfinished lumber, and a few potential features on the horizon, so I’m planning on riding this one out for a while. In the meantime, I’m researching selling wholesale and scouting out possible stockists. This is new territory for me, but I’ve always appreciated a learning opportunity and a challenge. I’m particularly interested in finding a home/kitchen/food-centric store or couple stores in the Portland area, so if anyone has any leads, I’d appreciate it if you could send suggestions or contact info my way.

Okay, after all this blathering, I just want to say thank you for supporting me with your dollars and your kind words over the years. I’m not trying to guilt you into anything, but if you’re so inclined, use the coupon code “WAYWARD10″ for $10 off any Red Onion Woodworks purchase over $50 between now and April 26. You are all so very appreciated.

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Adventures: Portland Preservation Society April Meeting

April 11, 2013 · 6 comments

The April meeting of the Portland Preservation Society was SO good! It’s such a fun thing to be part of. I made quarts of pickled beets with honey (not pictured here) to share, and in the end, I brought home pickled red onions, curry pickled cauliflower, romesco, lemon throat coat/hot toddy mix, and parsley-olive oil salsa verde.

Portland Preservation Society loot // Wayward Spark

The Portland Preservation Society is a loose collective of friends, acquaintances, Instagramers, etc. that meets monthly for a (mostly canned) food swap. PPS is open to anyone who can adhere to good food safety practices. The group is led by Brooke Weeber and mostly organized through a Facebook group. Every month, there are new folks, so if you’re nervous about showing up without knowing anyone, don’t be. I went to my first meeting of the group in December, and I had a great time even though I was in a room of almost total strangers.

A couple folks brought prizes for the people with the most popular food items. I contributed a chunk of comb honey that Aaron won with his beet-pickled quail eggs, but my beets took second place, so I got to bring home one of Brooke’s rad food posters (available for sale here). Brooke is an illustrator who sells crazy cool prints and cards in her Etsy shop, Little Canoe. I love both the message and the illustration of this print. Now I just have to find some wall space in my house to hang it.

This morning I made crepes and had them with romesco and salsa verde. It was the best dang breakfast I’ve had in a while. Later I spooned some of the lemon-ginger concoction into a mug with hot water and a shake of cayenne, and it was wonderfully peppy. I will eat well this week for sure.

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Propagation Greenhouse at Gathering Together Farm

April 9, 2013 · 3 comments

Gathering Together Farm propagation greenhouse // Wayward Spark

I had some time to kill this afternoon, so I stopped in to visit my friends in the propagation greenhouse at Gathering Together Farm. The place is bustling and beautiful. So much spring (and summer) in there!

radicchio starts

endive starts

lettuce starts

celery starts

eggplant starts // Wayward Spark eggplant starts

trimmed onion starts // Wayward Spark onion starts got a haircut

tomato starts // Wayward Spark baby tomato starts

grafted tomato starts // Wayward Spark big tomato starts (after grafting)

baby basil starts

big basil starts

cucumber starts

pepper starts

When I visited, Lisa, Paula, and Leslie (left to right) were transplanting young pepper starts into larger pots. I wrote a little about transplanting peppers last spring on the Gathering Together Farm blog here.

transplanting peppers // Wayward Spark

I don’t work for Gathering Together Farm anymore, but I’m so glad that I’m still part of the GTF community. I have a long history at the farm, so I’m pretty comfortable wandering around on my own, but customers at the GTF farmstand are welcome to take their own self-guided tours during business hours. GTF is also signing up folks for their awesome CSA program, so if you’re in the Corvallis/Newport/Portland areas and you’re shopping around for a CSA, definitely check them out.

pepper starts // Wayward Spark big pepper starts

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