Little did you know that I belong to the Mob. I didn’t know it either for that matter. My husband and I joined the mob in an unofficial way on the official date April 9^th, 2010. We purchased Belgian mares as a part of our heart felt desire to steward the land without dependence on overpriced, inefficient, fossil fuel guzzling tractors. This purchase transformed our lives in many ways. But, it began our work as unofficial mob members. Our friends invited us and we couldn’t resist. We were “wannabe”s with more passion than sense.

Mobs are “cropping up” all over this nation. I read this article and realized that we are mob members though we have not formally joined an organized group. As I share we are a part of the mob, I do so with trepidation. I already know that I have the USDA visiting my site. Will I be targeted with a raid?  Will my hoes, horses, and dirt be confiscated?  What will the consequences be? Too late, I have already shared that our behavior is strikingly similar to formal mob members. I have never articulated that we are mobs because I didn’t know there was such a thing … until today.

I read an article that described the mobs forming all over the United States and realized that we are mobsters. The mob I am talking about is the Crop Mob. Wanna be farmers and agrarians are teaming up through social networking media like Facebook and organizing efforts. These “wannabe”s volunteer their time and labor at small farms. The goal is to work with experienced farmers side by side to learn much desired and needed skills. Many who are volunteering are determined to buy their own land someday. Their participation in the Crop Mob will assist them in reaching their destination.

My husband and I volunteer three times per week at our plain friend’s farm. We are working in the green house, in the field, on the plows and in the garden. We have cooked meals on the wood stove, moved wood piles, cleaned up strawberry and asparagus patches and much more. We are not a part of the official mob. We simply prayed that God would guide and equip us for our journey. God answered our prayers a year and a half ago when we developed a friendship with a plain community that relied on draft animals for farm work and utilizes no electricity for daily living. So yes, we are mobsters albeit informally.

The Crop Mob is a national effort that may help others who are yearning for knowledge and the rewards of hard work. You can visit the official Crop Mob website here.

Stay tuned for an update on our Kansas Trip, a report on the impact of the economy on the health food market and more on our apprenticeship with the plain people. First, I must take advantage of the weather and finish planting our garden.
Udderly His,

The Kansas Milkmaid

After a brief break from the rainfall, the children and I slogged through the mud to investigate the garden. The first part of the garden is dedicated to potatoes. The sight depresses me. There are 28 rows covered with straw.

Periodically I dig through the straw to see what is happening. It is always the same thing. There are roots on some of the potatoes, a few shoots but no real intense activity. To make matters worse, when I drive around the area, I see bushy green tall potato plants in the garden. My tension and anxiety increases as I realize all we have is straw. My impatience nearly got the best of me. I fought temptation to salvage the potatoes by putting them in the garden with real dirt. My husband suggested we give this experiment more time. So, I stopped ranting and raving about the potatoes.

My family uses a lot of potatoes. We enjoy hash browns for breakfast. I had high hopes of growing enough potatoes to shred and can for hash browns. My husband bought a fifty pound bag of seed potatoes. We had not plowed our garden in March. It was too wet and we were too busy getting settled in our new home as family. We decided to lay the potatoes on the ground and cover them with straw. I felt awkward when our neighbors drove by seeing us in the yard with all the straw. They really stretched their necks to check out our activity. I mumbled something to my husband about wishing our garden wasn’t so visible. Planting potatoes using straw was so new to me that I was embarrassed and skeptical about it.

Two months passed and I saw nothing emerge from the straw save weeds. We continued to rake up the straw and add more where some blew away or composted. Every now and then, I checked with successful farmers about the straw method of growing potatoes. They assured me that this method worked though they did not use it regularly.

Today, I walked out to the garden and to my delight I saw beautiful potato leaves emerging from the straw. Just to think, I nearly gave up on the project. The grass was growing tall between the rows and we let the mulch get thin. Why waste more straw if nothing was growing beneath it? After seeing the potatoes plants press through the straw, the children and I decided to set to work cleaning up the potato patch. I mowed between rows while the twins and Moriah added more straw to the rows. I am still uncertain how much of a yield we will get from these potatoes, but I am delighted to see the plants.

The rest of the garden is doing well. The cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, green beans and peppers survived high winds and torrential rains last week. A few of the tomato plants will not make it because they were flooded. However, I am not concerned because we have close to 300 tomato plants. A few green bean plants will not make it as well. But, there are 280 plants in one row and I started 306 more plants in the house. They will be ready to transplant when the ground dries up. I don’t think there will be a shortage of plants.

I have celery, zucchini, cucumbers, cantaloupe, watermelon and eggplant growing nicely and ready for transplanting as well. Starting many of these plants in seed trays offers them a great jumpstart. It is nice to see them develop good leaves and strong roots before putting them in the ground. They are large enough that I don’t have to do a lot of guess work between the weeds and vegetable plants.

Overall, I am pleased with the efforts we made with our garden. By fall, I would like to get a greenhouse built to help with our planting endeavors. Starting seeds indoors gave us a good advantage. However, my plain friend suggests that even under a grow light the plants are more spindly. The greenhouse offers sun light from the sides and not just the top giving you a bushy robust plant.

We have a long way to go and much to learn about growing a prolific garden. I often look at my plain friends and groan because my garden pales in comparison. My husband wisely suggested we not compare ourselves to those who have farmed all their lives but rather look back at where we were a year ago and evaluate progress. One year ago I had seeds and no garden. I had never started tomatoes by seed or grown anything in potting trays. We lived in the city one year ago. Today we live in the country and began our journey of planting heirloom seeds. We are making good progress.

Today I praise God for answering our prayers to help our garden grow. We have much more work to do to bring the harvest to the table. We may face many more elements before harvest. However, we know who sustains us each step of the way and owe Him praise.

How is your garden growing?  Be sure and share!!

Udderly His,

The Kansas Milkmaid

Later in 2007, Moriah attended a ladies bible study with me at Coram Deo Fellowship. The ladies were asking for prayer requests. Moriah was seven years old back then but she understood the power of prayer. She asked the ladies to pray that God would give her a goat. Moriah was providentially sitting next to a goat owner. The next day, the goat farmer called me and said, “We would love to give your children goats and help answer their prayers.” I groaned but caved. We had too much going on in our lives, but the children needed something to delight in. I will never forget the day we carted two Toggenberg goats home in the back of the van. The children were ecstatic. However, the bliss was short-lived. Our family needed to relocate. Circumstances would not allow for us to bring the goats to Missouri. We left them with their previous owners. The children never forgot that moment either. They channeled disappointment into iron clad determination.

They took to praying and preparing. Though we lived in town and all evidence suggested that we would not be farming anytime soon, my children began saving every penny they earned, found or received as a gift for goats and chickens. They determined they would some day get goats again. I wrote about their decision to save money and the progress they made here. My children are not like most children. That is, most children do not set long term goals and keep them. Most children don’t even make serious or significant strides towards short-term goals. My children never forgot the trauma and disappointment of losing their goats. They prayed, they saved and they hounded me till I couldn’t take it any more. In a few days, we will be proud owners of Nubian goats once again. Coco and Bella will make their appearance on our homestead in the near future. Coco and Bella are not just any Nubian goats. They are descendants from Cricket. They are her granddaughter and great granddaughter respectively.

The saw reminds me that I should never underestimate the power, drive and seriousness of my children’s agrarian goals. Some how the children have conned their father into building a crate to transport them. He caved too. Though I do not want to deal with goats right now, they have convinced me to get them anyway. When children save money for two years, their hope should not be deferred any longer. Hope deferred makes the heart sick. I am thankful for my children’s determination. I am sure we will have many adventures with the goats. They are just four months old. It will be a while before we breed them. Perhaps, next spring the children will provide goat milk for our family’s use. We still anticipate bringing Sunny, our Jersey cow home soon. It will be like old times before we know it.

Udderly His,

The Kansas Milkmaid

Yesterday, my family took a long walk through the woods on our farm. Our goal was to find Jewel Weed. The recent rainfall kept us out of the garden and gave us an excuse to look for wildflowers. It was a nice break after four to five hour days in the garden last week. We use this time off from gardening to traipse through the woods getting acquainted with the land, trees, and medicinal wild plants. One of our many goals in reclaiming and redeeming the land is to use wild crafted herbs to create salves, tinctures, and teas.

My mother-in-law took me on a walk last Sunday afternoon and showed me how to gather Jewel Weed on her farm. Jewel Weed is important to Momma because she is active outdoors. Momma gardens. But, she is in regular combat with a beaver who works diligently at night to stop up water flow between their ponds. The beaver works all night, sometimes every night. Momma takes a rake, and sometimes uses her bare hands, to undo what the beavers did the night before. Beavers are clever as well as busy. Somehow they knew she was highly sensitive to Poison Ivy. Whether they stopped up the water flow with debris coated in Poison Ivy, or if they strategically built their dam near the Ivy, I do not know. But it was clear Momma was suffering in the dead of winter from the miserable rash. One day I ran across her in her kitchen. Momma had a circular shaped green ice cube with green vegetation dangling from it. She was rubbing it on a red rash near her eye. It was a strange sight indeed. Naturally curious I inquired about the ice cube that looked like a gift from the swamp thing. Momma had taken Jewel Weed the previous summer, boiled it in a pan, cooled it, and froze it in a butter dish for use when Jewel Weed was no longer growing. It was then that Momma told me story after story about the blessings of Jewel Weed to her and those she loves. The youth minister suffered from hornet stings earlier that summer. Daddy and Momma brought him to their farm and applied Jewel Weed. The swelling went down immediately. In fact, she encouraged me to make my own swamp thing ice cube for my husband as he is dangerously allergic to bee stings. We found a handful of Jewel Weed plants on Sunday. However, I was not satisfied. I wanted to gather a large amount to save in a variety of ways.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find Jewel Weed on our farm. Daddy says the plant is also called Touch Me Not. The seeds burst if you touch them. Perhaps, the plant exists here on the farm, but I haven’t found it yet. We plan to take regular walks through the woods to familiarize ourselves with the variety of plants as they bloom throughout the season. Perhaps we will find the Touch Me Not yet. Much of our woods are overrun with heavy brush making it hard to explore some areas. We are discussing plans to clear some of the brush in the late fall to help us better steward the woods.

Jewel Weed Preparation

I prepared the Jewel Weed by boiling it in water.  I strained the leaves and filled ice cube trays with the orange liquid.  This will give us an emergency remedy for bee stings or poison ivy.  I will continue to search for this herb as I walk our farm.

While I couldn’t find Jewel Weed, we enjoyed a fragrant walk. The wild roses and black berries are in full bloom. My strategy in working with herbs is to exhaust all potential uses of the plants I have identified. I was delighted to discover that Wild Roses and Blackberry leaves offer medicinal benefits for the homesteader.

Wild Rose Preparations

Wild Roses can be used in a variety of ways. I made a tea of the leaves and petals. It was an enjoyable and refreshing drink. Rose tea is a great blood purifier, acting as a mild diuretic, and benefits the liver, kidneys, urinary tract, and more.

Another way to use the petals is to toss them in a salad. I have not tried this yet, but the children and I have nibbled on a few petals. The children appear reluctant to have rose petals in their salad. I find this peculiar considering they have no problem eating cow tongue. Go figure.

Today, I followed steps to make rose water. I tried both the easy way and the more complicated method. The complicated method worked okay. I collected eight ounces of Rose water. I would have collected more but my bowl kept tipping. I think I had too much water in the pan which caused the inverted bowl and upright bowl to tip. The distilled Rose water smells absolutely wonderful. Whereas, the steeped rose petals do not smell as strong. It was an enjoyable experiment. The kitchen smelled fragrant. The children enjoyed the smell of roses wafting through the kitchen.

Blackberry Preparations

Blackberries offer wonderful fruits but that is not all. We discovered the leaves make an excellent tea to treat diarrhea. A few of the children experienced stomach upset recently. I gathered leaves of blackberry and made a decoction. In the past, I would have given them PeptoBismal. The active ingredient is Bismuth subsalicylate. Other inactive ingredients include benzoic acid, flavor, magnesium aluminum silicate, methylcellulose, red 22, red 28, saccharin sodium, salicylic acid, sodium salicylate, sorbic acid, water. The cost for this over-the-counter drug, if purchased on-line would be $4.70 (incl. tax & shipping).
The warnings and side effects are noteworthy and put me on edge. Click here for a listing of the damage possible by this OTC medicine.

Blackberry tea is rich in vitamin C and tannins. The active ingredients are not manufactured by a drug company in a sterile lab, but created by God and ordained for use by man. I noted there were no drug interactions, no contraindications and no known side effects for Blackberry tea. It cost me nothing to harvest this tea from the woods. In fact, some of the children helped harvest the leaves and enjoyed the walk. It is a far cry better than getting in the van, driving to WalMart and experiencing over stimulation due to all the advertising gimmicks. Instead of polluting my children’s blood streams with dyes and other chemicals, I nourished their system with vitamin C as I treated a specific ailment. Exploring the land God gave us and putting to use the medicinal plants is a rewarding endeavor. Using plants medicinally fosters a spirit of gratitude and awe for God’s creation. Many of the plants provide food like berries, or beautiful flowers like the rose. Yet, if we dig deeper we find there is more to these plants then meets the eye. Our Master, the Great Physician, created these plants not just to delight us and feed us but to heal and sustain us.

Udderly His,

The Kansas Milkmaid

Lately, I greet early mornings and late nights with the same thing, stiff sore muscles all over my body. That is, I wake up in pain and I drop in bed with the same kind of agony. Most associate stiff and sore muscles with illness, injury or symptoms of death. Not me. These are symptoms of well being. I hurt because I have been sedentary the last two years. Truthfully, I have been sedentary all my life when it comes to the kind of work I have been doing recently.

After a long cold winter, I am gardening in the sunshine. We are putting in a half acre garden and it requires intense work. I am not just coming out of a literal winter season but a figurative winter. I have been on sabbatical from dairy farming for nearly two years while I relocated from Kansas to Missouri to flee from hardship involving domestic violence. During this time off, God rebuilt, restored, and transformed my life. Two significant events permanently altered who I am as a person and my direction as an agrarian woman. The first and most obvious is my recent marriage. God knew the desires of my heart. That is, I prayed to recover from aftermath of domestic violence. I also prayed to have a godly father for my children, a tender, understanding and compassionate companion who shared my love of cows, kids and stewarding the land for God’s glory. Finding a companion would not be easy for me. After all, I had 24 dairy cows and six children. I shoveled manure and milked cows twice a day, every day, in all kinds of weather for a living. My life’s vocation was none too appealing. Most men would view my bovine’s and children as baggage. I saw my prayer for a companion as unlikely. But, with God nothing is impossible. God knew there was one man who would not find my life‘s work unappealing. In fact, he saw the cows and children as a dowry, a rich inheritance. Ten months ago, we united our lives in marriage and have relocated to the family farm, a farm that has not been lived on since 1951.

The second event that impacted my life is our friendship with the plain people. Over the last year and a half we have fellowshipped and worked with them in a variety of circumstances. Recently we purchased two Belgian mares with our friend’s guidance. Mr. G. helped us talk to the owner and ensure a good purchase of the mares, the required tack and implements to get started. If this weren’t enough, he offered on site training with our team. Mr. G. has played an instrumental role in helping us succeed in our quest to live a simple life. During the last month, we have worked with Mr. and Mrs. G two to three times per week.

This apprenticeship is so much more than learning to work with our draft horses. It is an up close and personal look at successful plain and simple living. We have seen first hand that poly culture farms with reliance on draft animals works!! It is not just working for one family but many families (Specifically, 300-400 people. This does not include the many families that have moved from the area because of land unavailability. Many little communities are shooting up all over. When there is no land available, the plain people are moving twenty to thirty miles to start up a new community. It is important to note that our plain friends believe children are a rich heritage. On average our friends have 11-12 children. The families are growing, buying up all available land and relocating if land cannot be found.)

Draft horse farming is not old, outdated and impossible. We American’s have grown lazy, our appetites for leisure and ease caused the failure in farming. Our friends witness to us daily in many ways that the ease in my life is not ease at all. It is bondage and complication of the worst kind. Our time with the plain people caused us to re-examine all aspects of our lives. We have started to exchange some of the “convenience” items for a more honest stewardship of the time and resources. For example, we own a wood cook stove, a manual washer, Belgian mares, a walk behind plow, and other horse drawn implements. We have a long way to go to fully integrate these items, but we are well on our way.

While we do not ascribe to the same religious doctrines as the plain people, we do affirm the overall approach to God and life. We believe we as a society we live well above our means. We have a standard of living that feeds an insatiable appetite for more and more things while never reaching satisfaction. Our plain friends show us the joy of being satisfied with less. They show us the reality of families living out legacies. They show us the fulfillment of sweat of the brow work. There is a health and vitality in their lives that we long to have.

We are privileged to see several varieties of plain people in our area. Some use all draft animals and no small engines of any kind. Others use draft animals with some use of small engines and gas powered appliances. Those who use fossil fuels complain to us about having less resources and feel they are more financially burdened. Our friends who use manual labor and draft animals only have never complained about making ends meet. In fact, those who do not rely on fossil fuels to assist them are farming as their primary income. In the past, we have hired our plain friends to work for us building furniture. For example, we had a friend build us some benches for our kitchen table. He powers his wood working tools with horses attached to a treadmill. When I hired him, he told me that he could not complete the job until November as he was busy with farming. We hired another friend to build us a manual washer. Again we were told that the washer would not be complete until after farming season. It is clear that the plain people who do not use gasoline power are much freer to farm as their primary income. They regularly turn down non-farm work because they can. Our friends who use small engines and gasoline powered tools complain that they are unable to farm full time and have to have off-the-farm jobs to support their farming.

Our journey to live a simple life is not clearly defined. We will likely alter our course as we go. We are thankful for our friendship with the plain communities. They have strongly impressed their values and methods on us. I plan to share what we have learned as time permits. We understand it took years to foster a learned helplessness when it comes to basic living. Much has been forgotten. As we relearn what has been forgotten, it will take time. It will take embracing and coping with stiff sore muscles. I have been in agony before, but I have never felt so refreshed in spirit and mind. Sweat of the brow work is good for the soul, good for the soil, and good for the mind.

Udderly His,

The Kansas Milkmaid