Jennifer Welch

Waking Dr. Devine, Part Two

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By Jennifer Welch As Dr. Devine began the endoscopy procedure on Alex, he explained the symptoms of choke and the possible complications that could go along with it. I spent part of the time admiring his short handlebar mustache which was waxed into a slight twist at the ends. He was young, straightforward, and very …

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Perfect Imperfection

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By Jennifer Welch

My heifer has a penis. If you remember, it wasn’t too long ago that I was waiting for my dairy cow to calve. And I called heifer. So you can imagine my surprise when my heifer was born … with a penis. Damn. I guess it’s true that we can’t always get what we want. But I did get a bull calf, which I aptly christened Boy Named Sue. So it would appear that, if we try sometimes, we get what we need. This seems to be a recurring theme in my existence.

After last summer, I wasn’t sure where the food truck or the farm were heading – if anywhere. I had to ask myself some very hard questions. And what’s worse, I had to answer them. When we learned that we wouldn’t be offered another lease at the distillery, one of my employees mentioned that she might know of a good spot for the bus just up the street. A new couple, Rick and Katy, had purchased a building and lot on East Main and had moved to the valley from Chicago. I reluctantly reached out with an email and a hopeful heart. The rest, as they say, is history. The bus moved into a new location, we gained new friends, and the farm remained secure and stable. 

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The Crowded Acre: Maybe

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By Jennifer Welch

Maybe being a farmer is akin to being a glutton for punishment. As farmers, we take on nearly insurmountable tasks against the worst odds and try to make a living out of it. We watch animals die and crops fail and weather reign supreme over our best fought intentions. Collectively, we’ve seen it all. We watch our friends get their hearts broken again and again, and we tell each other it will be okay, that this is how it goes. Entire seasons lost, the feeling of a lifetime of wondering how we can do it better, different. We tell our families, we tell ourselves, that next year will be our year. It’s coming, we just have to get up and make the coffee, keep our heads down, plow through the work, and patiently wait.

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What Do You Want?

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By Jennifer Welch

Summer never starts off with these words, “What do you want?” It begins on a much softer note. “Hi, what can I help you with today? What can I get for you? Is that all you would like?” Everyone in the service industry has the lines memorized by heart and, at least in the beginning, manages to even use them with customers. But towards the end of the season, when angry August rolls around, you just might let a ‘What do you want?’ slip from your lips … if only accidentally. It’s not that we hate our jobs by the end of summer, it’s that we loathe them. And, really, it’s not you, it’s us. The service industry is exhausting and gratifying at the same time and, generally speaking, the more exhausted you get, the more gratified you become. But at some point we just need to crawl into a hole and hibernate for the winter until the next tourist season rolls around and we are required to smile and talk to people again.

Here at the bus, summer is off to a great start. We are busier than we were last year and running a larger menu and a larger farm. We are also looking at adding more pasture land to our rotations which will allow us to continue to grow our herds and the food truck even more. We really didn’t know what to expect this summer, especially after last year’s fiasco. It’s hard to know when to quit and when to keep going and we were ready to hinge that decision on this year’s progress or lack thereof. So I am relieved to say that things are looking up so far. In hindsight, I might be willing to admit that taking two of the most demanding, failure-prone business models and smashing them together might have been a horrible idea. Maybe they were right, maybe you can’t do it all or have it all. These thoughts have been rumbling around in my head all spring and begging the question, “What do you want?”

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The Crowded Acre: Soccer Mom

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By Jennifer Welch

I’m not entirely sure how the thing happened. I was there, of course, when it happened. I even took part in the happening of the thing. But I still can’t be sure of the how part. And, you know, life goes on – blah, blah, blah, we will all survive – yada, yada, yada. Maybe I will even find a way to forgive myself somewhere way, way down the line. But for right now, in this very moment, I am still kicking myself for that single moment of weakness. I am utterly questioning what made me do the unspeakable deed of signing all three of my children up for spring soccer. Ugh.

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The Crowded Acre: The Dude

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By Jennifer Welch

It’s no secret to most that I am part woman, part wild animal. I walk a paper thin line between human reasoning and animal instinct, between empathy for our man-made problems and disdain for the four walls surrounding me. I find it difficult to relate to most people, especially the ones that don’t have dog hair on their pants. Animal communication is simple, straightforward. Humans are much more complex and I constantly find myself fumbling through the intricacies of interaction. When I am in town I feel slightly out of place, the proverbial fish out of water, as it were. But when I come home there is a small tribe of humans and horses, poultry and swine, goats and cats, that make me feel at peace. There is also a giant dog that insists on climbing into the truck to greet me every time I pull into the driveway. These are the things that make those four walls feel like a home. It may not be the cleanest home on the block, but it’ll do. 

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The Crowded Acre: Butter and Waffles

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I think I’m gaining ground. In the early days, my request for a house pig would have simply been ignored. Along with my ideas of owning goats and cows and chickens and ponies, it might have even been scoffed at. I think the initial resistance was due to the fact that my husband didn’t really want any animals, likely due to the fact that he had never really had any animals. I, on the other hand, can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t have any animals. In just over a decade together, we have grown a family, built a farm, lived in a yurt, turned a school bus into a food truck, and loved every minute of it. It just seems logical that the next phase of our relationship will be “house pig” … at least to one of us, that is.

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The Crowded Acre – What A Long, Strange Trip

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By Jennifer Welch

Y’all … what a long, strange trip it’s been. I am a pig farmer, a cook, and the owner of a 1984 65-passenger Bluebird school bus. The amount of stuff I don’t know could fill that school bus ten times over. But there are a few things I have learned along the way that are worth sharing.

The first thing I’ve learned is: Never say never.

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The Crowded Acre – The Grass is Always Greener …

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By Jennifer Welch

I never did fall in love with the idea of grazing our livestock on leased property 10 miles from the farm. The idea never sat well with me for a variety of reasons, the loftiest of which has been protection from predators. Our poultry are protected round-the-clock by a 140-pound livestock guard dog who resides on our property. The Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats benefit from his protection as well – being the little bite-size nuggets that they are. I don’t worry too much about our breeding pigs, as they average 600 pounds apiece, but the freshly weaned feeders would make quite a tempting snack. And the sweet, trusting Jersey cows make a nice target while they are calving or just afterward with a small, velvety calf by their side. No, I don’t like the idea of pasturing any of these animals even just 15 minutes away from our home base, but that is what we had to do to make things work.  

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The Bearded Lady

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By Jennifer Welch – The Crowded Acre

“The wheels on the bus go round and round …”

It was mid-summer when we purchased the 1984 65-passenger Bluebird school bus. At that time, it had been almost a full year since I had broken the news to my husband – I wanted to go back into the food service industry. I can’t be sure if he fully believed me then, but I am certain he believes me now. “If I can fit it down my winding driveway, I’ll take it,” I exclaimed to the previous owner of the school bus, despite being utterly unsure of where this adventure might take me. But it fit down the driveway like it was meant to be, and it hasn’t left our property since. After some explaining and very little coercing, my husband nodded for me to go ahead with my plans and insisted he be allowed to come along for the ride.

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Revolution

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 By Jennifer Welch – The Crowded Acre

“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” – Paul Cezanne

How many times has a single head of lettuce changed your life?

I received a call saying that my tank was ready for pickup – the one that I take to the local goat dairy every week to collect over 150 gallons of whey to feed to my pigs. But this time, they also wanted to know if I was interested in some lettuce that a local greenhouse was giving away as animal fodder. Given that pigs will eat nearly anything I said yes, I would take it. And before long I received another call, this time from the owner of the greenhouse, about picking up the lettuce for the pigs. Score. Free food for my little herd of garbage disposals. 

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The Crowded Acre: Drinking Leads to “Porking”

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By Jennifer Welch

I’m hitting my stride.
I’ve always known that I was a whiskey girl. Whiskey. Bourbon. Single-malt Scotch. Maybe a blend if you force my hand. Neat. Always neat. This I know. But my stride has nothing to do with that. No, my stride has more to do with curly tails and round snouts, curious minds and hearty grunts. My stride is pork. I take porking very seriously, as it is my business. More of an art form, really. The art of raising pigs for nourishment. This I am coming to know.
Luckily for me, these two things go hand in hand. Like pieces of a puzzle, they fit together in a way you might not expect at first. In fact, drinking and porking, as it were, go together in more ways than one. (I should know, says the mother of three.) Although, for safety’s sake, I do feel inclined to point out that we enforce a strict two-drink maximum if you plan to wander into our pigpens.

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The Crowded Acre: Technology on the Farm

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By Jennifer Welch

Although sometimes I hate to admit it, I belong to Gen Y, the Millennials, Generation Next. I do not have a college degree, despite the years I spent in college. I spent a period of time cohabitating prior to getting married. I have had access to the Internet since I was in high school. I feel that information should be free and, yes, I do believe that I can accomplish anything I put my keyboard to. All of these things tell me that I belong in this generation, even though my birth date is on the edge of inclusion. But I try not to let it get to me too much, especially given that for as much as I identify with my generation, I equally dissociate with it. 

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The Crowded Acre – Annabelle

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by Jennifer Welch Jamie said the calf delivered just fine, making her oldest cow a mommy once again. Annabelle was a good mommy to her calves, and this time was no exception. She was a full-blooded Jersey that had been bred to a Scottish Highland bull. Her calf was a bullcalf, shaggy and wet, eager …

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The Crowded Acre – My Native Home

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by Jennifer Welch “My native home is a certain type of labor, it is a certain type of relationship to my body and the uses and functions of my mind, it is a certain type of relationship to my environment, especially the land and space around me and in which I move and work, it …

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Full Circle

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 By Jennifer Welch

It’s embarrassing, really. I’ve lost two cows in two months. The first cow, Luna, snagged her training halter on a tree limb and snapped her neck trying to get loose. The second, my favorite cow, Deluxe, pushed her way into our feed stores and ate an entire bag of layer pellets. She perished three days later, despite our best efforts to keep her alive. Both of these deaths were the result of management issues.

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The Offering

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By Jennifer Welch

I was recently visited by a dear friend – the kind of friend who swoops in with a bottle of whiskey in hand and leaves you feeling more connected with your sense of being than when he arrived. On this particular visit, he happened to be in town the night before my first-ever hunting season opened. We sat long into the night and talked about farming and hunting and various other things. I mentioned that I was a little nervous about walking into the woods and taking a life. And that is when he began to tell me about the Ainu.

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A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

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 By Jennifer Welch

There is a certain amount of romance associated with farming; I can’t deny that this is true. Maybe it’s the idea of marrying a piece of land with a herd of livestock, or consummating that marriage with the careful placement of a seed deep inside a fold of the earth. There has to be some grand idea that makes the long hours and countless sacrifices mean something. The money makes you want to cry. The hours, and the losses, and the desolation make you want to cry. So why do farmers do it? No matter how certain farmers sound when they tell you the answer to this question, I can guarantee that they ask themselves the exact same thing every day: Why do I do this? For me, the answer is simple: it is love.

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Profession of Hope

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 By Jennifer Welch

Farming is often referred to as a “profession of hope.” I have spent the past year of my life learning exactly what this means. Most business owners wouldn’t enter into a field with as many uncontrollable variables as farming has. Most businesses are not even designed to rely on sheer optimism as the main driving force. And as such, Farmers live a life of optimism, and the only constant in our business is this: Some days are good, some days are bad.

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Who Shaved the Cat’s Butt and Why is There a Bomb in the Pantry?

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 By Jennifer Welch

Okay, so the cat’s butt didn’t actually get a shave … yet. There was merely an attempt involving a feline, a pair of blunt-tipped scissors, and a boy – my boy. But I assure you, the intent was there, and I have no illusions that this intent will subside any time soon. The reason for this belief is that I live with boys. I am, in fact, outnumbered by them. As is the poor, poor cat.

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Chances.

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The Crowded Acre

by Jennifer Welch

Late fall is easily my favorite time of year. The fading colors, the crisp air, the slow descent toward winter’s edge that consumes each sleepy day. It fills me with such gratitude that I often find myself sitting in the lowering sun, soaking up the last of the warmth, thinking back upon the previous growing season and the bounty it has provided us with. It’s quite appropriate given that it’s smack in the middle of the holiday season, which always wraps up our harvest season for the year and makes me feel, well, thankful. I am always thankful for my family and friends, my home and the wonderful town we live in, among other things. But as far as farming goes, it brings me to a whole new level of respect and appreciation for new life, old life, life given, and life spared.

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The Crowded Acre – Barn. Heart.

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by Jennifer Welch

I can’t think of a single aspect of farming that isn’t an act of love. It usually begins with the break of day, or just before it. I feel through the darkness of the room for my boots and jacket before fumbling down the stairs and out the back door. I slowly make my way to the barn and as I rub the sleep from my eyes, I am blanketed by the stillness of the earth at dawn. The animals begin to stir in the early light. Yak the horse lets out a low nicker then brushes my cheek with his whiskers – it’s his way of saying “Good morning.” Slowly, the goats and the cows follow suit as they rise from their beds and make their way towards the gate. The kittens stretch and yawn quietly until the first shot of milk hits the side of the pail, then they rush to my side impatiently waiting for their breakfast. And so it goes, the milking and feeding take place as the sun rises up over the Midland Hill, and the silence I first stepped into is carried off with the awakening of the farm. It’s mostly the silent moments that draw me in to this life. It gives me a quiet sense of solitude when I secretly crave isolation from the world around me, something I crave more often than most. It is in these moments, however, when I find I am least alone, and most surrounded by love.

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The Crowded Acre

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by Jennifer Welch

“Thirteen Pair of Winter Cardinals”

Winter. It means something different to everyone. To me, it is the longest and slowest of all the seasons. It carries with it the least variability, gelatinous and dark, a time for reflections and musings. Sometimes it seems as though time stands still in winter; frozen within the ice, buried beneath the snow, waiting for the urgings of a new spring to push it forth from the dirt. When I was younger, it would tend to make me restless and fitful. Now I have learned to appreciate the tides of the seasons, the death that is so vital to the rebirth. And though most things use this time of year to remain dormant, my mind is anything but …

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The Crowded Acre – “Mama’s Boy”

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by Jennifer Welch

“OK, it’s time,” I say to my husband and my dad. The three of us walk outside to the pen where our three baby goats live. We pull out Mama’s Boy and I look into his sweet, unsuspecting eyes. I think about all the times I swore I would never do this to any animal. Things change, time goes on; all I can do is try to keep up. “Hold him down for me guys …”    

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