My First Weekend in May

May has come in like some sort of energetic animal that seems to need so sleep-a shark perhaps. oh that's right that's March that comes in like some sort of animal-lions, sheep, lorises, etc..

But so far may has been one busy and energetic month. May is my favorite month, not just because I was born on May 11th but because it is the best month of spring-everything is in bloom, the trees are pretty much leafed out by mid May, the grass is green for real, the garden kicks into high gear production wise (you should see the lettuce crop-spectacular!) and our markets start up again which means steady income and not living from savings any longer.

This year May started on a Thursday and I spent May Day morning harvesting greens for our markets (our farm store and the Saturday FM in Oxford) and the afternoon dealing with the packaging for the green (I like to have labels on bags and it takes time to print labels, cut the printed labels to size and than adhere them to the bags. Especially when I am using sheets of labels that are not exactly compatible with my new laser printer-if anyone reading this knows what labels work best with a Samsung CLP-300 let me know. It sure ain't the ones I am using currently). Generally I wash the greens ASAP after harvesting but by 10 am Thursday morning we had 25 mph winds and since my "packing shed" consists of a table, a wash tub and a salad spinner and no shelter of any kind around all this stuff I decided it would be better to put the unwashed greens right into the fridge in an unclean state and get out early on Friday morning and get them washed and re-hydrated than.

So after harvesting 5 kinds of heirloom lettuces (Amish Deer Tongue, Cracoviensis, Marvel of 4 Seasons, Red Sails leaf lettuce and Green Oakleaf) arugula, spring mix, baby lettuce and cilantro I opened the store and than went inside to watch the Price is Right (something Eugene and I have done for the past 15 years or so because we can most days because of our work schedule. We love the almost mindless competition, the blatant commercialism and Drew Carey).

Had several customers drop by the store to buy asparagus, spinach, lettuce, seeds, herb plants between 11 am and 5pm. I found after running the numbers that our sales are up 10,000% so far this year over last. of course last year there were a lot of weeks where the store generated less than $20 a week gross income. Which is something we expected because it seems to take people about 3 years to figure out you are here without an expensive and aggressive marketing campaign.

Since we do not have $50K to spend on marketing and a lot of time on our hands we have opted to go cheap with the marketing and allow our on farm business to slowly develop and flower. My web based marketing (website and email list, which you can subscribe to by going to the Boulder Belt website and following the instructions there) has really taken off in the past 4 or 5 months. All I can say to that is, Finally! The Boulder Belt Eco-Farm website is about 13 years old and it has taken a long time for it to get noticed by the right crowd (that would be people in Ohio/Indiana). It also has taken that long for it to evolve into a really nice website that is both useful to me and to you the www public. I also have made a very nice brochure (another bit of work that has been evolving over the past 10+ years). I have a background in art and the person who introduced my to computers, my late friend Ann Bell, was a DTP person who was also a classically trained artist as well as having a lot of experience in printing using movable type. She trained me to use computers for graphics and nothing else. So, to this day I can barely use a spread sheet (and do not keep any records on the computer. That's all done by hand with paper and pen/pencil) but give me a drawing/paint program or word processing app and I am good to go.

Any Hoo, Got through Thursday and Friday came. In the past Friday has always been a bear of a day. Lots of harvesting and cleaning and bagging/bunching to do for the Saturday farmers' market. But I hope, this year, to have my act together to start harvesting Thursday or even Wednesday for the weekend (and I believe if things continue as they have, I will have to do quite of harvesting on Wed. to keep the store stocked) so that Friday becomes a day of light harvest and lots of selling. It sure was nice this past Friday not to have to work 14 hours getting ready for market.

So Friday morning arrived and I got breakfast early and started to work on washing the greens picked the day before. I was hoping to get done before the high winds redeveloped but did not. I was able to get through all the crates of lettuce before the 25mph+ winds kicked and started blowing by baby lettuce and arugula all over the place. Got everything clean, re-hydrated and back in the fridge by 10 am. Harvested asparagus and took lunch. After lunch started in on bagging the greens, bunching radishes and asparagus and waiting on the occasional customer. Wyatt came by for a visit and kept me company as I bagged up stuff (Eugene was mowing). It started storming which pretty much put a kibosh on business for the afternoon. Around 5 pm the rain stopped for a few hours and we decided we needed more asparagus than we had so the 3 of us grabbed knives and piled into the van and took a trip over to the Crubaugh Rd farm and did our annual raid on the asparagus we planted there 5 or 6 years ago. Got just over 5 pounds and noticed that about 1/4 of the row is not producing any longer. We decided this was probably the last time we would go over to get the stuff. The farm looked pretty good. The apple trees there are in amazing bloom and beautiful. Went back home cleaned up and bunched the asparagus than went out to eat at Fiesta Charro in Eaton (our second favorite eatery in Eaton, which has few decent choices. Our favorite place is Adam's Rib but since we had Wyatt, a vegetarian, and Adam's rib is a BBQ shop with no real veg choices we opted for the Mexican place). went back home and to bed before 11pm.

Saturday dawned stormily. We were up by 4am. Did coffee got the last few details finished for the farmers market, ate breakfast, packed the van and got on the road about 1/2 later than we should. Somehow when working with Eugene we both get stuck in some sort of time sucker and can rarely get anywhere on time. But since I am one of those people than tends to be early to things most of the time we are not very late (on our first date he was 4 hours late and I found this was not a fluke. The boy is very time challenged) and more and more often we are on time.

So we leave the farm later than we should in a driving rain storm and hydroplane our way down to Oxford. get to the market and park the van in our spot and the rain stops. Hooray! We do not have to set up in pouring rain. We get set up about 15 minutes after the market has started. But because of the wet weather few people are there to buy so no big deal we are running late. we get set up and we start selling asparagus. By 9 am we are out of the stuff. Val Taylor, the Locavore Queen of SW Ohio (join her list at cincilocavores) had put in an order for all our remaining leeks and arrived for those around 8:30am. It was nice to be done with the leeks after 9 months of harvesting and selling them. They were a wonderful crop but it was time they were sold. By 10 am the market was getting fairly busy, though not as busy as I would have like to see. the Oxford Gourd and Drum Ensemble set up and played for a couple of hours which was fun. The weather got quite windy and peoples shelters started doing bad things and had to be secured (we tie ours to our van). The market extended its' hours of operation this year from 11:30 to noon. It was dead from 11:30 to noon. We did sell a few things as we were packing up but i do not like the new hours. They will likely not be profitable for us and mean we get home a half hour later than in the past. This means things could go wrong on the farm. As an example, this past Saturday because it was storming when we left home we left all the hoop houses and cold frmes closed up. It got sunny around 11:30 or noon but since we had to tarry in Oxford for an additional half hour, plus run to the the Striets to pick up raw milk for ourselves and the Cox's and than drop that milk off at Adam's Rib, The Cox's restaurant, we were worried that when we got home around 1:30pm many things might be roasted to death (fortunately, they were not) in the hot houses.

Ate lunch, took a 45 minute nap got up and went to a Derby day party at Jules' and Rosie's house. because of life we were an hour late to that and forgot to bring salad (and we had a lot of salad greens left over from market-stupid, stupid, stupid) but did get the brisket from Adam's Rib (which I want to develop a religion around, it is that good. By far the best brisket I have ever eaten. Pete Cox is a master at brisket, the ribs are also excellent.) Got to the party got a mint Julep and put in my bets for the race just in time. watched the race and for about 2 minutes were were all jubilant about Big Brown winning in such fashion and the impressive run of the filly Eight Belles with her second place finish. And than just like that Eight belles is dead. Such a tragedy but that's racing luck (know that I spent a lot of my life working with horses both show and race horses and have seen some them die in competition or because of competition. Death happens but 99% of time death does not touch these animals when in their youth and at the top of their game). This event will not be good for American horse racing as there are simply too many sentimental people who will be permanently offended by this.

Got home from the party around 1am, which meant we had been awake for 21 hours (less the 45 minute nap). Went to bed and because I cannot sleep past 6 am no matter how late I go to bed, I got 4 hours of sleep and spent Sunday feeling hung over (and from two not very strong mint Juleps). Harvested asparagus for the store and set up the store for business and spent the early afternoon dealing with customers. but by 3pm I was spent and Eugene took over sales. I am happy to say we had quite a bit of business that day. Not enough to support the farm yet (which is why we still go to the Oxford farmers markets Saturdays and Tuesdays) but things are picking up, a lot, over the past 2 years and it looks like this year the store will be close to self supporting and when the store becomes self supporting we can stop breaking our humps doing farmers markets and stay home.

At 5pm I closed up the store and started making a big salad for dinner that was full of yummy things from the garden while Eugene mowed the grass that is growing at a scary rate. At 8pm we ate and by 9pm I was asleep on the couch, utterly exhausted.

That was our week.

Barbaro Euthanized

I was hoping never have to post this news. A sad day for me and Barbaro's owners and his former trainer Michael Matz.

Perhaps the real tragedy is not that this 4 year old colt lost his fight with some really bad foot problems but that he will likely never have any offspring. You see in the rules of Thoroughbred racing no foal can be conceived through artificial insemination so even if Barbaro's owners had gotten sperm from their colt they could never have a registered foal by him so we will never know what kind of sire he could have been.

Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro euthanized
BY DAN GELSTON
ASSOCIATED PRESS

KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. (AP) — Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized today after complications from his breakdown at the Preakness last May.

"We just reached a point where it was going to be difficult for him to go on without pain,'' co-owner Roy Jackson said. "It was the right decision, it was the right thing to do. We said all along if there was a situation where it would become more difficult for him then it would be time.''

Roy and Gretchen Jackson were with Barbaro this morning, with the owners making the decision in consultation with chief surgeon Dean Richardson.

It was a series of complications, including laminitis in the left rear hoof and a recent abscess in the right rear hoof, that proved to be too much for the gallant colt, whose breakdown brought an outpouring of support across the country.

"I would say thank you for everything, and all your thoughts and prayers over the last eight months or so,'' Jackson said to Barbaro's fans.

On May 20, Barbaro was rushed to the New Bolton Center, about 30 miles southwest of Philadelphia in Kennett Square, hours after shattering his right hind leg just a few strides into the Preakness Stakes. The bay colt underwent a five-hour operation that fused two joints, recovering from an injury most horses never survive. Barbaro lived for eight more months, though he never again walked with a normal gait.

The Kentucky Derby winner suffered a significant setback over the weekend, and surgery was required to insert two steel pins in a bone — one of three shattered eight months ago in the Preakness but now healthy — to eliminate all weight bearing on the ailing right rear foot.

The procedure on Saturday was a risky one, because it transferred more weight to the leg while the foot rests on the ground bearing no weight.

The leg was on the mend until the abscess began causing discomfort last week. Until then, the major concern was Barbaro's left rear leg, which developed laminitis in July, and 80 percent of the hoof was removed.

Richardson said Monday morning that Barbaro did not have a good night.

Brilliant on the race track, Barbaro always will be remembered for his brave fight for survival.

The story of the beloved 3-year-old bay colt's fight for life captured the fancy of millions and drew an outpouring of support unrivaled in sports.

When Barbaro broke down, his right hind leg flared out awkwardly as jockey Edgar Prado jumped off and tried to steady the ailing horse. Race fans at Pimlico wept. Within 24 hours the entire nation seemed to be caught up in a "Barbaro watch,'' waiting for any news on his condition.

Well-wishers young and old showed up at the New Bolton Center with cards, flowers, gifts, goodies and even religious medals for the champ, and thousands of e-mails poured into the hospital's Web site just for him.

"I just can't explain why everyone is so caught up in this horse,'' Roy Jackson, who owned the colt with his wife, Gretchen, has said time and again. "Everything is so negative now in the world, people love animals and I think they just happen to latch onto him.''

Devoted fans even wrote Christmas carols for him, sent a wreath made of baby organic carrots and gave him a Christmas stocking.

Although the get-well cards and banners eventually will fade or be trashed, the biggest gift has been the $1.2 million raised since early June for the Barbaro Fund. The money is put toward needed equipment such as an operating room table, and a raft and sling for the same pool recovery Barbaro used after his surgeries.

The Jacksons spent tens of thousands of dollars hoping the best horse they ever owned would recover and be able to live a comfortable life on the farm — whether he was able to breed or not.

The couple, who own about 70 racehorses, broodmares and yearlings, and operate the 190-acre Lael Farm, have been in the horse business for 30 years, and never had a horse like Barbaro.

As the days passed, it seemed Barbaro would get his happy ending. As late as December, with the broken bones in his right hind leg nearly healed and his laminitis under control, Barbaro was looking good and relishing daily walks outside his intensive care unit.

But after months of upbeat progress reports, including talk that he might be headed home soon, news came Jan. 10 of a serious setback because of the laminitis. Richardson had to remove damaged tissue from Barbaro's left hind hoof, and the colt was placed back in a protective sling.

On Jan. 13, another section of his left rear hoof was removed. After Barbaro developed a deep abscess in his right hind foot, surgery was performed Saturday to insert two steel pins in a bone, one that was shattered but now healthy, to eliminate all weight bearing on the ailing foot.

This after Richardson warned last December that Barbaro's right hind leg was getting stronger and that the left hind foot was a "more formidable long-term challenge.''

In the end, the various complications from the breakdown at the Preakness were too much.

Bye Bye Barbaro

I was so looking forward to watching The Preakness Stakes. Like many I was high on the horse named Barbaro. Instead of Barbaro winning the race and having a shot at becoming the first horse to win Thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown since Steve Cauthen rode Affirmed to the title in 1979 he broke his right hind ankle in the first furlong of the race.

While I was really high on this horse as the race drew closer I had an ugly inkling something bad was going to happen that would prevent this horse from winning the Preakness. And when he broke through the gate in a false start I thought this must be it and made a comment to my husband that the colt would likely be gate training all next week. Than he had a beautiful start and things looked good for the first few seconds of the race until the announcer said that Prado was pulling Barbaro up before the quarter pole. NBC went on to show the rest of the race which was surreal because the jockeys in the race had no idea what had just happened but the crowd did and was pretty quiet while race was run-not the expect behavior of tens of thousands of human beings.

Any kind of leg injury can be career ending for a racing or show animal but a broken ankle can also be life threatening because in order for the bones to heal the horse must stay off of the appendage but since horses cannot lie down for more than a couple of hours at a time without damaging most of their internal organs and horses need to stand on all 4 legs for balance this is a very tricky proposition. One solution is to put a horse into a sling that is put under the belly and attached to strong pulleys that are bolted into the rafter beams of the barn that will hold the horse up 24/7. And seeing as how Barbaro seemed to understand the trouble he was in, let his jockey pull him up (I have seen horses with such injuries refuse to stop racing and run full tilt on a broken leg and in one instance had no hoof by the time the rider was able to pull the horse up and had to be destroyed on the track) and was very calm right after the injury took place, allowing the handlers and vets to do what they had to do to stabilize him and get him to the hospital

Barbaro is a very valuable horse and the plan seems to be to save him for a breeding career. He has a lot of money backing him so everything that can be done to save his life will be done. Now it all depends on how well his surgery goes today, just how badly he injured his ankle and if everything works in the surgery how good a patient he will be over the next months and years.

I really feel for the Michael Matz Stable. Being so high on a horse, having what is considered the best 3 year old racing today and the very real prospect that this colt will win the Triple Crown only to have it cruelly wiped out in a split second. It's what they call racing luck. But life goes on Matz and his employees will have to go back to work because Barbaro is not the only horse in training in Mr. Matz's barn and the rest need feeding, stalls cleaned and work. And these chores will likely do a lot of good for the trainers, grooms, hot walkers, exercise riders, etc., who were all impacted by this event. Doing something useful is always good medicine when tragedy strikes.

I hope Barbaro comes through his surgery today with flying colors and goes on to be a good patient and recovers enough to have a long and successful career in the breeding shed but I have been around long enough to realize this is pretty unlikely and that the colt may not survive the weekend. All we can do is wait and see.

Kentucky Derby

Yesterday was Derby day. I rarely miss watching the Kentucky Derby. I used to work with trotters and pacers and have retrained several ex-race horses to be jumpers and dressage horses. So I was excited to see that Michael Matz had a horse in the race. For the non horsey, Mr. Matz was one of the US Equestrian Team's top jumper riders and trainers and a couple of years ago he made the switch to thoroughbred racing horses.

I have long wondered what would happen if a top show trainer started trainer top flight race horses. Show riders generally are also the trainers of the horses the ride so they develop a truly intimate relationship with their show animals. They get to know them very well and develop a deep trust with each other. This is a very different relationship that goes on with thoroughbred racehorse trainers who never ride their horses and therefore never develop the kind of trust a show rider will have and therefore looks at the training of a horse differently. It is a lot like the difference between how an organic farmer looks at the farm and an conventional grower looks at a farm. Both work but in very different ways. The organic grower and the show horse trainer tend to operate holistically and the others tend to operate linearly

Because the show people tend to take this more holistic outlook in how they do things I have long assumed that if one of these guys were given a stable of top flight horses they would quickly climb into the top ranks because they would add things to the training regimes that trainers who do not ride would not know about. I do not know if Michael Matz takes his horses and trots them up and down hills at his farm but it would not surprise me at all and this sort of work would give a race horse a nice edge in that they would improve their balance and endurance and this is work most jumper, 3-day event and dressage trainers would do with their horse to get them fit and keep them happy.

I do know from working on both harness tracks and show barns that the race trainers do not know about a lot of techniques that show trainers use. For example, the idea of teaching a horse how to extend and collect their gait is foreign to most racing people but I have noticed the great race horses know how to do this naturally. This leads me to believe any horse taught collection and extension would be an improved racehorse. And there are many other training techniques that the show people use that would improve any racing performance.

Yesterday it was proven to me with Barbaro's impressive win going away from the pack in a virtual hand ride that Mr. Matz is likely including a lot of ideas from what he learned in his decades of working with show jumpers in the training of his race horses and it is working. I believe we are seeing the beginning of a stellar race training career. And we just might see a triple crown winner this year as well