The Beautiful Birth of Baby Pearl

I went to bed last Tuesday thinking I would blog the next morning about the guinea fowl, Pumpkin and Banjo, or my mom and dad's 35th wedding anniversary party. I spent the evening getting all of my favorite pictures ready. Little Pearl Kathryn decided she would be arriving instead. I woke up at four in the morning with contractions every seven minutes and I knew we would be having a baby in the next few days. Here is a picture I took of Oliver kissing my belly the day before I went into labor.

My experience giving birth to Oliver four years ago was pretty traumatic. For the two of you who haven't heard about Oliver's birth, you can read about it here:

Oliver's Birth

I had a miserable surgical birth and I was praying for a normal birth experience this time around. I spent the day at my sister's house in early labor. My contractions were regular and strong, but didn't appear to be getting any worse after 14 hours. My sister decided we should try to move things along, so we went for a walk down her block. I felt a pinch during a contraction and then felt my water breaking all over her neighbor's driveway. We laughed and Kate (my sister) vowed to bring back a hose later. Once my water broke, I knew we were going to be meeting the baby soon. We headed to the hospital where I was hoping to have a VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean section).

My mom met us there and knew I was in active labor when I politely asked for some f****** water. I always hoped I would be "zen" and quiet during labor-a birthing goddess if you will. I was more of a birthing drunk sailor, loud with a foul mouth. No more "fudge crackers" for me, it made it hurt less to just say f***.

We arrived at the hospital at 7:30 PM. The nurse checked me and told me I was three centimeters, then patted me on the knee and left. She was assuming I would be laboring for the next 12 hours or so. Luckily my mom, sister and Glenn were all there to be my support people, because I was left alone by the hospital staff. They were all so helpful during my three and a half hours of active labor, cooling me with cloths, squeezing my hips, staying calm and letting me hang on each of them. I can't imagine how anyone could labor naturally without proper support. When I felt as though I might split down the middle, I insisted the nurses call my midwife. She came in to check and I was six centimeters. An hour later I had to push during a contraction, then thirteen minutes later Pearl arrived.


I thought I would save you from having to see the crowning pictures. It wasn't even close to being orgasmic (thanks Ina May Gaskin for that shred of hope), but it was painfully wonderful. I would do it all over again to meet my daughter in such a peaceful way, surrounded by the love of her family.

Oliver came to meet his little sister at the hospital the next day. You can see how thrilled he is to finally meet her. We were released from the hospital later that afternoon (thanks to our groovy postpartum nurse) and have been enjoying our quiet time at home together as a family.





This morning we had a placenta burial in the garden. My mother/baby blessing gift was an apricot tree to plant over Pearl's placenta. I'm sure next year we will have the best tasting fruit in town.



So, that's it, the perfect birth of our daughter.

Guineas, Melons and Alpaca Corralling

I have learned a valuable lesson. I will never again talk about erections on my blog. Using the word "erection" in a post title alerted the people at Viagra to the fact that I am now running a pornography site. So, if you see random advertisements from Viagra in my comment section, please disregard. Here are a few recent farm updates.

The Guinea Fowl Roost

Glenn is loving my maternity leave. He has all day to work on the many projects he has going around the farm. Yesterday Glenn finished the construction of the guinea hen roost and decided to paint it red (like we are planning to paint the barn). We will be moving the guinea fowl into their new home this Saturday.




Big Melons!

We ordered seeds for this large "Bidwell Casaba Melon" from the seed saver catalogue last year. Glenn picked this variety because it was developed in Chico, CA and he thought it would have a good chance in our climate. They are turning out to be huge and so tasty. We will be planting this variety again next year for sure!

Alpaca Grooming

A couple of weekends ago we decided the alpacas were looking a bit unkempt so we gathered them up for a morning of grooming. Alpacas are decently easy to corral. They can be captured with only an (extremely frightening) rope. I watched as Grammy and Glenn roped in the alpacas and began to wonder why we even built a fence for them. It seems like we could have saved some money and made a large enclosure out of ropes. You can see Leche and Serio (the goats) laughing at the alpacas in the photo below.

Grammy haltered all of the alpacas and then I began to work out Remy's knots.


We "let" Glenn brush Pablo because he is a bit more wild than the other two. It was fun to watch them dance.

Finally, all the boys were clean and I was able to snap one quick picture before they rolled in dirt.

Our audience: Oliver and my two cute nephews, Reid and Owen.

Our Romantic Anniversary: A Vigorous Erection and Hours of Pickling

Yesterday Glenn and I celebrated six happy years of marriage. To honor the occasion, we spent the day getting "farm chores" done, then had an excellent evening together getting foot massages and having dinner out on the town.

Glenn's big project this weekend was erecting his guinea fowl roost. We wanted the guineas to be close to the garden and the front pasture to keep bugs and snakes away from the places where we spend most of our time.

Oliver and Glenn spent a long time thinking about how to most easily get the roost up without getting hurt. Glenn decided Oliver and I were pretty worthless, so he asked Grammy and Pop to come over to help.


Glenn put on the final touches on the roost and I decided to check out the guinea fowl view. Not bad.

Finally, after two hours, Glenn was fully erect and boy was he proud!

Here is a picture of one of the guinea hens. She is at the awkward teenager stage, but you can see how pretty her coloring will be.

We wanted to hang out and admire his erection all day, but we knew we had a big pile of cucumbers waiting for us inside. Our excellent neighbors donated all of these cucumbers to us in exchange for some pickles. After our jam experiment we were ready to take on more canning.

Glenn filled the jars with fresh dill and other spices. He really had to study the directions as making pickles is slightly more difficult than making jam.

My job was to cram the cucumbers tightly into the jars. The sad thing about this picture is that this is my attempt at making a "sexy" face. It is a wonder how I ever got pregnant.


The final product: eight jars of pickles! We will have to wait two to three weeks to try them. Pickle photograph by Glenn.

Raspberry and Apricot Jam and a Huge Spider!

I'm embarrassed to say I have never canned anything until last week. Feeling like country folk fakers, Glenn and I finally decided to break out the canning equipment his mother had given us when we moved to the sticks. For years Glenn and I have talked out canning pickles, tomatoes and other goods from the garden. We never seem to have enough of a surplus to actually can, so the jars have been collecting dust in the barn. We decided to start with jam because that seemed like a simple canning experiment.

Last Saturday, we had a long day of picking. First we picked apricots at our local university, then we headed to the coast to pick organic raspberries. After nearly two hours of raspberry picking, we were all ready to collapse. I estimated that our raspberry jam would cost us about ten dollars a jar at that point if we considered paying ourselves a decent wage.





Canning the jam was fairly simple. Each batch took about an hour to make and an hour to clean up. When the jam cooled in the jars, we were excited to hear the popping sounds of the canning lids. Oliver's favorite part was sampling the fruit throughout the picking and canning process. I love looking at the finished jars, knowing we will have delicious homemade jam for at least the next six months!






We found this cute little guy in one of the canning jars. He nearly stopped my heart when I saw him. We let him go outside and are praying he finds a home far away from the house.

Banjo Bigalow: Goat Gigolo

As a nurse-midwife, I spend much of my time at work counseling teens about the physical perils of unprotected sex: unintended pregnancy and infections. Imagine my shock and dismay when I pulled into the driveway and noticed multiple teens engaging in risky sexual behavior, right in the front pasture. Banjo, with his smooth black coat and long spotted ears, has swept our neutered male goat and two female goats off of their feet. When Oliver screamed happily, "I see his penis!", I knew it was time to separate the goats. There will be NO teen pregnancies-not on THIS farm.

Glenn decided to put Banjo together with the only animal he would be unable to hump: Pumpkin. Pumpkin was overwhelmed with excitement to have a new companion. It took Banjo several hours before he decided he liked sharing his space with Pumpkin. Now the two are enjoying the benefits of bachelorhood together: late nights in the dog house, mid afternoon wrestling, and just chilling without any distraction from the ladies.

AND THE WINNING NAME IS.....

BANJO!

A panel of eight impartial judges had the difficult task of narrowing our ten favorite entries down to one. In a surprise turn of events "Banjo" slipped into the top ten early Saturday morning and gained momentum throughout the day. We appreciated all of your thoughtful, funny, gross, literary, cute, gangster and regal name entries! We especially loved Ramses, Henry VIII, Rex, G-Love, Artax, Gobo, Yagi, Mac and Guenther. A special thank you to Kelly for entering the most disgusting name: Squirt.

Congratulations Andrea! Banjo thanks you for an excellent name.

Beneficial Bee Lip Balm Giveaway!

We need help naming our fourth baby goat. Glenn, Oliver and I picked him up last Wednesday and have yet to figure out a fitting name for him. This goat will be the father of all of our baby goats in the coming years. We are told he will be big, stinky and urine soaked, but sweet.

The Rules:

1. Please leave your name suggestion in the comments section of this blog. You can leave as many name suggestions as you want. If you feel weird about leaving blog comments, you can e-mail me.

2. If your name is chosen, we will ship your lip balm to you. We are happy to ship all over the world.

3. Names like Shadow and Midnight will disqualify you immediately.

4. The winner will receive a four season gift pack (all four of our lip balm scents in a cute box).

5. The winner will be notified on Saturday July 17th.

6. Bribes will be accepted, but will not guarantee a win.

I tried to take some nice pictures of the new goat this afternoon for the blog. My plan was to have an Oliver-free blog, but the new goat decided otherwise. Like all of the other animals on this farm, the goat thinks Oliver is the greatest. So, Oliver ended up being in virtually every shot because the goat wouldn't leave his side!





The Prize (minus the bees):