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.

Carrots, a Dead Gopher, Bees, and Chickens

I have been taking pictures thinking, "This might make for a good post," then I realize I really only have one or two sentences to say about the topic. I decided I would blog about those topics not quite interesting enough to warrant an entire blog post.

1. My husband's huge carrots

This post was Oliver's idea. He wanted to show off the biggest carrot we have ever been able to grow. After years of trying Glenn finally grew this amazing carrot. It was delicious.

2. Poor dead baby gopher

Our cat Otter (previously a pacifist) killed his first animal. After murdering this cute gopher, he went inside to eat some processed dry cat food. We were actually kind of happy Otter killed this gopher (who recently ate all of our peas) until I brought up that some mother gopher just lost her baby. Then we got a little sad.

3. Honey and Bea update anyone?

Some of you may remember Honey and Bea from our previous posts.
The Beneficial Bee: Honey and Bea
Bea was injured as a chick and we worried she wouldn't be able to walk. Look at her now, a healthy young chicken. You can always find Honey following Bea around the coop (Honey is white, Bea is black)

4. Bees in the garden

We have had very few of our bees visit our vegetable garden. Now thanks to our sunflowers, we have many more bees buzzing around the garden.

5. Introducing our new head rooster: Eddie!

Carlos found a new home on 20 acres where he will be used to fertilize eggs (and where he will not be able to attack toddlers). It is free range and happy and I'm not just making it up to make you feel good. Eddie has a much more gentle style. Oliver and I watched him take the most sensual bath today with two of the hens. Just look at the expression on his face. Have you ever seen a happier rooster?

A Snake Saves the Day

We have a gopher in the garden. He has been creating tunnels under our peas and destroying them one by one. The battle between Glenn and the gopher has been intense this week. One could find Glenn in the garden digging up Gopher holes, filling in gopher holes, putting road flare smoke into holes, and even setting our cat over a hole. The gopher has won every battle by digging new tunnels, avoiding the smoke and laughing at our inept cat.

Then this beautiful gopher snake came into our lives. My sister and her family accidently picked up the snake (it climbed under their car and hid for a week) while visiting the Carrizo Plain. My sister gave this wonderful gift to Glenn after she learned of his gopher problems.


Here is a picture of my mom holding the snake. She was the only one brave enough to touch the snake so I could photograph him. I made her wear our bee gloves.

We put the hungry snake into the gopher's most recent hole. So far the snake appears to be winning. We have not lost any vegetables to the gopher in the last twenty four hours. We did, however, lose some trees to deer and have a new bug eating our artichoke plant. And the battle continues....

Glenn's Garden

I take no credit for the wonderful vegetables growing in our front yard. Glenn and Oliver have planted nearly every seed, watered every plant and pulled every weed. We moved into our house about a year ago. The place where our garden now grows used to be fill dirt, plastic, rocks and ugly pompous grass. Glenn wasted no time moving out rocks and moving in sheep and horse manure. By June of last year, Glenn had a small vegetable garden growing. This year we have already eaten peas, artichoke, beets and chard from the garden.

This first shot is of the garden in June 2008.


Glenn put in an irrigation system this year which saves him several hours a week. This is our garden in March 2009.


April 2009


May 2009


On a side note, I found this lizard living in our artichoke plant eating ants. Oh, how I love reptiles!