In the pre-dawn December darkness, Mary Rohlfing nodded toward a familiar silhouette perched in a tree on the edge of her Boise farm.Buy oil paintings for sale online. As if on cue, a great horned owl let loose a burst of hoots as Rohlfing pulled on gloves, preparing for her morning chores.
"Now that it's getting a little bit lighter, you can see the bib on her neck area there. She's kind of the mother owl," Rohlfing said, her words condensing into translucent clouds.
"And you named the farm for her?" I asked.
"Yeah, we did name the farm for her because, in the morning, I'd come out and hear the owls, just like we are this morning, so we named the farm Morning Owl Farm."
That was 10 years ago, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Rohlfing, a tenured professor at Boise State at the time, decided to make a radical career change.
"I was in my garden on about the 30th of September in 2001 and just realized I was at home and where I wanted to be," she said.
Rohlfing wasn't thinking only of changes she needed to make to her life, but of changes she felt the whole nation needed to make in light of that then-fresh tragedy.
"I felt that we needed to, on a grand scale, rethink how we were doing everything. And it seemed to me that one of the big changes we could make to be more self-sufficient and safe in the world was to begin to eat more food that was grown closer to where we lived."
Rohlfing owned 8 acres of land in the Northeast Boise Foothills and decided to give up her professorship and turn her fallow land into a farm. Along with organic produce, she wanted to raise ducks based on advice she'd gleaned from the books of Eliot Coleman, an authority on small-scale organic farming.
As the light behind the Foothills brightened, sliding from slate gray to salmon pink, Rohlfing began her duck-related chores: breaking up ice in several drinking basins, adding fresh water to rubber wading pools, gathering bags of feed, then finally heading toward her duck coop.I have just spent two weeks shopping for tile and have discovered China Porcelain tile.
"So the girls are in there," she said as she approached a shed containing 200 sleepy ducks. "They're being pretty quiet for us so far, but they'll get noisier."
With the sound of Rohlfing's voice, a few quiet quacks coalesced into a low chorus, then rose quickly to a cacophony of duck calls that soon threatened to blow the coop apart. When Rohlfing finally unlatched the door, flung it open and shouted,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. "Come on girls," ducks burst out of the coop like a fire hose spewing feathers.
"Some run straight for water," Rohlfing yelled over the flapping, quacking din.
"They're like school kids at recess," I said as the ducks ran into a fenced field, dove into pools and guzzled water, backlit now by a cresting,You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here! yoke-colored sun.
"It's part of the reason I love what I do," said Rohlfing. "I like the routine of it all. I like the fact that you're working with something that's alive ... that's a mutual dependency. I didn't know this when I started but I think it's really hard to imagine farming without having livestock or poultry as part of the system. It's sort of the way it's suppose to be."
Endless studies have found that diversified farms--as opposed to vegetable monocultures or factory feedlots--are healthier farms. According to Rohlfing, her ducks were an integral part of clearing this once-infertile horse pasture of weeds and insects and greatly increasing its fertility with duck dropping-enriched compost.
"Using the ducks as part of our plan has been a real help," Rohlfing said. "And that's why we try not to get too angry when it's 8 degrees out in December and you're trying to get a hose to run water."
Not to mention the 110 to 130 duck eggs she collects every day during winter.
"Speaking of eggs," Rohlfing said as she grabbed a basket and walked into the now-empty coop, "let's collect some."
Rohlfing is known in the Treasure Valley as much for her duck eggs as her organic vegetables. Those eggs, with their large, golden yokes and viscose whites give extra lift to baked goods and a tender texture to omelets. Cafe de Paris in Boise uses them in creme brulees and duck eggs Benedicts.
"They're just a great egg," said owner Mathieu Choux. "I really like the color of the yoke; it's a very deep, orange-colored yolk. I like the flavor; it's richer, more full of flavor [than] a chicken egg--and we really like Mary."
"Once you go quack, you never go back," Rohlfing joked--parroting her business slogan--as she filled her basket to the brim with large, alabaster eggs.
And yet, as sunny as this farmer-duck partnership seemed, Rohlfing said her second career as a diversified, local-food farmer had come with some challenging caveats.
"When I started to raise ducks in 2004, my prices for feed were half of what they are now," she said as she walked from the coop to her egg washing room.
Not only that, but the kind of community-based, small-scale agriculture Rohlfing hoped would help move America forward after Sept. 11 is extremely labor intensive. Over a sink of soapy water, she scrubbed every egg she'd collected before shining a light through each one to check for cracks and other defects.
"I have a friend who calls it 'the dirty secret of local food,'" she said as she scrubbed. "No one can charge what it really costs them to produce, whether it's a carrot or a duck egg."
Without the subsidies and economies of scale enjoyed by industrial agriculturalists, local-food farmers are often trapped between their ideals and the limits of what consumers, even those who value local food,Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings? will pay.
"If I really wanted to make a profit on duck eggs--I mean break even on duck eggs--I would have to probably retail these eggs at about $7.50 a dozen," Rohlfing said.
"Now that it's getting a little bit lighter, you can see the bib on her neck area there. She's kind of the mother owl," Rohlfing said, her words condensing into translucent clouds.
"And you named the farm for her?" I asked.
"Yeah, we did name the farm for her because, in the morning, I'd come out and hear the owls, just like we are this morning, so we named the farm Morning Owl Farm."
That was 10 years ago, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Rohlfing, a tenured professor at Boise State at the time, decided to make a radical career change.
"I was in my garden on about the 30th of September in 2001 and just realized I was at home and where I wanted to be," she said.
Rohlfing wasn't thinking only of changes she needed to make to her life, but of changes she felt the whole nation needed to make in light of that then-fresh tragedy.
"I felt that we needed to, on a grand scale, rethink how we were doing everything. And it seemed to me that one of the big changes we could make to be more self-sufficient and safe in the world was to begin to eat more food that was grown closer to where we lived."
Rohlfing owned 8 acres of land in the Northeast Boise Foothills and decided to give up her professorship and turn her fallow land into a farm. Along with organic produce, she wanted to raise ducks based on advice she'd gleaned from the books of Eliot Coleman, an authority on small-scale organic farming.
As the light behind the Foothills brightened, sliding from slate gray to salmon pink, Rohlfing began her duck-related chores: breaking up ice in several drinking basins, adding fresh water to rubber wading pools, gathering bags of feed, then finally heading toward her duck coop.I have just spent two weeks shopping for tile and have discovered China Porcelain tile.
"So the girls are in there," she said as she approached a shed containing 200 sleepy ducks. "They're being pretty quiet for us so far, but they'll get noisier."
With the sound of Rohlfing's voice, a few quiet quacks coalesced into a low chorus, then rose quickly to a cacophony of duck calls that soon threatened to blow the coop apart. When Rohlfing finally unlatched the door, flung it open and shouted,An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. "Come on girls," ducks burst out of the coop like a fire hose spewing feathers.
"Some run straight for water," Rohlfing yelled over the flapping, quacking din.
"They're like school kids at recess," I said as the ducks ran into a fenced field, dove into pools and guzzled water, backlit now by a cresting,You can find best china Precision injection molds manufacturers from here! yoke-colored sun.
"It's part of the reason I love what I do," said Rohlfing. "I like the routine of it all. I like the fact that you're working with something that's alive ... that's a mutual dependency. I didn't know this when I started but I think it's really hard to imagine farming without having livestock or poultry as part of the system. It's sort of the way it's suppose to be."
Endless studies have found that diversified farms--as opposed to vegetable monocultures or factory feedlots--are healthier farms. According to Rohlfing, her ducks were an integral part of clearing this once-infertile horse pasture of weeds and insects and greatly increasing its fertility with duck dropping-enriched compost.
"Using the ducks as part of our plan has been a real help," Rohlfing said. "And that's why we try not to get too angry when it's 8 degrees out in December and you're trying to get a hose to run water."
Not to mention the 110 to 130 duck eggs she collects every day during winter.
"Speaking of eggs," Rohlfing said as she grabbed a basket and walked into the now-empty coop, "let's collect some."
Rohlfing is known in the Treasure Valley as much for her duck eggs as her organic vegetables. Those eggs, with their large, golden yokes and viscose whites give extra lift to baked goods and a tender texture to omelets. Cafe de Paris in Boise uses them in creme brulees and duck eggs Benedicts.
"They're just a great egg," said owner Mathieu Choux. "I really like the color of the yoke; it's a very deep, orange-colored yolk. I like the flavor; it's richer, more full of flavor [than] a chicken egg--and we really like Mary."
"Once you go quack, you never go back," Rohlfing joked--parroting her business slogan--as she filled her basket to the brim with large, alabaster eggs.
And yet, as sunny as this farmer-duck partnership seemed, Rohlfing said her second career as a diversified, local-food farmer had come with some challenging caveats.
"When I started to raise ducks in 2004, my prices for feed were half of what they are now," she said as she walked from the coop to her egg washing room.
Not only that, but the kind of community-based, small-scale agriculture Rohlfing hoped would help move America forward after Sept. 11 is extremely labor intensive. Over a sink of soapy water, she scrubbed every egg she'd collected before shining a light through each one to check for cracks and other defects.
"I have a friend who calls it 'the dirty secret of local food,'" she said as she scrubbed. "No one can charge what it really costs them to produce, whether it's a carrot or a duck egg."
Without the subsidies and economies of scale enjoyed by industrial agriculturalists, local-food farmers are often trapped between their ideals and the limits of what consumers, even those who value local food,Why does Plastic moulds grow in homes or buildings? will pay.
"If I really wanted to make a profit on duck eggs--I mean break even on duck eggs--I would have to probably retail these eggs at about $7.50 a dozen," Rohlfing said.
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