Spring Farm Work

Spring brings about a lot of changes and chores around the farm. One of the bigger chores for me was pulling a fence line through the overgrown hedgerow on one side of our property. The previous owners had a fence in there at one time but never maintained it, and every time it became overgrown they would just put in new t-posts. This limited the amount of usable pasture that we had access to and made it difficult to allow the goats to browse the hedgerow since I had no way of containing them on the other side. Starting late winter I began the task of chopping a path through the wild olive, rosa multiflora, Chinese sumac, and honeysuckle that is our hedgerow. The culmination was on Easter Sunday when I was finally able to put in the field fencing.


It is hard to see here but if you click on the image to enlarge it you can see that the fence line goes through the hedgerow just in front of the larger trees on the hill behind the mobile chicken coop. The weather was beautiful on Sunday (warm but not hot and plenty of sun) and Julia came out and helped me put the finishing touches on the fence. She stood at one end of the last pull and told me where to place the t-posts so that the were in a nice straight line. Jules was a great help and when we were policing up all the tools and getting ready to go in she told me that this was the best Easter ever since she got to find an Easter basket, got a new game and DVD and got to spend time with me. Well I had to agree that it was a pretty great Easter after she told me that.

Spring also brings about the start of barbecue season on our farm. For Easter this year I barbecued up a beef brisket for the first time. The whole family is fond of pulled pork so I did more or less the same recipe. First I give it a dry rub consisting of paprika, chili pepper, garlic and salt. Put it on the grill with the coals off to the side and cover with the lid. After 8 hours, periodically turning, mopping with a mixture of oil, white vinegar and tabasco, and adding coals to keep the temperature the meat is done.

Since I was in charge of cooking, and was also doing the fencing we ended up having a carnivores delight dinner. The entire meal consisted of the beef brisket, rolls, BBQ sauce and beer. The kids of course got to choose their own beverage but seemed to really like the meat. I am sure it is not the healthiest way to eat and I would not want to do it all the time, but after a long weekend of fencing gorging myself on beef and beer was pretty great.

Hope everyone had a good start to Spring.

Full Moon Rising

Here is the view of the moon rising from our back porch. Depending on your religious/historical associations you might call this the Paschal moon (which is why Easter is so early this year), or the Worm moon (so named for the appearance of worm cast in spring).

Snug as pigs in straw

Well that might not be the correct saying, but these little guys and gals seem pretty happy.


They are our first litter of Tamworths here on the farm so we are probably obsessing a little over them. You can see that we have two distinct color variations blonde and red. Danielle thinks that all the blondes are females, but I will request that you all refrain from the dumb blonde jokes.


I look in on them when I feed the pigs, since their mama Maya is distracted. Big Boy, the sire is in an adjoining pen and has been foaming at the mouth a number of times when I came near. I guess he is anxious to protect his offspring, which is a good thing, but might make our barrowing of the boys difficult. He calms down when he has food in front of him so we might have to feed both Mama and Papa and see if we can abscond with the boys. Will let you know how that goes.

Spring Rains

After work last night I took the kids to check out what happens when the Spring rains come. This is one of our fishing spots along the Conococheague Creek. The nominal creek bank is 20 to 30 ft from where the wood posts are. Here is what it looks like in the summer.


When the creek is running normal this waterfall is about 5 feet high. Yesterday there was not much difference in the height on either side.


We watched a number of large tree trunks go over the waterfall before heading back to the house. While this is less than a quarter mile from our house we are a good 100 ft or so higher in elevation, which made the kids feel comfortable that we would not be flooded out.