Another Farm Update

Things have gotten away from me again, so this will be another whirlwind update of what I have been doing on and around the farm.

Summer is always a hectic time around the farm, crops to plant, weed and harvest; animals to feed, water and move; etc. Every once in a while my real job also gets in the way. Late July I had to go out to Keystone Colorado to give a talk at a nanotechnology conference. Now that does not sound like a bad thing considering how beautiful Colorado is and all, but with CSA deliveries, Emily's birthday (more on that latter) and generally not wanting to be away from the kids for too long of a time, what could be an enjoyable trip turns into flying out Wednesday to talk on Thursday and flying back home Friday morning.


On the way back to the airport on Friday I took the scenic route over Loveland Pass and got these photos of the sun coming up over the continental divide.

Unfortunately, my original 10:20 am flight home from Denver is canceled and I am re-booked on a 7:30 pm flight. As you might imagine the prospects of hanging around the airport all day and getting in to Dulles airport after midnight are less than appealing. Luckily I am able to connect with the ticketing agent for the 12:10 pm flight and he pushes me up to the top of the waiting list. I physically got the last seat on that flight, last row window seat. This means that I get into Dulles at a much more manageable 6:30 pm and I am back at the farm sometime around 8 pm. The kids are happy since we get to do dinner together and I am happy to unwind.

This was particularly important since my oldest, Emily turned 11 in July and we had a pool party/BBQ for her the following day. Danielle roasted up a farm raised turkey from last year and I BBQed up a huge pork shoulder from one of our hogs. There were also deep fried potato chips from our Red Nordland potatoes made to order and great rolls brought down from New Jersey by my parents. All of the pork and at least half of the turkey went, and I think everyone would still be there eating the potato chips if I was willing to keep frying them.


Doesn't she look all grown up with her new haircut!
Happy Birthday Emily.









Bella (our Jersey cow) is doing well and has seemed to settle in to the routine here on the farm. I am still getting used to how much grass she eats and figuring out how and when to move her to new pasture. She is fairly easy to move in that she respects a single strand of electrified polywire at nose height, but the dance of rotating her with the sheep and the laying hens can get complex. We try to follow Bella with the hens so that they can scratch apart her cow patties and destroy the pathogen cycle. This works ok, but we have not figured out a good way to get her to the upper part of our large pasture and still have a convenient method of watering her. Considering how much water a cow drinks in a day having a close by water source is a must.

My other continual chore is constructing shelters for the animals. In the picture above you can see some poultry shelters fabricated from cattle panels and tarps as well as the store bought canopy Bella uses for shade. A commenter asked how sturdy the canopy is since her cows tend to rub against anything and everything. At the time I mentioned that it was holding up fine. Well two months later and Bella has broken the canopy and I am now in the planning stages for a permanent run in shelter. At first it will just provide shade but I will eventually put three sides on it to provide some shelter in the winter months.

The kids and I went to our first minor league baseball game. They were so excited to go, they even made a homemade t-shirt to support the Hagerstown Suns our local team. Once the hotdogs and ice cream were eaten and the other team got up 7 to nothing with little more than a hit by the home team the kids thought otherwise and decided they had had enough. This was the in the fourth inning mind you. The highlight of the night was that while walking through the parking lot back to our car a father and son who had been collecting the foul balls gave one to the kids to take home.

As I mentioned in a previous post our potatoes have done excellent this year. On top of the 470 lbs of Red Nordlands I harvested 82 lbs of Russian Banana Fingerlings. Corn, my other large crop has not fared as well. The plants themselves have grown tall and strong, however the ears are not getting fully pollinated. Another problem is that someone else is helping themselves to the corn. Lots of ears were pulled off the corn stalks and were lying on the ground after being eaten. The guilty party was trapped this past Sunday. We are in the process of preserving his pelt so that Julia can make something out of it. Originally she was going to make a coon-skin cap for Sam but I am not sure that is still the plan. While we are on the varmint front I was able to get another of the groundhogs who have been raiding our gardens. There is at least one more that I have seen -- shot at and missed in fact. Hopefully the trap or the .223 will take care of him soon enough.

Well that about sums up what I have been doing, except that somewhere during all this I managed to get shingles. For those of you that don't know, shingles is the chicken pox virus playing hide and seek in your spinal cord. As it turns out the virus never goes away but just lies dormant until it decides to come out along a nerve and create a skin rash and a large amount of pain. It is not fun but it seems that I have a rather mild case so that is good.

Even though at times it can be crazy, life on the farm is fun!

UPDATE:

Finally got the elusive third groundhog. She won't be eating any more pumpkins!