Farm Panorama

Above is a panorama of our fields/pastures. Our house is just visible behind and to the left of our barn. Our property runs behind several properties and is nominally in the shape of a L. The barn off in the distance is our neighbors. Our turkeys are in the foreground, the mobile layer coop is near the middle and the pig and goat pens are near the right side beyond the market garden.

We had some friends visit us over the long 4th of July holiday. Tom is a painter and has been doing a series of landscapes "to celebrate the beauty, history and reality of life...". While he and his family were visiting he started doing a landscape of our pastures from this perspective. The painting came out so well that I stole the composition for the above photo. We already told him that we want to buy the painting from him after he uses it in an upcoming exhibition.

Praying Mantis and Praying for Rain

Julia and I were going out to dig some potatoes when we noticed this Praying Mantis on one of our Hostas. I am having fun with the macro function of my digital camera and have been trying to find new things to take close up pictures of.

Unfortunately, the Praying Mantis was the highlight of the outing. I wanted to dig some Yukon Gold potatoes to distribute to our CSA members. We ended up harvesting more than a row of potato plants and did not completely fill up two 2 quart baskets. Last year this same amount of potato plants would have provided us with a trailer full of potatoes, but each plant only had one or two tubers on it.



The severe lack of rain has really taken a toll on our crop production and has been making it difficult to provide enough produce for our CSA members. As my wife and I were discussing over dinner last night, we have our pride and honor wrapped up it meeting our CSA commitments (although part of the CSA model is shared risk) but our financial situation is not affected by the venture. I can only imagine how stressful it would be to have your entire livelihood held hostage by the whims of the weather.

Market Garden -- Update #1

Here is the first of my promised market garden updates. The corn is doing surprisingly well given the little rain. The first planting has tasseled out and the other three plantings are all going strong. We have our first beans in with our corn and will likely need to start harvesting them this week. We have already harvested some zucchini and there are numerous yellow squash coming along. The yukon gold and fingerling potatoes are continuing to do well, but I am still waiting for the red nordlands that I re-planted to pop. I am hopeful that they will soon, otherwise we will have a diminished potato harvest this year. On Sunday I dug two more of the floundering rows from the upper plot. While the potatoes are still tasty, their yield leaves much to be desired.

De-Predation

One of my jobs on the farm is keeping predators from harming our livestock and crops. I have a fairly broad definition of predator -- cotton tail rabbit eating our strawberry plants is a predator -- and generally don't mind the job. To date I have taken care of a number of rabbits, one skunk, and one groundhog (or whistle pig). Must mention that I am not positive about the groundhog since he got away, but I am pretty sure I got him with the .22 rifle.

Last night I was feeding the peeps -- 20 some chickens and 8 Chinese geese -- that are brooding in a stall in the barn. The geese had been getting out of the small plastic pool that we were keeping them in so I decided to pull it out to let them run about the stall just like the chickens. Well, I pull the pool away from the wall and I am greeted by a rather large black snake. As I find out later, he was in the middle of making a meal out of one of our Delaware peeps, and based on our count already had helped himself to another sometime earlier. To most people this wouldn't be a big deal, as I mentioned I am in charge of killing on the farm, but I am irrationally afraid of snakes. Just thinking about them gives me the heebie jeebies, but I was mad and this snake was eating my chickens, so I grabbed a shovel and dispatched the snake. I went inside to get the kids before I tossed the snake in the hedgerow since they get mad at me if I don't let them see the carnage. The first thing my 7 year old son says is, "Dad you conquered your fear, I am so proud of you!" To say there was something of a role reversal is an understatement. Sam took this picture of me with the snake on the end of the shovel.

Market Garden

Here is a picture of our market garden taken on Sunday (click on image for an expanded view). My wife and I (read my wife) are doing a CSA this year, and while a lot of the produce is planted up in our kitchen garden this large plot will provide much of the late season goodies. As you can see (or not see as the case may be) not all that I have listed is up yet, however as of Monday night all of it is at least in the ground.

Everything on the right hand side is Danielle's. My only contribution is plowing and tilling of the ground.

I planted four rounds of corn approximately each two weeks apart. The first corn should be ready in early July if the crazy weather hasn't effected it too much. Danielle is enamored with the native American method of co-planting corn, beans and squash the so called three sisters. The traditional way to do this is put all three seeds into a mound. She modified this by intermixing rows of the three crops. The brilliance of this planting system is that the beans fix nitrogen into the soil --which corn needs loads of-- the corn provides a trellis for the beans to climb, and the squash foliage shades the corn roots and crowds out weeds. This is our first year of trying this symbiotic planting so we will have to see how it works.

My other main crop is potatoes. We have three varieties planted in this plot. The Yukon Golds at the top were planted first and are thriving. I have hilled them up repeatedly and they are starting to flower. The Fingerlings were planted somewhat later but are coming up strong and have good looking foliage. The Red Nordlands are actually the result of a failed early crop in an upper field. Both the Yukons and Nordlands were grown from seed potatoes from last years harvest. I planted the Nordlands somewhat early and our cold wet early spring and hot dry late spring was not kind to them. The plants did come up but between the less than stellar weather conditions and the increased potato bug pressure --planted potatoes in the same plot two years in a row-- they were already dieing back. I thus took a gamble, harvested what I could and replanted the potatoes in the market garden. I just got them in the ground this weekend, much later than I would like to plant potatoes but I figured it was worth a shot.

I hope to take this same picture every couple weeks to really appreciate how the garden changes throughout the season.

Watering Pigs

We need to water a lot of things on the farm, but the pigs are the most fun by far. Our three Tamworth's spend most of the day sleeping in their shelter out of the hot sun, but two or three times a day we go out and spray them down with rain water collected off our barn. When they hear us turn on the pump they come out for a drink and a refreshing cool shower.


The pigs are really happy now that they are all together. Maya was lonely (or so I suppose) being by herself out on pasture. The boys (Grunt and Runt -- same names as our last two males) were real skittish in the barn but settled in quickly after they were moved onto pasture. The three never seemed to have any major problems getting adjusted but the boys were silly for a while. They would pester Maya and nip at her ears. She would put up with this for some time then growl and bite at them when she had had enough. Maya never did any damage to the boys, but they would get submissive and their tails would droop down. A minute or two later you could see their tails curl back up and they would come back and start pestering her again. It was all very amusing.

Pools Up

It is officially summer on the farm. We set the pool up yesterday morning and got a delivery of 2000 gallons of water in the afternoon. I was in the pool when we were filling it to help get out the wrinkles, but the water was too cold for anyone except a child. Sam in fact slept in his swimsuit so he would be ready to go as soon as the water was delivered.

Lots Going on at the Farm

We have been quite busy here on the farm. A brief recap of some of what has been going on.

Latte our Nigerian Dwarf goat gave birth to her first kid Dragon. Latte has been a wonderful mother taking good care of her little boy. Danielle has been milking her in the morning for the last week or so, and the two of them (Danielle and Latte) are just starting to get it all worked out. We now have our own milk in the frig.



The geese, ducks, broilers, poults and pullets are all growing like gang busters. They seem to like being out on pasture although it is tough at times keeping them stocked with water.



Our crops have had a rougher time of things. We were cold in the early spring and then jumped right to August type weather -- hot and dry. We fashioned a mobile water station from some freecycled barrels and a 12V pump. We collect any and all rain we get and have been watering the crops with it to make it through the dry patches.



We have recently received some much needed precipitation, and our efforts have seemed to pay off since the corn, beans and squash are doing well.



The kitchen garden is thriving, we have loads of fresh strawberries, peas, and all types of lettuces. Danielle has been busy making and canning strawberry preserves and getting the CSA up and running.


360 degree view from the center of the kitchen garden!
Click on image for larger view.

Did I mention that my wife picked up three Navajo-Churro sheep this weekend,



or that our Narragansett hen hatched out a brood of poults.



Like I said, lots going on at the farm.

Early Father's Day Gift

Danielle is horrible about keeping secrets, and thus when my Father's day present arrived last week she showed it to me right away. She bought me the grill for Father's day 4 or 5 years ago, so it only seemed fitting to get the matching rotisserie. You can't see it in this picture but there is a small electric motor that mounts on the right side of the spit and an adjustable counterbalance that goes on the left side. We defrosted a free range chicken and I have to say the it came out even better than my beer can chicken. Since it is always rotating the bird essentially self bastes. We had a salad with greens out of our garden as well as some homemade bread to accompany the chicken. We are already looking forward to doing one of our heritage turkeys and maybe even a suckling pig on the spit.

Nothing Like a Fresh Coat of Paint

I previously mentioned our barn renovations, and last week my parents came down to celebrate Sam's birthday as well as help us paint the barn. Sam and my Dad's birthday are a day apart so we ended up putting my Father to work on his birthday. Didn't really seem fair but he has always helped us paint our houses or do other major renovations. Here he is up on the ladder painting the trim. We finished painting the entire barn and attached chicken coop red, but still have some of the trim to finish up. The paint has added new life to the barn, hopefully it will be good for another 10 years or so.

Thanks Dad!

Moving Animals onto Pasture

We are busy moving all the livestock away from the barn and out onto pasture. The idea is to let the animals feed on the grass, fertilize the fields and allow the barn yard to rest. The mobile chicken coop was a large part of this but we also moved Mia, our tamworth gilt and our water fowl out this weekend.

I made Mia a simple A-frame structure on skids, siding it with some vinyl siding that was up in our hay loft when we bought the place. We hoped to use just a couple strands of electric tape, but Mia is too much of a "people pig" and would charge through to get back to her people. For now we added a second perimeter of electric netting to keep her in. Hopefully, once she gets used to her new setup, and she gets some company, we have two male weanlings coming in the next week, we will be able to go back to the tape. We have her setup in a small area in hopes that she will root up all the grass. Then we will move her to a new area and repeat.

The ducks and geese are sharing a run. I made them a "tractor" from an old moving crate, chicken wire and an old tarp. Unfortunately they had no desire to go into it at night. They just grouped up and went to sleep out in the grass. I checked on them this morning before going to work and they were happily eating and going about their business. We will use the tractor for the broilers and pullets once they are ready to be put out on pasture, hopefully sometime this week. We also took the cap off my truck and put it out as a run in shelter so the birds can get out of the sun when needed.

So now all we need to do is get the goats, turkey poults, broilers and pullets out on pasture and I will be able to reseed the barn yard.

Mobile Chicken Coop

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was converting an old trailer into a mobile chicken coop. We got the trailer from my neighbor and after stripping off some things we didn't need it formed a strong platform to build the coop. I did a simple lean to design with a large nesting box on one end and roosts in the middle. The bottom is diamond metal mesh so hopefully most of the chicken droppings will fall through. The bottom is secured with hardware cloth to keep out any predators and to allow a lot of ventilation. I used metal roofing and a single plastic panel to afford the chickens some natural light. There are large doors at both ends and a small chicken door which is left open during the day.

I set the mobile coop in the barn yard Saturday afternoon and locked all the chickens out of their old coop. Danielle and I came back out Saturday night and transfered all the chickens into their new home.

Sunday morning we moved the coop out onto our pasture and setup a perimeter of electric netting. The chickens happily came out to explore their new digs and seemed pleased to have some fresh grass to feast on. I am happy to say that when we went out Sunday evening to close them up all but one of the chickens had found their way into the coop. They also had no problem finding the nesting box and provided us with 19 fresh eggs.

What smells???

That's what Danielle was saying when Buddy ran back to us during an after dinner walk in our pastures. I had seen a skunk earlier in the day when I was disking our upper plot and figured he would move on after all the noise from the tractor. That was not the case and Buddy managed to find the skunk and get sprayed in the face in record time. When he ran back to us he plowed his head into the ground and started rolling around in the wet grass to try to get the smell off. We quickly rounded up the dogs -- not wanting Boo to suffer the same fate as Buddy -- and I ran back to the house and got my rifle. An impromptu skunk hunt commenced with the kids and I tracking and Danielle taking pictures.



Lucky for us skunks never seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere and thus we were able to find and dispatch the skunk without too much trouble. I was willing to let the skunk go about its business earlier in the day but we could not tolerate one taking up residence in our pasture, spraying our dogs, and preying on our chickens.



They are mean looking critters with sharp little teeth. Their aroma shall we call it is quite pungent. Since I work in chemical research I knew right away that the skunks spray was primarily thiol based. As it turns out there are three main classes of chemical compounds in a skunks spray thiols, thioacetates and alkaloids with the thiols being the most odoriferous of the three.Sam brought a shovel up from the barn and we buried the skunk out in the hedgerow where I shot it.





With that taken cared of it was now time to try to detoxify Buddy. We went with the old standby of using tomatoes. We did not have any tomato juice handy so we used a can of crushed tomatoes from the pantry. Buddy was actually fairly stoic through the process of me rubbing the tomatoes all over him then rinsing and shampooing him with normal pet shampoo. He has spent the last two nights in his kennel in the garage but is mostly fumigated now so we will probably allow him to sleep in the house tonight.

Busy Weekend on the Farm

It finally warmed up this weekend so we tried to make the most of it and pretty much worked dawn to dusk.

I replaced the rotten sheathing on the barn.



Started turning an old trailer into a mobile chicken coop.



The kids took turns helping me out, but also took advantage of the warm weather to have a water gun fight.





Some other things accomplished that do not have associated pictures.

• Hand forked the new berry patch
  
• Tilled up a portion of our new plot for onions
  
• Planted Bi-Color corn
  

All in all it was a great weekend, but one of the weekends that I am kind of happy to have end so I can go back to work and rest.

Ribs!

The picture above says it all. Danielle picked up the pork from the butchers on Wednesday and we have been eating it almost constantly. The kids tried some pork chops the night she brought everything home and liked them so much that Sam requested to have more on Friday night. This weekend my parents were down so I barbecued up a couple racks of ribs and we made some more chops. It was quite the feast. Emily my oldest has already requested that I barbecue up a pork shoulder for her birthday, the kids really love the pulled pork. Danielle is salt curing the bacons and hams and my only disappointment is that I will have to wait up to 6 months for the ham. I must say that all this good eating is making me forget how much trouble we had getting the pigs to the butcher.

Fields Plowed

The last two evenings after work I have plowed up two plots for crops. The larger, where the pigs were paddocked, will be planted with corn, beans, melons, pumpkins etc. The smaller plot is up at the top of our property where the potatoes and first round of corn are planted. I plowed up a wedge shaped area next to the original plot which we will use for transplanted berry plants. We hope to some day have a pick your own berry operation with strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. We already have all of these varieties in the kitchen garden and will be transplanting the suckers and daughter plants as they spread.

When Pigs Fly

Runt and Grunt, our Tamworth pigs have done a good job of rooting up and fertilizing our field over the last couple of months. They both put on a lot of weight and thus were ready to go to the butchers. The plan was to load them into the back of my pickup the night before their appointment (Easter Sunday) and drive them up the next morning. I built a ramp out of two 1/2 inch thick sheets of plywood with furring strips spaced every foot or so for traction. Danielle and I tried to coax them in with the slop bucket and after many failed attempts managed to get Grunt -- the bigger of the two -- into the back of the truck where he happily went about eating his dinner. We tried unsuccessfully to get Runt to join him then realizing that one was better than none decided to just take up Grunt and let Runt feed out for another couple of weeks. After we closed up the back of the truck and turned it on Grunt started to take exception to his location. He broke the latch that holds the cap window down and then proceeded to flop up onto the tailgate, teeter there for a moment and ungracefully flip out the back. He was quite the site in my rear view mirror. Luckily he was unhurt and was more than happy to return to his paddock.

My wife wakes me up the next morning to inform me that all before 6:30 AM she has called a livestock hauler that the butchers recommended and that he would be coming that morning for the pigs. The hauler shows up to our place at 9:15 AM. It takes the three of us at least a half hour to wrestle the pigs into his truck -- I am stiff and sore as I type this. And the biggest kicker is after calling the hauler at the last minute and him having to help us fight to get our free range pigs into the truck, all he wants to charge us is $15. I have to force him to accept $25 for his troubles and feel that I got off cheap.

So all in all the pigs make it up to the butchers and we should be able to pick up our fresh pork on Wednesday, and now I have a story to go with the expression When Pigs Fly.

Garden Tilling and Corn In

Spring is definitely moving on although we are still getting some cold snaps, and may even get some snow flurries later this week. We picked up a walk behind tiller this weekend and turned over the kitchen garden. Danielle had a bunch of seedlings in a makeshift cold frame which we needed to get into the ground. I am pleased with the way the garden soil is developing. It was much easier to work this year and all the organic matter from our composted kitchen scraps and chicken bedding that we worked in has really helped to break up the clay. Maybe in a couple more years we will be able to skip the tilling altogether.

After work on Tuesday (April 3^rd) Sam and I carted the tiller to the upper field, prepped the soil and put in some rows of corn. We had some White and Bi-Color super sweet left over from last year. Not sure how successful the germination will be on this seed but figured it was not going to do us any good sitting in the barn. If we do get some to grow from this planting it will be a nice early crop of corn. We are going to plant new seed down where the pigs have plowed and fertilized for us after they are shipped off to the butchers next week.

Potatoes In

Over the last two days I put in our first round of potatoes. The seed stock are leftovers from last years crops. We have some fingerlings on order but for now I got in three rows of Red Nordlands and two rows of Yukon Golds. I still have more of each in the cellar, we plan on planting a couple different rounds to maximize our yield and storage ability. Last year we only did the one early planting and got an excellent crop, but over the last month or so the Yukon Golds were getting mighty soft. We had stopped eating the Nordlands in the early winter. The Nordlands will be harvested early as new potatoes, but we will let the Yukon's fully mature. After a long winter it felt good working the soil again and getting our first crop in.

Look what I found.

Those would have been the words Buddy -- our 1 1/2 year old border collie/terrier mix -- was saying when he exited the hedge row with his latest find. I took the dogs out for an early morning walk through our back pastures. I like getting out to survey the land and think about where we will plant things and what other projects I need to do. The dogs, the aforementioned Buddy, and Boo -- a 4 year old springer spaniel mix -- love to run and explore the hedge row around our field. This morning Buddy pops out of the hedge row with a large white object in his mouth. I initially thought it was a piece of styrofoam or other trash. He was a little hesitant to give up his prize but did come over and leave it for me when directed. Turns out Buddy found the top portion of an animal skull. After bringing it inside the kids had fun speculating what type of animal it was until Google revealed its true identity. The skull is from a White Tail deer and since there are no horn buds (not sure if that is the correct terminology) I assume it was a female deer. We need to start a nature shelf so that we have some place to display all the things we find around the farm.