Catching up

Things are pretty hectic for me now, and I don't think it'll be changing anytime soon, so you probably won't be seeing many entries from here for the foreseeable future. I now have two part-time jobs that add up to one full-time job, plus teaching a yoga class a week. When I'm not working off the farm, I'm generally helping Orrin on the farm, wherever he needs help. He works hard all day, every day, and is finding that he is able to get more done these days as Oliver is getting more independent.

Orrin's moving the cows daily now, which is a job he can do by himself. But it takes both of us to roll up and move the electric-netting fence for the sheep and goats each day, so that's usually the first thing to be done when I get home in the evening. May is also a big gardening month, as we are prepping new and existing garden beds, picking rocks, planting seeds, weeding and watering the greenhouse, etc. About a month ago we had planted about 200 onion seeds into soil blocks. Most of them grew well, and we just transplanted them into the main garden a few days ago. Lots of other seed varieties went into the ground early last week, preceding several days of rain. More rain is on the way later this coming week, so his plan is to get a bunch more seeds in the ground. We'll be planting out about 26 beds this year, 4' wide by 50' long. In a rougher section of the garden, where there are still quite a few roots in the ground, we plan to skip making garden beds for this year, but will probably plant winter squash and beans there, along with a bit of corn. We've counted 9 potato plants up in the garden at this point, which were planted a few weeks ago.

Several babies have been born in the last month. The buff orpington chicken, who was sitting on 5 eggs up in the cow shed, had 4 babies hatch. One died, but the 3 remaining seem healthy and are doing well.

Taffy, the Jacob ewe, had a baby girl on April 24. We've named her Delilah.

Yesterday Orrin and Oliver picked up 50 day-old meat chicks at the local feed store. They will be ready to butcher in about 9 weeks.

I've been talking up our farm to folks, trying to line up a few members for our CSA (community-supported agriculture) program. There are two people who want to do this with us, and we're hoping for one or two more. We want to start small, to make sure we have enough food to feed everyone (them AND us), and because we know we'll make mistakes along the way as we figure out what we're doing. Our plan is a year-round CSA that will include 3 kinds of meat, eggs, vegetables, and some fruit. We'll add more varieties of fruits and vegetables as the years go by. Our inspiration comes from Kristin Kimball's book “The Dirty Life”, where she farms in upstate New York.

Chicks hatching in an incubator, in early April. The top-most just hatched,
the other two were around a day old.

Zoe sunning herself on the deck.

Oliver, taking the job of holding a chick very seriously.

The buff who sat on eggs in the cow shed (in the background). One of the chicks is peeking out,
the others are tucked in underneath her.

Beautiful rhubarb, the first fruit of the season.

Taffy with her new baby, Delilah. She was probably an hour or two old at the time.

Oliver, feeding weeds to the laying hens. It was so awesome to see him doing this.

A very large bale of hay. It feeds cows, sheep, goats and pigs.

Delilah, one week old.