Guest Blogger : Kanning Karen

As some of you may have noticed or pointed out, Farmer Phil has not made any recent blog posts.  I would love to say this is because he has been off enjoying his summer, lounging at the beach, building campfires or taking me on a fancy vacation.  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately depending on how you look at it, we have had a very busy summer.  Besides continually rotating the sheep to fresh pastures, keeping the barn and house standing, catching whoever is loose, fixing whatever is broke and feeding whoever is hungry we have added some new critters to the farm.  We have eight new goat kids, who combined with the four born this year are providing high quality brush clearing services.  Farmer Phil has recently built a prototype chicken tractor (it’s smaller scale version of the ones Joel Salatin uses at Polyface farms, who is a big inspiration for some of our crazier ideas) which we are using to move 25 broiler chickens around the front yard, and finally we have our first batch of turkeys getting ready for their big day in November. 

Since Farmer Phil is undoubtedly outside doing something necessary to prepare for winter, like stacking wood or hay, I figured I would lend a hand with the blog. 

Circa: Not Recently

It is really hard to believe that it is already September, but with the cooler breezes and the sun setting earlier every day it is clear summer is behind us.  As with every year we seemed to have some successes and failures with our gardens.  We have beets, Swiss chard, herbs, cucumbers, peaches and tomatoes by the bushel load.  Our peppers seem to be late but are coming in now and the beans had a good run early in the summer and we have been successful with the carrots.  The onions, garlic and potatoes did well until the weeds started to overtake them (lesson learned, use mulch).  Our lettuce and broccoli seemed to spend more time flowering and bolting than being productive and the squash beetles found my pumpkins.  Finally there are the peas, I love peas, I am determined to have peas, they grow, they wither, I replant, and Farmer Phil laughs, but I will have peas.

Dill Cucumber Relish

With all this overabundance of some things and a desire to enjoy the benefits of the garden throughout the year I have begun canning.  I started a few years ago with a dear friend and have been trying to branch out into various recipes.  I still have not managed the science of determining how many jars of what we will use until spring and then backward planning my garden to ensure we will have enough to make the recipes.  I have found canning to be part art, part science and a big part luck.  This year I have made peach salsa, peach jam, maple bourbon peach sauce, dilly beans, cucumber dill relish, cherry tomato salsa, garlic basil tomato sauce, mint simple syrup and lemon balm simple syrup with plenty more left to do.  Canning tends to be a late night activity after dinner is made and cleaned up, then the kitchen is free for canning and somewhere around midnight when even the dog is snoring I am done.  Farmer Phil compares my canning season to his maple season.  Despite all the hard work of harvesting, prepping and late hours there is nothing more satisfying to hear the lid pop on that last jar in the bunch.  If you haven’t given it a try I highly recommend it.  Feel free to send any recipes this way too (especially ones that deal with giant cucumbers that seem to hide in the garden until they have grown to the size of baseball bats!)

(Farmer Phil is allowed to select all art work for guest bloggers)

 

Well I think I just heard the first apple drop.  It looks like I better wrap up all this canning and get ready to make cider!

Hay Now!

Ahh, the dog days of summer. When the mercury spikes at 97 and the humidity makes it feel like you are breathing through a wet blanket. Best to heed the advice of the radio dj's in their nice air conditioned studios as they advise you to stay inside and drink plenty of water. Good call buddy.


But then the call comes:
"Baling at noon"
"How many?"
"600"
" I'll take 250"

And hay season has begun. Hay is made when the sun shines....for at least three days....with no rain...and lots of heat. We used to bale our own hay but are  buying hay out of the field now. The old adage says "you lose money buying hay and you lose money making hay". Some day we'll find the right mix.

Away I go to gather bales. Hay is often sold one of four ways- in the field, off the wagon, out of the barn, and delivered (those are in order from cheapest to most expensive). Frugality being my faith, we get it from the field. When I am lucky I have help to drive the truck and we stack them on our flatbed trailer. When I am really lucky, the hay guy says he has some off the wagon for field prices. Park by the wagon and throw it on. Sweetness.

The fun isn't over yet though. You now need to put it into the hay mow. I'm not sure where the "mow" word came from but I have a suspicion that it is a combination of pained moaning and the word "OWW". While it is a frigid 97 outside, it is quite possibly 137 in the hay loft. Today Karen is feeding bales from the trailer to the hay elevator and as she suffers in the sun, I wonder if all the sweat pouring off of me like Niagara Falls would suffice as mineral for the sheep. The trailer has a pretty specific pattern I stack on. The hay mow is irregular in every way, and as such, starts with a great weave making the most of the space and sturdy all the way up till the second row when the flow of bales becomes faster than my cooked brain and they just get wadded into the voids, like a giant Jenga tower. Meanwhile, I am aware that farmers are much tougher than any coal miner Black Lung is nothing compared to Hay Lung.

Despite my complaints, I love haying. I've been doing it since I was 12 and any year I haven't done it I have missed it. There is no better smell than a barn full of fresh hay. And the satisfaction of knowing that no matter how bad the winter is, our animals will be fat and happy. Besides that, the health benefits are immense. I quit smoking the year that I was convinced I was the youngest person to ever have a heart attack while tossing bales. I drink plenty of fluids and the toning my body gets is better than any gym can offer. Always looking for a helper so feel free to let me know if you want that same great feeling.......

Gawkers

I was on the computer the other morning minding my own, when I heard someone lock up their brakes on our road. As a concerned citizen, I looked out the window to see a man jumping from his pick up to look at my neighbors cows. He then proceeded to take pictures of them. So I took a picture of him.

 

I'm curious what will become of those pictures. Does he get them printed up and hang them on his wall and dream of that great day when he saw cows in a  field? Now that the warm weather has returned, this is a common occurrence. We often have the motorcyclists who feel it necessary to yell "BAAAAA" at the top of their lungs as they drive past our sheep. Or the woman who pulled into our driveway and got into the pen with the lambs because they looked so cute-lucky for her the electric wasn't on, despite the sign saying it was. Part of me wished the ram had been in the pen and he would have shown her how cute he could be. I imagine this year will probably have more gawkers than usual.

 

  Hay is not cheap, and previously the rams have spent the summer lounging in the barn dining on it in excess quantities. I resolved last fall that we would be going with a low mow approach this year. The rams don't need large  areas, but do well on smaller plots that the ewes would have gone in hours. So, we have one ram who is working a rotation in the front lawn in three sections. and the other will be cleaning up in the area behind the barn and in front of the sugar shack. Keeping them out of visual distance of each other is also key because a battle could erupt were one able to get near the other. Initial experiments have been good on the front lawn although I have to put aside my dream manicured golf green in favor of a less uniform look as he grazes randomly from place to place, however the end result is not too bad and two hours not spent mowing each week sucking in exhaust fumes is okay with me.

We're Lambin', and I hope you like lambin' too

Well, It is 12:11 AM on a Friday nite and my wild time consists of making sure that some newborn lambs find their mothers teat for their first lifesaving meal. Karen finds it amusing that I stress out about lambing so much. In my defense, I am most concerned about the first time ewes, who like irresponsible teenage moms, step over their children to go see what is new with their friends. I worry about every stumbled step the newborn takes and why the mom isn't getting up right away and oh god please do not let her have twins because that means a whole Pandora's box of problems for me. Tonite is Holly, who (hopefully only) just had a lamb and looks like another is on the way. She is part of the new problem as the oldest ewe who now we have to worry about her having triplets again and will she make it through the whole process. She is a strong girl though and I think there is one more breeding season in her future. As always, she is laid back and ready for what comes her way.

Holly

It is a huge time of year though. It determines how much hay we need, what kind of pasture rotation we should plan, how many boys or girls, and most importantly, what color are the lambs! Icelandics are always a surprise as to what color may come out. We have bred black rams with black ewes and had white lambs and vice versa. Sometimes you get black and white, like our ewe Bessy who looks more like a Holstein cow than an Icelandic sheep-always a surprise.

We lamb late. Unfortunately this year it was very late. Some breeders have lambs in January-February so that by time the grass is gone, so are the lambs. Icelandics are a smaller heritage breed so they grow slow and they don't get very big. We would rather wait until April (or May in this case) when it is warmer and we can turn the lambs right on to fresh green grass with mom, because regardless, we will need to keep them over the winter and feed hay so they can get big enough to sell for the boys. The girls will get one year off to get bigger and then they will become moms too.

Ewes have a five month gestation period. We move the girls into the barn five months the day we turned the rams out with them. This is actually the most crowded time of year for inside space. The ewes are put into lambing jugs. These are small pens, most recommend 4'x4', but we usually make them larger and odd shaped to fit the space we have available. These give ewes no choice but to love on their babies. You can see from the pictures that pretty much every scrap piece of anything gets used as fence/barrier material for the jugs.

Let me out!

Well, Holly has had twins. A black girl and a white boy. Both have nursed from mom and she seems to be doing fine, despite Noel knocking over her water and flooding the jug. Hay and shaving added for bedding so she (and I) can go get some sleep.

Notice the obligatory bailing twine holding it all together.

Dirt Farmer

Long, long ago, when we were first starting our farm, Karen said she wanted a garden. Being an ardent carnivore, I promised help as far as it could be done from the seat of my tractor. As a child I grew to hate weeding with a passion and began to hate the gardens that produced them. So, we tilled a corner of the field, fenced it off with electric and planted everything under the sun. The only thing that came up was some raspberry shoots from my Great Grandmothers garden and those were quickly devoured when the sheep figured out that the power had gone out (I have a suspicion the goat had a hand in this). Karen was heartbroken but for me it just reaffirmed that gardens suck....time and money and energy from you.



Yeah...I did it. And the next time you plant I'll do it again.

Now, don't get me wrong, I would gladly have a fresh juicy whatever from my own garden than some pesticide laden junk from the supermarket. That has been the driving force behind most of our farm plans. But, I just never really enjoyed the garden much. We were also lucky to have a friend who grew an abundant garden that kept us fully stocked anyway. But, when we moved back to New Hampshire, other than some free zucchini, we were on our own. It is rumored that the only time people lock their cars here is when zucchini is in season because friends and neighbors will sneak in and dump a few bushels without your knowing. After a season with a regular garden where Karen came into her gardening prime, as well as years of fencing experience under our belts, we decided to make a garden that was user friendly. Enter our raised beds.



Just like that!

We decided to make our raised beds taller than normal. Advantages- you can sit on the sides comfortably so no bending over to weed. Also, deeper soil to grow in. Disadvantage--more lumber and more compost. We ended up doing 6 raised beds and were very pleased with the results. Some lessons that we have taken away are that spreaders like pumpkins, watermelon and squash should have their own area on the ground or a separate bed. We also keep horseradish, rhubarb, garlic and other recurring plants or overwintering plants in a traditional garden bed. If a really harsh winter hits, the beds don't retain heat because of their exposure. While I may not help much on the weeding, I do get into the spirit by planting seedling and watering- you know, Lazy farmer stuff.

Yummy!

Vet visit day

        One of the rituals of spring is to get all of the animals checked out by the vet before they start having babies. The vet checks them over and gives required shots. As you probably guessed, that requires rounding everyone up so that she can take a look, and as with most things for us, we have gotten better at this with time. Catching sheep and goats is more art than science. Our first attempts were aided by a smaller pen within the larger pasture where we could contain the animals and systematically run them down. This often resulted in terrified sheep and exhausted farmers. Our next upgrade was a chainlink dog kennel that we would put hay in and shut the door once we had gotten all of our patients cornered. It became this by default since Cody can somehow climb out of it if he feels like it. The biggest problem with this was that it is really heavy to move so if you have multiple animals in multiple locations, you were out of luck.

 The livestock trailer has become the standby method for catching animals. The main trick is to skip a meal before they need catching and then put the feed inside the trailer. This often works best with two people. Sheep are especially leery and it helps if you are slightly hidden while another person spots them all inside so you can shut the door. With one set of especially wily pigs, I sat on top of the trailer for hours until hunger got the better of them and they were convinced no one was around. They walked in and I slid the door shut behind them.

This time, since we were just catching them for shots. We used feedlot panels (A 16' rigid steel wire panel) to hold them in a small area and the vet administered shots and inspections through the fence.

Round up time!

One of my dreams is to have real handling equipment that we can funnel the sheep and goats through and by switching the gate one way or the next, everyone goes back to where they belong. As always, this is very attainable....if you have a grand or two to spare. One thing I did discover was that should we get any more cattle, we will need something better. Erica managed to throw our very pregnant vet back and me sideways when the first needle hit her. A full body hold against the tractor by Karen and I kind of worked but if she gets much bigger that probably won't be very effective.


Before the shots-I believed that cute look....

Long story short, everyone checked out with a clean bill of health. Best wishes to Dr. C expecting her first child. Her help is always a lifesaver (Literally!) for the farm.


Spring Cleaning

I apologize for my lack of postings recently. I would however, ask everyone to notice the title is not "Confessions of a Diligent Blogger". The syrup season is nearly complete! Actual, it is but one part remains----the dreaded clean up.

Some of the aftermath-each of those 5 gallon buckets has tubing in it also....

I resolved in January when I was cleaning with ice water trying to get ready for the sap I would have an orderly and efficient clean up time this year and by god I am trying to. The first thing is the tubing. As with many things in the maple community, there is some disagreement over cleaning. Some folks use bleach water, which others say attract rodents and leaves a poor taste in the lines. Some do not do any cleaning. I am of the flushing fresh water through the lines crowd, followed by compressed air and a drying period. To do this, I built a contraption that allows me hook the tubing up to our hose bib and force water through the tubing. I use a compressor to blow out the tube and then hang dry with a weight on the bottom to allow water to drain out. Once they dry, I will store them in a 55 gallon drum by tap amounts on the line.

 

 

As for the buckets. We scrub any debris or dirt out and then rinse with a water-bleach solution (20:1 is the recommended amount) and allow to air dry. Then they will be stacked and covered in the sugar shack. By far this is the most tedious part of the process but is key to making good syrup next year and saves money on having to buy new tubing and buckets each year.

With any luck this will be complete by tomorrow. Then the real fun starts with the cleaning of the evaporator. All the ashes get shoveled out and the grates are removed for cleaning. Then all the small parts are taken off and cleaned in the sink. The larger parts like the pans will be pressure washed and scrubbed. I am in the market for some covers to go over the top for the off season but most likely I will just store the pans upside down so they won't collect dust and debris. Now you can see how exciting things have been over the past week or so and why no postings. I'll spare you the fascinating story of getting our taxes done.....

 

 

In other news, the snow is mostly gone and cleanup of the winter mess has begun. Erica the calf is happy because she gets to spend her days out in the back field taking sun baths. The mini truck is back on the road and the heated buckets have all been put to bed. One season down, the next is just beginning. Soon we'll be shearing the sheep to get ready for lambs!