Category: A Week on the Farm

This has been another slow week as far as farm chores go. My garlic for the garden still has not arrived, so the garden has been neglected. A few beans have been picked, just enough to eat, not to freeze. The broccoli is ready and needs to be harvested and frozen.

The meat chicks have mere days to gorge, and indeed that is what they do, before they all go to freezer camp this weekend.

They don’t quite look like small turkeys this time, but several are substantial.

The daily egg hunt continues to amuse me, especially when 1 is very round or very pointed or speckled, this girl had a faulty dyer yesterday.

My shawl is coming along.  I’m on the last lace panel and it will be done. I’m hoping is blocks out larger than it appears now. I’m considering adding a final border to make it a bit larger.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

This has been a rest week after last week’s marathon mowing of the 30 acres. The garden is waning, with only beans, broccoli being harvested and waiting for the cabbages to head and reach cutting size.

It needs weeding and a fall cleanup, but I was hoping my garlic would arrive soon and I could plant it at the same time.

The chickens are funny animals. Whenever they see me in the side yard, they gather under their coop then follow me to whatever end of their pen I am working near, yet they won’t let me touch them except as they exit their coop in the mornings.

Cogburn and his harem getting some free range time, their favorite time of the day as they forage for bugs, seeds and fresh grass.

They are consistently providing us with 3 plus dozen eggs each week, yes one of them is green. The last pullet to mature appears like she may add another to the 6 to 8 we get each day very soon.

Yesterday’s soap making solo, seems to have been successful. The two molds, a simple mold from Michael’s Arts and Crafts and a silicone baking pan, produced a generous number of bars, now curing on a mat for use in 3 or 4 weeks.

My needle crafting has been in a doldrum until this week. I was making my daughter a black lace sweater to replace one I made last year that was ruined. I’m not a fan of lace knitting, nor knitting with black yarn, so I procrastinated, knitting very little on it this summer, but it was finished, washed, blocked, dried and shipped off to her this week. No pictures taken. Perhaps, she will send me one of her in it. Once it was finished, I picked up the Traveler’s Companion Shawl that I had been working on and seem to be making pretty good progress on it. It is being knit to go with a long travelling skirt I own.

Getting yarn dyed especially for me to match a hat I designed, now I need to design the scarf to go with it.

Learning cold process soap making with a friend. Now I can do it myself, but it is much more fun making it with a friend.

Mowing the 30 acres for fall. There are still 4 or 5 to do and a gorgeous weekend to get it done.

An end of week harvest, more beans for dinner and the freezer, the first two heads of broccoli also for dinner and one for the freezer, tomatoes for the freezer. A dinner that came entirely from our garden except for the ground beef from the farmer’s market.

A daily 6 to 8 eggs from the flock, but oddly, they will line up to use the same nesting box when there are 6 from which to choose, occasionally one will use a different box, but not often.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

A Week On the Farm – September 20, 2013.

Fall harvesting

Pasta sauce for the freezer

Free ranging and learning that my best layers are the Red Stars, not the heritage breeds. Hmmmm.

Doggie walks off the farm

Wild Asters

and Bee Balm

The week has been cool and gray with more rain tonight and tomorrow. A horseback ride on a different horse, just reminded me how little I know, I guess I had gotten comfortable or complacent riding the same well schooled gelding all the time. Some doggie walks and another session with the doggie behaviorist, still trying to get the big guy comfortable again with strange dogs. He loves people and cats, but not so much, new dogs.

Life continues to be good on our mountain farm.

As the week and the summer draw to a close, the fall garden is beginning to take off as the summer garden is almost gone. Today, we picked our first batch of fall bush beans and enjoyed them for dinner while preparing 8 more meals of them for the freezer to enjoy this winter when the days are cold and the snow falls.

The tomato plants are all brown, the last of the tomatoes ripening or being attacked by grasshoppers and stinkbugs. The only ones left are small yellow, orange plum and Roma tomatoes. The volunteer that is sprawled through the grape bed, is producing the best crop right now.

The potato growing experiment was less than successful. We tried growing them in half barrels putting a couple inches of compost in the bottom, planting the seed potatoes and then adding more compost as the tops grew a few inches. We were hoping for a couple of barrels full of nice potatoes, but only got about 10 lbs. They are tasty though, we had some mashed with dinner tonight.

Today, for the first time, the hens produced 8 eggs. That leaves only one who still hasn’t figured out how to lay an egg.

The freezer, in spite of the cool wet summer, is beginning to look like it will hold us through the winter months. If the beans continue to produce, the peas make it to production size, the cabbages and broccoli are heading nicely, the chard is developing this time, we will be able to put more away and enjoy some more fresh produce. Today only reached the low 70’s and it is going into the 40’s tonight. The weather “prognosticators” are threatening us with an early and snowy winter, I hope they are wrong for a while.

The 4 1/2 week old meat chicks are tightly snugged in the chicken tractor with a tarp covering most of it and a heat lamp on to help them through the cold night.
On the craft front, our daughter in law asked me to make two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle hats for two of our grandchildren as part of their Halloween costumes. One of the hats is almost finished, pictures will follow next week once they are finished.
Life is good on our mountain farm.

The chickens are getting supervised free range time these days. The nine pullets are laying 5 eggs each day now, 4 of the girls still haven’t figured it out yet. Once they are all laying, we are going to have many eggs to share with friends. Selling a few dozen eggs will help with feed costs.
The summer is winding down, the weeds in the garden have the upper hand, the flowers are fading, the evening temperatures are getting cooler. We have had a couple of days reprieve from the rain.
Since hubby started the summer off with knee surgery, we aren’t planning our usual week of skiing this winter, instead will take a week long cruise with our youngest and his family this fall. This means that the fall mowing is being done a bit early this year. The task was started this afternoon and it was a challenge because the rain has resulted in a very thick stand that has grown tall quickly.

Some of our neighbors have just gotten their hay in, they will not have to do a fall mowing. Our hay was done in June, between rains and our fields will require a fall mow. One of the plants that we fight constantly is an invasive imported plant called Stickweed. It is a fairly attractive plant, but neither cows nor horses will eat it. It is a perennial and comes up anywhere in the yard that isn’t mowed at least once a month.

Mowing in the late afternoon has benefits and hazards. Our farms seems to grow rocks. Areas that are mowed regularly have been cleared of rocks or we know where the rocks are, so we can avoid them. When the ground is damp, sometime a rock that has been level with the ground will be flipped up to the surface by the tractor tires which results in the brush hog picking it up on the next round and either throwing it out or rattling it around the brush hog housing. Each mowing results in the collecting of more rocks being removed to safe piles.
One of the benefits is having a deer wander out into the yard, stopping to see what is going on, then moving on to a safer location. The evening skies are lovely to watch as each round is mowed.

Half of this past week, we left our farm and traveled about 3 hours north to celebrate the 90th birthday for my active and vibrant Dad and to have two of our grandchildren baptized. The site of these celebrations is where our family began vacationing 57 years ago. I have not been a regular for all of those years, but all three of our children were baptized there, our daughter was married there 3 years ago and her children were the grands baptized there this year. The gathering was 4 generations, my Dad and step Mom, hubby, both of my siblings, one of their spouses, cousins, nieces and nephews, their spouses and children, two of our children and their families. The eldest, my Dad was 90, the youngest was a nephew at 17 months.
It was a wonderful gathering, though we missed a few family members, we did get a group photo taken of those in attendance. We returned home last Saturday and our daughter and her family left Sunday. We really enjoyed having them here for 12 days and wish they lived closer than the 13+ hours away that they do live.
The week allowed us to add 256 ounces of blackberry, blueberry, and black n’ blue jam to the summer production. Half of that returned to Florida with our daughter.

Finally, the tomatoes are turning red, though with this week’s highs in the 70s and lows in the upper 40s, production is slow. What we get will be put away for winter.

This is 3 of today’s eggs, typical of the variety we are collecting. The Silver Laced Wyandotte and the Delaware are laying the normal sized cream colored eggs. The Red Rock crosses are laying the larger dark brown eggs and one of them is laying the dinosaur sized eggs, often with double yolks. The dogs love when I cook one of them for their breakfast supplement. The number of eggs collected is exceeding the number we are using. One dozen was gifted to a neighbor, another will be gifted to my cousin. Three dozen were sold last night at my weekly Clicks and Sticks knitting group. We still have 4 gals that haven’t even started laying yet.

This morning started with a call from the Post Office that the fall meat chicks were awaiting me to come pick them up. They are now safely, securely bedded in the brooder with food, water, and their heat lamp. They are so cute at 2 days old, but this breed grows so quickly that they will soon not be so cute.

We have recently begun seeing a dog trainer that trains without the use of treats, to try to make us the alpha members of the pack and to get the 185 pound Mastiff to defer to us instead of being stubborn. We are also working to curb his recent anti social behavior toward strange dogs. This is as far as he got after we returned from today’s training.

The last news of the week is the return of our bear friend. He was seen last night and again this morning on the south edge of our farm near the woods. I guess we must be in his current territory. Unfortunately, he will likely be found and hunted down when the season begins, by someone on the mountain who will likely hunt him not for his meat.

     This week has been delightful, the weather is mild during the day and cool at night.  The rain has abated with only the occassional shower.  

     On Wednesday morning, our daughter with her husband and kids, along with one of their friends arrived.  We are really enjoying having our kids and grandkids here.  Their dog is getting along with our dogs fairly well.  There was really nothing scheduled, we picked wild blackberries on Wednesday afternoon and made a batch of 6 half pints of jam.

     Today we all went to the local you pick berry farm and picked nearly a gallon and a half of blackberries and about 3/4 gallon of blueberries.  Daughter and I have spent the better part of the afternoon making 2 batches of blackberry jam and 1 batch of blueberry jam for our pantry and for daughter to loves the blackberry jam, and this was her first time making jam.

It has been a week of pickle making, a couple jars of jalapenos put up, but still no tomatoes. The hens are now laying a fairly consistent 5 eggs a day. Four of the girls still haven’t figured it out, but I am seeing more mature signs from them.