Category: Farm Life

After our Horsemaster’s Club ride yesterday, we both arose sore, facing a 10 a.m. lesson. A biscuit and newspaper in town to fuel our bodies and minds, we arrived a bit early, knowing which horses we were riding today and mine being Daisy that I rode yesterday, in the top field, I dropped off hubby at the arena, grabbed a halter and rope and drove to the top field to get her. Yesterday, she was at the top edge of that very steep field, today since I was at the top, she was at the bottom, requiring a scramble down the slope to get her. The roan in the paddock with her wanted to be my friend today and tried to put her head in the halter, then followed me like a puppy as I led Daisy out. Our instructor arrived and we worked on some skills, both complaining of being sore, so she went and got a horse and tacked up and we took our first trail ride. Our first ride out of the confines of the huge enclosed and roofed arena. It was so much fun and once at the top of their property, realized that we could see the power tower that is closest to our house. As the crow flies, we couldn’t have been more than a mile from home.
A few errands to get chicken feed and we arrived home to farm work. As it is fall, the locals are either doing a fall haying, in some cases, their only haying this year due to the summer rain, or as we do, mowing the now very tall grass down for the winter. It will make better spring hay. Today was the day we began to mow our fields. This is always bitter sweet as we will now be able to walk our property, we will be able to see the deer and turkey, but the mowing takes out thousands of white Queen Anne’s Lace, Daisies, and clover; purple thistle and red clover; golden flowers of the hated stickweed and goldenrod; and the cornflower blue of Chickory. The tall seed heads of the grasses standing above the tops of the tall rear wheels of the tractor.
A dinner break of a homemade pizza with tomatoes, basil, peppers and onions from our garden, hot Italian sausage from the Farmer’s market and a couple of lumps of fresh mozarella. It was delicious.

After dinner, some more mowing as the sun deepened the shadows as the sun dropped below the west ridge, leaving the eastern ridges still glowing from the setting sun.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

     Though officially still a few days away, fall has come to the mountains.  After a cool, rainy summer, we have had a dry spell of several weeks, today is chilly and foggy with a slight chance of afternoon showers as another front moves through.  It is unlikely that the colors will be stunning this year.  After two years of dry conditions and the stress of too much water this year, the trees that normally color first are browning and dropping their leaves instead

There are hints of color change, the emerald greens of summer are now dull, hints of rust and reds appearing.
The weather lore is that the morning fogs we have been experiencing for several weeks portend early and heavy snow. Last autumn, we had a school closing snow in October. Hopefully that won’t be the case this year since I went to the effort of putting in a fall garden. We have only lived in the mountains for 8 years and I have noticed that none of our farmer neighbors put in fall gardens. As I was pulling spent summer plants, weeding beds and dumping the weeds in the chicken pen, I wondered if by now, they are just tired of their gardens, or if by experience, they know that the weather will win. Most of them don’t work to keep the weeds at bay after their plants are established. They till it all in come spring, or they put down huge sheets of black plastic, punch holes in it and plant through the holes. I don’t want my food growing in beds that have plastic leeching into them. I will continue to weed, mulch and hope for the best. Perhaps, one of the huge round bales of hay should be spread around the trees in the orchard and over the fallow beds and aisles soon.

     No, I’m not using a perjorative name for women, I am referring to the 4 week old meat birds that I am raising for my son. The ones that so quickly outgrew the brooder that they had to be put outside in the chicken tractor with a heatlamp and tarp to give them more room. They don’t have the sense to go up on the perches in the top of the structure to protect them from wind and rain. It only took them 3 days to foul the area under them so badly that the chicken tractor had to be moved today. Unlike the other chicks that I have raised, these birds are ugly and stinky. Even when they are fully feathered, they have naked spots.
These chicks, don’t have the sense to get out of the rain. The hens and rooster get under their coop or inside their coop when it rains. The chicks just sit there and squawk. The chicken tractor is triangular in shape and about 8 feet long.

It has about 12 feet of perches located across its width just above the solid roof, but they stay on the ground in the wire covered area and get wet. It is currently pouring down rain outside. Mostly falling straight down thank goodness. Once it stops, I guess I’m going to have to go out and make sure they aren’t drowned rats.
Dumb chicks!

   
 We have all seen the commercial of the camel, yeah, that one.  Yesterday, one of my hubby’s acquaintances posted an obscene version of it on Facebook.  No, I won’t share it here. I dislike the commercial on television, in fact, I dislike most commercials on television and the insurance ones are the worst offenders.
Today is hump day by definition and we had a very full schedule. Because I was away last week and did not get home until afternoon on Saturday, we missed the farmer’s market. There is one on Wednesday afternoon too, not quite as many vendors, but enough to take care of most of what we needed. We are having guests this weekend and needed meat in quantity for 4 instead of 1 or 2 and veggies as we are currently in a doldrum with only a few tomatoes and peppers ripening, the peas, beans, cabbages and broccoli are still growing and maturing. Wednesday is the day I get my bouquet from the flower share and that also involves a drive to town to pick it up from one of the two Natural Food stores. Wednesday evening is knit night and since I was away all last week, I had 5 extra dozen eggs to share and those ladies are generally ready for some fresh country eggs, so even though I had flowers and farmer’s market goodies that needed to get home, I stopped by for a short visit and sold some eggs.
As we have seven weeks at home before any more travel, babysitting, or other reasons to tie up our schedule, we requested some riding time this week and our instructor suggested today at 2 p.m. We accepted the schedule and that meant that the rest of the afternoon’s errands that couldn’t be done until after 2 would have to be done sore and dirty. We are currently looking for our first horse, and our first appointment to look at one was also supposed to be this afternoon, but we postponed it so that our instructor could go with us to look at the horse.
Every Thursday, we have training for the big dog beast, and that is mid day, messing scheduling much else, as we have nearly an hour drive each way from training. Tomorrow will include a grocery store run for coffee, cream and a few non farmer’s market items and then the house needs cleaning after a two week without one.
I did get some more tomatoes in the freezer for winter, enjoyed some stuffed peppers, the hens are consistently producing 6 or 7 eggs each day with two still not laying. We did get the yard and orchard mowed yesterday and this morning, most of the front bed weeded, but after we bring the dog home tomorrow, we will have to venture back out for fresh mulch for that bed. The wet summer has encouraged, clover, oxalis, smartweed, horse nettle, purslane, dandelions, and anything else that could gain a foothold in the garden beds.
Now, I’m tired, a good tired, but tired just the same. Time to lock up the chickens for the night and get a hot bath and some rest.

This is an interesting word that has erupted into our language in the past decade. One of the bumper stickers seen in town says “Buy Local, Eat Local, Live Local.” In the interest of reducing our carbon footprint, it is a mantra that we strive to live. There are snack food items that we desire and indulge in on occasion, hubby likes cola, crackers and chips and I enjoy pistachios and coffee. I know that these are not local and in no way can be local. For the bulk of our food, we grow it, buy it at the local Farmer’s Market, or do without. We grow organically and patronize those farmer’s who do likewise. We astutely avoid GMO products and seek non GMO snacks, oils, and grains that we do not grow.
The garden each year is planted with those vegetables that both of us welcome on the table. There are some that I would gladly enjoy, but hubby doesn’t care for, and it isn’t worth my time and effort for them. I will indulge in the purchase of butter beans, squash, and Brussels sprouts at the Farmer’s Market when they are in season. So far, I haven’t started an asparagus bed, so they too are a seasonal treat from the market. That said, the variations in the summers here have altered the success of various crops from year to year. There have been years when the pumpkins, gourds, and cukes have nearly overrun the garden. This year only the cukes survived and only for a couple of short weeks produced. Most years, the tomatoes have been abundant, but the cool wet summer has not been kind to them and though, there will probably be enough for our winter fare, there won’t be much to share with our son’s family. Some years, I get almost no peas and beans, this year they are plentiful and with the cool wetness, the broccoli and cabbage are thriving.
With the peppers generously producing and not finding frozen pepper much to my liking, I have been looking for ways to enjoy them. Yesterday afternoon, with the temperatures cool enough to allow the oven to be on, I baked bread. Herb and onion bread, a recipe I have had for decades, one that was always enjoyed by my family and relatively quick to make. It is not a batter bread, but a quick yeast bread that is ready for the oven in about an hour and a half. It smells delightful baking, is delicious hot from the oven and toasted the next day. Since the oven was going to be on, while the bread rose, I minced and chopped veggies, thawed a cup of Farro, and browned a pound of local ground beef, mixed it together and stuffed peppers from the garden. There will be several more meals from the stuffing that was prepared. That and a homegrown cabbaged sautéed, made a meal fit for any guest, had there been one.
With a half a loaf of bread left, this morning’s feast was toasted herb and onion bread with homegrown fresh scrambled eggs with local hard cheese.
Life is good on the farm. By the way, does anyone want a beautiful large Buff Orpington rooster;-)

     This has been a very atypical summer.  We have required very little use of the A/C but umbrellas and rain jackets have been a standard part of most day’s attire.  By now, usually, the fields are brown, the trees showing the stress of lack of water, the garden and deck pots requiring daily watering.  Not so this year.  The fields and woods are verdant, the flowers vivid.

The garden has been less productive this year, too much rain, too cool temperatures. The fall type crops, beans , peppers and coles are thriving. There won’t be many tomatoes for sauce and chili this winter. We will have to vary our winter fare to accommodate this failure. We had a couple of weeks of cucumbers and pickles were made, berries were plentiful and jam was put up, but not a single winter squash or pumpkin survived. A trip to Meadows of Dan is in order in the fall to stock up on them.
Today it is actually chilly. Sitting on the porch requires socks and a sweater to enjoy my coffee and the views. This pattern is to continue through the weekend. I am not complaining about this and neither is our power bill. At least today we have sun.shine

The farm from the SW corner

     It is still a cool hazy morning, a delight in the summer.  Last night dipped to 52f, I can definitely sleep in that kind of weather.  The A/C is off, the windows open, the humidity is tolerable.  Tomorrow, we again get rain, but today is to be enjoyed for what it is.

The morning has been productive, adding hay to the coop, some garden weeding and planting for a fall garden. Last week I planted a bed of green beans, a second planting which won’t produce as many beans, but will give us a much longer growing season for them. This morning, 8 Swiss Chard seedlings, 18 broccoli seedlings, and 24 cabbage seedlings were added to give us some variation for the winter. There will be another planting of peas in a couple of weeks and again, they may or may not give us a crop depending on how hot the late summer is and when we get our first frost this year. Any harvest will add to the peas already frozen.
The sole pumpkin looks very sickly this morning. None of the winter squash survived and produced this year. Such is the life in the garden, some plants thrive on the weather of the season, others falter and die. The cucumbers are prolific this year. The 2 small okra plants provide a few okra every few days and most of it gets roasted with other veggies or steamed whole with beans and I enjoy them fresh. So far it is not a good year for tomatoes, there are fruit on the plants, but they are still green, the only 2 to pink up dropped with blossom end rot. I guess I need more calcium in that bed and they could do with less water, but I have no control over that.
The chicks are now producing 4 to 5 eggs a day, more than we will eat. After our family who will be visiting for 10 days beginning tomorrow morning leave, I will have to find others who would enjoy a few fresh eggs periodically.
Life is good on the farm.

  Last week’s heat wave has moderated to normal summer temperatures, still hot, but mostly tolerable.  The humidity is still wicked and we must be approaching a record for rainfall, at last report, we were only 8″ from the total normally received in an entire year.  The rain has wrecked havoc with the garden this year, the weeds growing fast enough to watch them.  The beans, peppers and cucumbers love it, the tomatoes not so much.  The plants look ok, but there are very few tomatoes and they aren’t ripening.  There is a stellar crop of grapes, I am hoping when they ripen to be able to make grape jelly.

     The garlic has cured and was moved to the root cellar shelves today.

There are now 4 pints of dill pickle spears brining in the refrigerator. The frozen vegetables are accumulating in the freezer. A second planting of beans has been done, the peas will follow soon, the cabbage and chard sprouts are developing on the back deck and they will soon be planted in the garden as well.
The young hens are reaching laying age, we are getting 2 eggs a day from them and hope to be getting about a half dozen a day soon.
It is such a delight to be able to eat from the garden and know that there will be home grown produce this winter and to decorate the house with flowers from the gardens.