Tag: haying

The Harvest

Yesterday just as they finished mowing the lower field, it started to rain. We probably got two inches yesterday evening and last night. This morning dawned thick and gray and it didn’t look good for finishing the hay. Jeff unhooked the baler and added a second fork to the back of the tractor and started moving the already baled hay into trailer size loads around the fields. The sun finally came out and the wind picked up, so they tettered the mowed field twice and let it sit for a couple of hours, raked it and finished baling it about an hour ago. The total hay harvest this year is 96 big round bales.

While they were baling, I picked more raspberries. I need less than a cup to make a batch of pure raspberry jam. Another day or two and I will be set. The peas are filling out faster than I can pick them and certainly faster than we can eat them, so tomorrow I will pick, shell and freeze at least a few packages for the winter. There are tiny peppers on some of the plants, blossoms on the tomatillos, the cucumbers, squash and beans are continuing to grow. I think there will be a handful of blueberries soon too. The chickens are enjoying the over matured kale leaves. I think a big armful of kale and chard will accompany me to Northern Virginia in a week when I babysit for 4 days and then bring our oldest grandson here for a few weeks of the summer to help his Mom and Dad out.

The 3 jars of mustard finished their ferment time yesterday and today and were completed and packaged in 8 oz jars for summer enjoyment and to share with our kids.

We started our morning at the Farmers’ Market and came home with radishes, turnips, carrots, spring onions, flowers, beef and pork. We are set for a week of good eating.

Lovin’ life on our mountain farm.

June 21, 2014
Farm Life as Summer Approaches

The 90 hp behemoth at work. There are 47 bales done and they are working to beat the rain on the lower field. He will bale by headlights tonight. The hay is beautiful and thick. That tractor always amazes me, our little tractor is only 28 hp. It would pull the tetter or the hayrake, but the sickle bar and round baler require too much power. We can easily mow with a 5 foot brush hog, power a post hole auger and if we could figure out how to use it, pull the small plow we store in the barn. I am not a short woman and my chin would rest on the top of the back tires of that beast.

Bales in the morning sun.

Jeff has equipment that is modern with CD players and A/C and equipment that is older than my kids. It is always fun when he is working here as he brings one tractor, then another, a hayrake, a tetter, generally he doesn’t trade out the equipment, he just changes tractors for the next job.

In the midst of the chaos, today I found a new wildflower/weed in the front yard which is green, but seems to be more wildflowers/weeds than grass.

This afternoon when I went to pick peas for dinner, I realized that there were still garlic scapes in the garden. I harvested as many as I could hold with the egg basket full of eggs and peas. I was able to make 7 half cup jars of garlic scape pesto and blended the other half of the scapes with olive oil to make a garlicky paste that I dropped in 2 Tbs. plops on foil to freeze for use as fresh garlic in sauces.

I was hoping to get some peas in the freezer for winter, but we are enjoying them fresh so much it is hard to put any away. Peas picked, shelled and cooked within half an hour are a whole different vegetable than even “fresh” peas from the Farmers’ Market.

It has been a productive day on our mountain farm.

June 19, 2014
Olio – June 18, 2014
Olio: a miscellaneous collection of things

Pet peeves of the day;
- the trend of semi fast food restaurants to shout out across the dining area “Welcome to …” each time a patron enters any door of the establishment. Do they really think that is appealing and welcoming?
- also in a semi fast food restaurant or even a real restaurant for an employee to walk up to your table and grab the tray/plate before asking if you are finished with it and say, “May I take your …” One literally tried to take the tray with my husband’s fries on it today while he was still eating them.
- along the same vein, to be in an establishment and have not only your own server ask how your meal is, but anyone else that works there. We have been asked at one steak place we patronize as many as 4 or 5 times by that many different people about how our meal/visit was while we are still seated and eating. Let us enjoy our food in peace.
Today was resupply all the critters feed. We managed to run out of dog food, cat food, chicken layer and chick starter grower all at the same time. That was a car full.

On our way home, we stopped at a local greenhouse and bought 4 new Day-lily plants, different from the two that I have and also bought 3 more pepper plants as some of my heirloom starts didn’t grow once put in the garden. Of course that mean garden work when we got home and it is HOT, HOT, and humid out there today. Two of the Day-lily plants went in the perennial bed in the front of the house. The garage wall bed had gotten grossly overgrown with grape iris, the purple ones that smell like grape Kool-aid.

That is one of 4 huge clusters when they were blooming. They haven’t been thinned in a few years, they were overrunning the English Daisies, and the bed had gotten weedy as well. I dug them all out! I hate to throw them away, but there are too many to replant. I am going to load them in the tractor bucket and dump them where we don’t mow. I bet some of them will come up next year and bloom there. A few of them were moved to a bed by the deck. The rest of the bed now has the other two Day-lily plants, two lavender plants, some English Daisies, a yellow poppy, three clusters of Dutch Iris plants that I divided from the deck area and on the opposite side of the walkway out of the garage side door, the Bronze fennel. The bed is weeded, watered, and mulched with spoiled hay until I can get some more shredded mulch to apply to the bed.

It looks sparse now, but will fill in quickly and have more variety.

The haying is not going as quickly as we had hoped. Jeff is trying to do too much at the same time. They tettered the upper fields yesterday then came back and raked it into rows for baling, but the first bale was too green so they left it to mow the lower field and ran out of fuel. This afternoon the have turned the hay and

hopefully will get it baled this evening as we are due for rain for a few days.

The first batch of mustard is so good, there are 3 batches fermenting now to share. Two are Bavarian style and one is a repeat of the horseradish recipe.

I think I am going to have to buy some sausages to grill soon.

Raspberries are ripening. Tonight I harvested about a cup of them and resisted eating them as I picked. They went into the freezer. As soon as I have a quart, there will be a raspberry jam making session.

Life is good on our mountain farm.
June 18, 2014
It is Hay Time

It is that time of year. We have been watching the fields mowed and baled around us for days. Jeff has been waiting for hot dry days to do ours as we have really good hay this year and he didn’t want to spoil it. There are currently two tractors with sickle bars mowing the upper fields. Tomorrow they will be tettered and tomorrow evening probably baled. The lower field will follow.

For the first bit they were here, both dogs were going nuts in the house, barking and looking out first one window, then the next. They have gotten used to the noise now, but we wouldn’t dare let them outside right now.

The plus side of this is that we will be able to walk our entire property for a few weeks after they are done, and we will be able to see deer and turkey. The negative side is that this will disrupt habitats and we will see more bunnies near the house and mice in the house for a few days. It usually brings out a snake or two.

Life is good on our mountain farm.

June 16, 2014