Some hay, some snow, and a new banjo

Some of you may wonder where I’ve been. The answer is, no where really. I just haven’t posted in quite a while. I do intend to rectify that, and this post will be the beginning.

Things on the homestead are going well. It’s winter now, so some things are slower. The fewer daylight hours and weather affect how much time I spend working on different projects outside. There are chores to be done every day. So, I get out rain or shine at least twice a day.

I moved the cows to the barn just before Thanksgiving. I put it off as long as I could. The limited amount of rain that we had during the summer months affected how the grass grew. I could probably have kept them out on grass for another two weeks, but we were planning on going to North Carolina to visit family for Thanksgiving. Since my dad was going to take care of my chores, I wanted to simplify the process as much as possible, and having the cows in the barn provided that simplification.

I bought a few more bales of hay in order to ensure I have enough to last through the winter months. Usually, we are able to bale enough to feed the animals until grass greens up in the spring, but I only had two cuttings of hay this summer. Also, I was pasturing the cows on part of the ground I usually hay. I hope to not feel a need to buy any next year.

This winter started early with colder temperatures and snow. We’ve had more snow already than we’ve had many winters. We’ve also had temperatures 10 to 20 degrees below normal. It snowed again last night. So, we woke up to a beautiful, white snowscape. For some, I’m sure, the snow was welcomed as a special blessing augmenting their Christmas celebrations. We don’t celebrate Christmas, so it didn’t add any specialness in that regard. It does add some visual beauty to the Sabbath, though!

I’ve not brought home any new composting material for several weeks. The large corporation that owns the local stock yard had some financial trouble and wrote nearly 100 million dollars worth of bad checks (not just here, but in the 11 states in which they have facilities). So, the local facility hasn’t been open for business since before Thanksgiving. I don’t know if it will reopen. Besides, the ground has been wet and muddy which would make hauling anything problematic.

I bought a banjo with the intention of learning to play. It’ll take a while, I’m sure, but I’ll learn. It would be great to just be a good banjo-player, but there’s a process for becoming one. I can’t skip the process. I’ve found some good resources online. I’m learning a lot from Patrick Costello who has written a few books (which are available through Amazon or for free download) and has a ton of instructional material available online, including a lot of YouTube videos. I bought a Gold Tone CC-OT and am learning frailing/clawhammer banjo. Whenever my skills are good enough, I’ll share some of my playing in a video or two. It may be a few months!

I already play the guitar some. I bought a guitar seven years ago and taught myself how to play. I’m not that good with it, but I’m learning more along with my banjo learning. I’d like to be able to play the guitar better, too. So, hopefully, I’ll become relatively proficient on both instruments.

Well, ya’ll stay warm. I’ll try to keep you updated more regularly on the goings on at our place.

Boiling sap for maple syrup

I decided not to tap any of my maple trees this year. I just didn’t feel like doing it, and we still have plenty of syrup from last year. We don’t have very many syrup trees, maybe three dozen at the most. But, our friend Gill who lives across town has a couple hundred he usually taps. Last year he let us collect sap from his trees and boil it down on his evaporator. This year the weather hasn’t cooperated very well, but Gill has been collecting sap for about a week and expects to get more in the next few days. He offered us some sap, because he didn’t think he would get all that he had collected boiled down soon enough.

So, Dad and I went over yesterday to bring home some sap. We didn’t know quite how we were going to evaporate it to make maple syrup, but we figured we would come up with some way. In the past we have evaporated a few gallons inside on our wood stoves. But, we brought home about 85 gallons from Gill’s, and that is too much to do inside. Gill was kind enough to lend us his small evaporator pan. It holds about 15 gallons.

We put the sap in a 275 gallon tote that I had previously had water in for the cows (thankfully, it was empty). When we got back home, I made a quick fireplace with concrete blocks, some pieces of metal, and a short section of stove pipe. It’s large enough for the pan to cover the opening on the top. Keeping a good fire in it allows the sap to boil, evaporating off most of the water, leaving the sugars concentrated for syrup. We finish it inside one the wood stove. It boils away at about 1.5 inches per hour.

I lifted the bed of the truck to tilt the tote, making it easier to get the sap out. The fireplace is near the truck, making it easy to add sap to the pan as needed.

I finished two pints of syrup last night. This is grade “AA” stuff – quite thick and flavorful. I put another pan of sap on last night after taking off the first batch. Before going to bed I was able to add about 6 gallons more sap and then some more this morning for about 27 or 28 gallons all together. I made three pints of grade “AA” syrup form this today. We just took off the third batch we boiled down from about 21 gallons of sap this afternoon. Dad will finish it tonight. There’s another pan on to evaporate tonight and tomorrow morning, hopefully finishing up what we brought home.

When I bring the condensed sap in to finish it, I put it on the stove to boil. Inside I can watch it more carefully and keep from scorching it. Our candy thermometer doesn’t work, even though it is brand new (I don’t know if we’ve ever had one that actually works right). When the syrup started foaming vigorously, I figured it was ready to bottle. I heated pint jars in the oven and boiled some lids. Then, I strained the syrup (a slow process, usually) into the jars, put lids and rings on them, and set them on the counter. They usually seal within 30 minutes or so.

We enjoy the pure maple syrup we make during the rest of the year. It’s great on pancakes, of course.

Where’s the beef?

On May 14, 2007, our Guernsey, Josey, gave birth to Chucky Joe, a little bull calf. It’s been something watching him grow during the last 19.5 months. I banded him when he was a couple of months old (he was just about too big at the time) in order to make a steer out of him. We’ve raised him for beef. Sometime in the next two weeks, we’ll butcher him. I know that to some that may sound like a harsh thing, but that’s what he was created for – to become beef (and to provide the materials to make two powder horns).

Chucky has lived a good life. He’s had plenty of grass and hay to eat and good clean water to drink. He’s gotten to be with or near his mother his whole life. In fact, he still nurses. She never kicked him off. It’s something to see a 900+ pound steer nursing. Josey is just too patient and kind to wean him. I tried to wean him, but it just didn’t work because Josey wouldn’t help. Even those weaner things you put on a calf’s nose didn’t work. He found a way to work around it. I even kept the two of them separate for two and a half months, but when they were together again, it was like they’d never been apart. Finally, I gave up.

If we put off killing Chucky for beef until next winter, I’m sure we’d get more out of it. He’s got the frame to grow quite a bit more, but, I don’t want to keep feeding him for another year. So, his time is coming soon. Dad, Danny, and I will do the job. Mom and Anne will help with the processing, too. We got fewer deer this year than usual, but with the addition of the beef from Chucky, we’ll have enough meat for the coming year.

We don’t buy and eat conventionally raised and processed meat from the store. The way animals are treated and raised and what they are fed and injected with in order to provide that unnaturally-colored meat in the supermarket is horrible. I don’t want to consume it, let alone support the industry and its practices.

I want to know how my meat is raised. I want the animal from which it comes to live a good live, eating good food, and to not be filled with antibiotics and hormones. A cow is not meant to eat a diet of corn and corn products; it is a grass eater. Chucky has eaten grass and hay his whole life; he has lived naturally. The meat we get from him will be healthful and will have been gotten in an ethical, humane fashion. And, apart from some labor and a little fuel and string for making bales of hay to feed him, it’s free meat. In my book, that’s good.

Hay in the loft

During the summer, Dad and I bale as much hay as we can off of the fields here on the farm. It’s not the best hay, yet, but it is improving, I think. This last year we baled over 500 bales. For some people, that isn’t very much, but it’s a good amount for us. It’s enough to feed our cows during the winter and Dad’s goats year-round. My old hay equipment makes the job take longer than newer, more expensive equipment would, but I could afford it.

It’s a wonderful feeling to have the loft full of hay. If you don’t cure and store hay properly, you can create a fire danger, though. I don’t put hay in the loft of my barn unless I’m confident about it’s state of dryness. If hay is baled before it is properly cured, it will grow mold and/or mildew. That’s not what I want for my animals.

My barn is an old tobacco barn. In years past, the people who farmed the fields on our place grew Burley tobacco. When they took it out of the fields, they hung it from tier poles in the barn to dry/cure for a couple of months. Of course, the growing of tobacco year after year depleted a lot of nutrients from the soil – something we continue to work on, especially in the garden areas on the farm.

I don’t grow tobacco, and have no desire to. So, I’ve worked to convert the barn to be serviceable for animals. A few years ago, I put about 800 square feet of hay loft space in it. We used tier poles we took down in the barn for floor joists and nailed onto them a couple bundles worth of rough sawn oak barn lumber for the floor. We added some cedar posts in places on the first floor to help support the loft. I figure that I could store about 800 bales of hay in it. This year after summer ended, we had close to 700 bales in it, counting what we baled and what was left from last year.

I designed the hay feeder so that hay can be dropped from the loft down to the animals. It makes no sense to make extra work feeding livestock. It’s a fair bit of work putting the hay in the loft during the summer (we put it in as soon as it’s baled so it doesn’t get dew on it or rained on), but in the winter it’s nice to be able to feed it easily. As I’ve also said before, having the animals in the barn during the winter months allows their nutrient-rich manure to be collected for later use on the fields and garden. If they were out on pasture during the winter months, they’d really make a mess of the wet ground, and their manure would not be able to benefit the soil and plants as it does in the summer. Besides, they wouldn’t be as warm and secure as they are while in the barn.

Another benefit of having hay in the barn is that the children love to play there. They climb on the stacks of hay and play hide-and-go-seek. Last summer, they even slept in the loft overnight when they had cousins visiting. I routinely find “ropes” of baling twine that they’ve made and have tied to the rafters for swinging on.

There are stairs for getting into and out of the loft (there are other ways, of course, as my children would readily show you). They are steep but are quite serviceable. A friend gave them to me after we took them out of his house and built a new set of stairs for him. All in all, having a hay loft with hay in it is a great blessing for which I am quite thankful.

Hunting with my boys

We had two weeks of rifle season here in November. I did not see any deer. Dad saw some three different times, but, alas, he didn’t harvest any of them. Even though we didn’t get any deer (actually, I got a small one with the van the week before rifle season), it was still enjoyable to spend several hours in the woods or in the deer blind.

The boys wanted to go hunting with me. So, one morning I woke Malchiah up at 5:00am to go out with me. We walked to the blind in the dark and got situated. Once in place, the idea is to sit still without making noise while watching for deer to come by. Sitting still and quiet for 2.5 hours for a six year old is a pretty big task. Malchiah did admirably well, but he grew bored after the first hour. He laid down on the ground and played with a piece of wire. He did perk up and get excited when a flock of turkeys crossed the creek and began working their way across the field. He encouraged me to shoot them, but I explained that it wasn’t turkey season and that a rifle isn’t the best gun to use for shooting a turkey. After the turkeys went into the woods, we headed back to the house.

Ramiah went out with me that afternoon. Perhaps, sitting still and quiet for that length of time is easier for an eight year old, but he still was fidgety at times. Still, no deer came by during our time in the blind that afternoon. No turkeys either. Ramiah went with me one more afternoon during muzzleloader season. No deer then, either. But, we watched two coyotes walk across the field.

Venison from the deer we shoot and ones that neighbors give to us is the primary meat we eat during the year. This year we have a steer to process, so the limited amount of venison won’t be a problem.

Someday I expect the boys will do much of the hunting to bring home meat for the family.

Our new pond: current photos

The pond is currently a little less than two feet from being at full pool. Another two or three inches of rain should bring the level up to the overflow. The children and I have enjoyed skipping stones on the water and thinking about swimming next summer.

We added 200 1” – 3” redear sunfish on November 25. Actually, Dad put them in the pond since we were in North Carolina visiting family (we left Mom and Dad here to take care of things). I only found three fish that didn’t make it. The children and I occasionally see some of the them swimming near the surface. We also put 2 pounds of flathead minnows in at the same time. I haven’t seen any of them, but I don’t reckon they went anywhere else.

I took the following photos a few days ago. The pond level hasn’t changed since then. I’ll post some more photos when it’s full.

    

Deep bedding

I had to move the cows to the barn earlier this year than I wanted. That was the fault of a failure to plan ahead sufficiently and the fault of having more than just a couple of cows. We had our two milk cows, Chucky Joe (steer for beef this winter), Buster (a young steer for beef next winter), and Aggie (Buster’s mother who belonged to a friend). Spice was also on the pastures eating grass. So, the grass ran out earlier than I wanted.

I prepared the barn for housing the cows over winter. The hay Dad and I cut is all stored in the barn. So, it made sense to me to move the cows to the hay rather than move the hay to the cows. Besides, I’d rather have the cows warm and dry during the winter.

The last couple of years when we’ve had one or two cows, I’ve kept them in the barn, too. I would put down fresh bedding every day after removing the soiled bedding. This bedding and manure was piled outside to compost and be used in the garden/fields later. It was a lot of work, though, forking out the heavy, wet, soiled bedding twice a day.

This year I’m trying something new for me: deep bedding. The idea is to not clean out the cows’ mess but, rather, to continue adding fresh bedding on top, letting it accumulate and build up inside the barn. Adding fresh carbonaceous materials (bedding, like, old hay and straw) traps the nutrients in the manure, holding them and allowing the composting process to begin. The non-aerobic composting that occurs within the bedding will also provide some heat for the cows. It makes a nice soft floor/bed for them, too. Adding fresh bedding every day keeps their beds clean and dry which helps the cows to stay clean and dry.

They have a small area to lounge outside, too, but they spend most of their time inside the barn where the hay is. This is good. All that good stuff coming out their backsides is being incorporated into the bedding for later use.

I’ve been adding oats to the bedding as I throw down more old hay or straw. These are to feed the pigs. No, I don’t have any pigs, but I plan on getting a couple in the spring so I can put them to work.

The thing about the bedding is that with several thousands pounds of bovines walking around on it and the composting action going on within, it will be packed down and will be dense. I don’t relish the thought of forking and shoveling it loose in the spring (my back hurts just thinking about it). A better idea is to let a couple of pigs loosen it for me, aerating it and helping the aerobic composting process along. But, pigs need a good reason to root it all up. Hence, the grain that I’m adding. It’s pig food for when I get a couple pigs in the spring.

If I ate pig, this would be idea. But, I don’t eat it. It’s a moral choice. So, I’ll sell the pigs after they’ve worked for me by getting the bedding loosened in the spring. I expect that the bedding will be three feet deep or more by then. Think of all the good nutrients to be added to the garden and fields!

Oh, one more thing. With all that carbonaceous material being added, it does not stink. If it smells bad, that means you’re losing nutrients. The carbon materials hold the nitrogen and other nutrients. That’s a great thing about compost – you don’t loose the good stuff!

The kitchen floor: gettin’ rid of ugly

When we bought our farm, the only “livable” space was an old mobile home. It’s UL listed according to the 1972 standards. It was dirty, dark, and smelled of mothballs when we first saw it. It has evidence of roof leaks and leaks around windows. It’s an old mobile home.

We’ve done things to make it more livable over time. We removed the brown shag carpet from the living room. And, the original green carpet that was under that. Then, we patched places where the floor was rotted out near the walls and put down laminate flooring. That made the living room much better.

The next room we tackled was a bedroom. It had the original green carpet. In the corner of the room, the carpet was about the only thing keeping things from falling through to the nether regions under the house. We removed the old, nasty, dirty, disgusting (add your own adjectives here) green carpet, patched holes and rotted places in the subfloor, and then put down laminate. We also added some big windows to the room.

Later, we installed laminate in the hallway and remodeled the bathroom, creating a small half bath off of the bedroom. These too received new flooring.

The one room that still had the original flooring was the kitchen. It needed replaced, but I was reluctant to do so because it meant moving everything out, including the heavy wood cookstove. The old linoleum was a “lovely” gold and green color with a fascinating pattern designed to excite the senses and provide cover for dirt hiding thereon. It was also rapidly deteriorating as pieces of it were wearing off.


The thing that motivated me to replace the floor was a leak under the kitchen sink. One of the housings on our reverse osmosis water filter developed a crack. Before we noticed it, much water had leaked and had saturated the subfloor under the sink. It should be noted that the subfloor in this lovely manufactured house is nothing more than particle board, a material that dissolves into nothingness when it becomes wet.

Rather than have the horror of someday soon watching someone washing dishes disappear through the floor along with the sink, I decided to fix the problem. While I was at it, it seemed appropriate to replace the ugly linoleum with something better – laminate in an oak pattern.

My dad helped me complete the job. It took us two days and involved taking everything out of the kitchen and then tearing out the gold & green linoleum. Once it was removed, we cut out the bad sections of the floor and replaced them with something solid (new boards). Once the floor was repaired, we laid the laminate flooring. What an improvement!

Digging potatoes

Yesterday and today while I’ve been working on the house, Dad’s been digging potatoes. We planted 50 pounds of Yukon Gold seed potatoes and at least that many of the Kennebec. We used potatoes left from last year’s harvest for the Kennebec. As he digs the potatoes, he’s putting them in the barn. Last year I laid out the potatoes as I dug them on a canvas drop cloth in an empty stall in the barn. The potatoes seemed to do very well there. It’s fairly cool, dark, and generally has a slight breeze filtering through. They kept well until fall when I put them in our cellar.

Out of the Yukon Gold potatoes, Dad dug 6-1/2 bushels of potatoes. There were quite a few nice-sized ones. They didn’t seem to produce a lot per hill, but what was there looks good. He dug two rows of the Kennebec potatoes this morning. These were on the less fertile side of the patch. Out of those two rows, he ended up with a little more that 1/2 bushel. So, that makes just over 7 bushels so far. There are another nine rows of the Kennebec, I believe.

I’ll see about some photos later.

Do we need this many green beans?

Last year Anne canned many, many quarts of green beans. We had oodles of them. The thing is, we really don’t care for them canned. We much prefer them frozen. Fresh is even better, but that’s seasonal. As it turns out, we had several dozen quarts we didn’t eat. They’ll keep, of course, but we’re getting bushels of fresh ones from the garden now. So, we gave all that we had left over to some friends to whom they are a great blessing. We’re freezing ones from this summer.

Right now, Ramiah and Malchiah are snapping green beans, and Anne just put a few quarts in the freezer. I picked a bushel and a half a week ago. They needed picked again the end of last week, but my back still hurt from the previous picking. My dad was kind enough to pick. He spent two or three hours picking on Friday, but stopped when he’d filled all three five-gallon buckets he had. There’s still another quarter of the beans to be picked, and they don’t want to stop producing.

Earlier, when Dad and I talked about what to grow in the garden this year, we figured we didn’t need too many green beans. Mom and Anne were considering preserving many since we had so much left over. Dad planted two 50 foot long double rows using beans I saved for seed from last years crop. What was he thinking? We’ve picked five or six bushels off of them so far, and they are threatening to produce another three or four bushels. How many do we need?

When planting a garden, it’s hard not to plant the seeds you have and set the plants you have in the space available. But, that’s not always a good idea. You can be overwhelmed by the produce. I find it hard to not pick it when it needs picked, even if we don’t need it. We give away what we can, but often, other people have an abundance just as we do and don’t want our extra.

We can be thankful, though, for the blessing of abundance. It’s great to have the problem of figuring out what to do with too much food rather than what to do with too little.

Blueberry propagation

We have a few blueberry bushes that we’ve planted in the previous three years. There’s a local blueberry farm that sells berries and plants. They actually sell thousands of plants every year that get shipped all over the world. Last year Dad, Danny, and I picked berries for a couple of days for them. We took payment in blueberries rather than in cash.

Our bushes are small yet, and there aren’t very many. We’d like to be able to grow more of our own. We could buy plants from Bluegrass Blueberries, or we could start our own to set out. Danny has been picking berries again this year, and he asked a lot of questions about blueberry propagation. Apparently, it is quite easy to new plants going.

For our propagation endeavor, I set an old tractor rim that was in my barn out near the garden and filled it with peat moss. Peat moss can be bought from places that sell plants and gardening supplies. Another alternative that works well is saw dust. I believe that raw saw dust from a saw mill rather than from a cabinet shop would be better. I didn’t have any saw dust other than from cedar logs available, and it has oils in it that makes it less than ideal.

Once filling the rim with peat moss, I began to add water in order to soak it well. It took a lot of water. We needed it to be well saturated. I think we added enough water to make it a peat bog.

Once the propagation area was ready, Danny and I went to get some blueberry clippings. We cut new growth off of the plants. Some cuttings were only three or four inches long, but others were over a foot. It just depended on the plant and the kind of growth it had put out.

We took the cuttings to the tire rim. Danny then began to cut the longer ones into shorter lengths. He cut them so that they each had at least three leaf nodes. We removed all but the top one or two leaves and then stuck the cuttings into the wet peat moss where they’ll stay for the next year or so. I’m keeping them well watered so that the peat moss stays moist.

It was cloudy and rainy when we put them out and for the next couple of days which is good because you don’t want them to have too much sunshine which can dry them out and kill them. Because we expected to see the sun again before too many days passed, I put a shade above the cuttings. Normally, a 50% shade cloth is used. I used what we had available, and I don’t know what it’s rated at. I set it up a few feet above the cuttings so that I can get under it to water them. At that height, they also get some morning and some afternoon sun.

We put 70 cuttings into the peat moss. We hope to have at least 50 plants survive until next fall (2010). We’ll have prepared a place for them and will set them out at that time. They do better when set out during the fall as opposed to being set out in the spring.

Baling hay

One of our summer activities is baling hay when the grass in the fields has grown enough and the weather cooperates. The first step in the process is cutting the grass using my 1950 John Deere MT with a John Deere 8W sickle mower. I enjoy mowing. It’s pleasant to hear the two cylinder engine putt-putting along with the clicking of the sickle while watching the grass fall. We had a nice stretch of weather forecast, so I mowed the field behind the ridge on a Sunday afternoon. It’s four or five acres in size.

Ramiah and I walked through the field the next morning with pitchforks to break up and spread the grass where it had gotten clumped together. This is an important step to ensure that the grass will dry. Green or wet grass will not make good hay; it has to be dry. Thankfully, this task didn’t take long because there were only a few clumps and the weather was forecast to be excellent drying conditions.

Late Wednesday morning, I raked the hay into windrows. It would have been dry enough to bale on Tuesday afternoon, but we were occupied with other activities. For raking the hay, I use my 1966 International 424 with a Massey-Ferguson rake. One of the challenges on the field behind the ridge is to rake the hay away from the upper edge where there is a hump left from it being plowed years ago.

Once it was raked into windrows, it was about 11:30. Dad and I decided that we would start baling, planning on finishing baling and picking up the bales after lunch. So, I hooked up the baler, a mid-50s IH 45T that doesn’t tie consistently, to the 424 and headed to the field.

When baling Dad walks alongside the baler, watching for any bales that aren’t tied properly. He also pulls the finished bales off the baler and stacks them together with any other nearby completed bales. The old 45T is doing well when it ties a dozen or more bales consecutively without messing up a knot. It seems like we have to stop a lot to retie bales. If we don’t get things in order when it missties, it’ll mess up on the following bales. It’s a nuisance, but better than putting up loose hay. I’d like to get a more reliable baler when I can (but it needs to not be too expensive).

After we completed baling the field, we quit for lunch. After lunch we came back with the truck and trailer to pick up the bales and take them to the barn. It doesn’t take too long to pick the bales up from the field and stack them on the truck and trailer. Putting them in the barn is probably the hardest part. If I didn’t have 300 bales of straw stacked in the middle of my barn, I could drive in with the loaded hay and toss the bales up to the loft. As it is, we have to back the trailer up to the straw and toss the bales through a smaller opening into the loft. I tossed them up to the loft, and Dad stacked them.

 

By the time we had them all stacked in the hay loft, it was time to quit. We only baled 98 bales this time. There’s still another field to cut and bale. I’m watching the weather. It’ll probably be next week. I expect 150 bales out of that field. With what we have left over from last year and what we’ve already baled, we ought to have extra hay this year.

Playing in the dirt

We’ve had some nice weather the last few days. The temperature has been very nice – in the 70s the last couple of days. There was a chance of rain at the end of last week, but thankfully we didn’t get any. I’m thankful because that allowed things to continue to dry out enough so that we could work on the gardens.

Three weeks ago I was able to disk the garden areas, including the new ground in the turkey pen I tilled last fall. This particular spot is within a fenced area where we’ve grazed goats on a rotational basis in the past. For the last year or so, the turkeys have enjoyed it as their main paddock. That’s why we call it the turkey pen. It’s a nice, level piece of ground near the main garden area. It’s grown some nice clover during the last six years since we’ve lived here. I worked it up because of its apparent fertility and because it’s already fenced. We had problems with deer eating things in the garden last year, primarily sweet potatoes. Although deer can easily jump over the 4 foot fence around the perimeter of this area, the existing fence will make it easier to keep them out. Adding extensions above the field fence will not be too difficult.

Last week I hauled two truck loads of manure from the stock yard in town and dumped on the turkey pen garden. Each load was approximately 3500 pounds and consisted of a lot of saw dust. I spread it out with a shovel and rake as evenly over the ground as I could after dumping it – completing this task on Sunday of this week.

On Monday, I borrowed some equipment from a friend. He’s a very generous and kind person who we are truly blessed to know. I borrowed his  sub-soiler, tiller, broadcast spreader, and field cultivator. I had hoped to use the spreader to put lime on the garden areas. However, it didn’t work for spreading lime (it’s designed for broadcasting seeds). So, Dad and I threw lime out of the back of the truck onto the turkey pen ground. We dumped what was left over to be added to other garden areas as desired (we didn’t want to throw it by shovel over the other garden area which is much larger).

I used the sub-soiler on both garden areas and two other small fields. It helps to open the ground up fairly deep – about 18-24 inches with this single-shank sub-soiler. We actually spread the lime after doing the sub-soiling. After that, I tilled both areas, preparing the ground for planting.

It’s still early in the season, but weather like we’ve had starts the itch to play in the dirt. The things that can be planted at this time are the early-season, cold-hardy crops. While I continued working on the other fields that needed to be worked, Dad pl anted onions and potatoes yesterday and today. We usually don’t grow enough onions. So, we have purposely set out to change that this year. Dad bought 5 pounds of onion sets a week or so ago, and he set out several in his garden near his house. I bought 6 pounds of onion sets last week and another 10 pounds on Monday. Dad planted all that I bought and what he had left over – about 18 pounds of onion sets (about 1,000 feet in 20 rows). I hope they grow well so that we can have enough onions this year!

Dad finished planting the onion sets this morning. After lunch we sorted out some of the smaller potatoes we have left over from what we grew last year (we planted 100 pounds of Kennebec potatoes last year). Dad put these in the ground this afternoon. I don’t know how many pounds we had to plant, but he planted 13 rows (each row is 40-45 feet long – so about 500 feet of potatoes). We will plant more Kennebecs and some Yukon Gold (I bought 50 pounds of Yukon Gold seed potatoes on Monday).

 

Our idea is the to try to grow plenty of the staples: onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes. I made a hot bed for starting sweet potato slips. I dug a 2 feet by 3 feet hole 12 inches deep, added about 5 inches of fresh cow manure, and put 3 inches of sand on top of that. I’ll lay out sweet potatoes saved from what we grew last year and cover them with more sand. The manure will heat up, keeping the soil warm (sweet potatoes need warm soil to sprout). The sweet potatoes will send up multiple sprouts. When they’re big enough, these slips can be twisted off and planted in the garden (once it’s warm enough outside – they don’t like it cold). I hope to put out about 400 sweet potato slips with the primary variety being Georgia Jet (these did the best for us last year out the five varieties we grew).

I’ll be starting tomato seeds soon. We saved seeds last year. We grow open-pollinated and heirloom varieties so that we can save seeds. There will be a lot more things to get started and planted in the next 6 weeks or so, but it sure is nice to get started on the process. There’s just something about playing in the dirt.

I'm in North Carolina for the weekend

Anne and I decided on making a quick trip to North Carolina to visit her siblings. We didn't get to go for Thanksgiving last year. It's become a yearly tradition for all five siblings and their associated families to get together for Thanksgiving and Ruth and Harvey's house. Last year, for various reasons, we were unable to attend, and we missed everyone. So, earlier in the week, we decided to make the trip.

We're staying at Ruth's house, and Anne's other siblings will come over on Sunday. They all live within 2 or 3 hours of Ruth's house. We'll be heading back home on Tuesday.

Mom and Dad are taking care of things at home while we're gone. There are many advantages to having a homesteading community. One of these is that it provides built-in help. Dad's been helping me a lot during the last week or so with cutting and skidding cedar logs out of the woods. These will be for the house. While we're gone, he's taking care of the bovines and the turkeys.

Although he's nine months old, Chucky Joe still believes that he needs to nurse, and Josey continues to let him do so. He went a week or two without nursing. I think that Josey kicked him off during that time because he had made her teats sore. But, since they've healed (mostly), she's let him back at it. The calf weaner didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference for him. So, I took it off the other evening.

Actually, with him nursing, it makes chores a little easier. Chucky gets locked up separately at night, and I milk in the morning. This also gives Dad the option of not milking while we're gone -- just leave Chucky with Josey to do the job.

There's a lot of work to be done once we return home. It'll soon be gardening time, and there's a lot I want to do on the house. Taking this trip now is good because it's before the really busy time gets going. It's nice to see everyone. Anne is out enjoying they day treasure hunting with Ruth.

General goings-on

Spring is approaching. Or, at least it sure has felt like it. We’ve enjoyed some nice, warm temperatures during the last couple of weeks. This winter has been different (they all are, though) in that we’ve had some frigid weather with temperatures near zero and some warm weather with temperatures over 70. I had planned on tapping some maple trees and making syrup, but the weather hasn’t cooperated to make that really doable. We’ve made syrup the last two years. Maybe next year will provide cooperative weather.

Wednesday of this week we had a windy day. The storms that moved through the central part of the country mostly missed us, except for the wind. Other places got it worse than we did, though. We only received about three tenths of an inch of rain, and all of that seemed to come within 15 minutes. That’s alright, though, since the ground is still plenty soft from the previous rains. Winter time is like that though; around here it seems that the ground doesn’t dry out until summer. It does somewhat, but it sure seems like we have mud from November to May.

Anne and mom took the opportunity to run off to Glasgow on Wednesday to do some treasure hunting. They both enjoy spending time looking for bargains in thrift shops and antique shops. Dad came over so that he and I could go over our garden plans for this summer, mainly determining if there are any seeds we need to order. There are only a few like onion seeds and some seeds for winter squash. We saved a lot of seeds from last season’s gardening, including tomato, corn, squash, okra, green bean, pepper, arugula, and basil seeds along with some others. We grow open-pollinated and heirloom varieties so that we can save seeds. We also have potatoes to plant and will start some sweet potato slips.

Yesterday, dad and I worked on pulling some cedar logs out of the woods. He wrote a post about it on his blog and I wrote one on my Cedar Ridge Farm blog. It was a great day for working outside, and the previous day’s rain didn’t make things too wet and sloppy to get the job done. I’ll have some more logs to cut and skid out of the woods.

With the nice weather, I’ve been able to work on some house projects. It’s kind of nice to be able to focus some attention on it. I’ve actually been motivated to spend some time thinking about the project and planning for different aspects of it. So, I’ve posted a few times to Cedar Ridge Farm, and I expect there’ll be a lot more posts on that blog in the coming weeks and months. It is my hope to get a great deal of the house project completed this year. So, keep an eye on my other blog, too. 

Spring and summer are busy times of the year, but there is such a richness in living the life we do. We count it a blessing every day that we have opportunities to work together, to grow good food and not be completely dependent on that which is called food but really isn’t (standard grocery/restaurant fair), and to be surrounded by such fabulous beauty as can only be found in God’s glorious creation!
     

Chucky Joe is home

On Monday, January 26, we brought Chucky Joe home. Chucky is our 8-month old calf. Josey had become lonely during Chucky’s absence. The week prior to Thanksgiving, I took him to a friend’s farm to stay for a while. I wanted him weaned, but he had a problem recognizing the fact that he wasn’t supposed to climb over the fence. Granted, he only went over the fence in one place where I needed to fix it, but all the same, we didn’t want him getting to momma and taking all the milk. It was becoming more difficult with how we have things set up here to keep him separate from Josey. So, we packed him up and took him away.

Two months later I figured he ought to be well weaned and would no longer try to nurse. That, and Josey was lonely. She needed a companion. So, the children and I headed over to bring him home. He led out of our friend’s pasture just fine and loaded on the trailer with no problems. When I unloaded him near our barn, he recognized where he was and seemed excited to be home. He called out, and his momma answered him right away. As I took him around the barn, Josey excitedly came out of the barn with a special skip in her step. I let Chucky go and stayed to watch the reunion.

They were happy to see one another. They sniffed each other, and, then, Chucky decided he needed to nurse. Two months wasn’t long enough after all. I dissuaded him from nursing, but he continued to try. So, I locked him in a separate stall, not wanting to sacrifice the evening’s milking to a calf too old to need to nurse but too young to know better.

I went into town and bought a calf weaner from the feed store. It attaches to the calf’s nose and is supposed to make it difficult for him to get to his momma’s teats. It also has some tabs that are meant to poke the momma a little bit so that she will kick the calf off when he tries to nurse. Well, when I put it on Chucky and put him with Josey, he still figured a way to nurse. Figuring that the one I bought may have been too small, I returned to the feed store and bought the larger one. It seemed to work when I first put it on him. But, later in the evening, it was clear that he had figured out how to nurse with it on anyway.

In some ways, this worked out well. Anne and I made our trip to Michigan, and while we were gone, I left the weaner off of Chucky and just let him nurse. This meant that Dad didn’t have to do the milking. He wasn’t disappointed in this deprivation, either. Once we returned, I reattached the weaner to Chucky’s nose, figuring maybe it would at least slow him down. I was just going to separate him at night so that I would have the morning’s milk until I could get another weaner of a different design. However, somewhere in the first day or two after we returned, he decided it just wasn’t worth his trouble. He no longer tries to nurse. I’ve left the weaner on him, though, but it’s nice that we’re still able to milk twice a day as we really appreciate the cream, the milk, and the yogurt we make on a regular basis.

Josey and Chucky seem happy together. Contentment has returned to the barn now that Josey has the companion she needs.