Destruction

Sometimes, it's just fun to take a sledgehammer to an old manure spreader.

In all seriousness, we spent some time with our angle grinders and skill saws (and ratcheting socket wrench, one of my favorite tools) taking apart our old spreader to make a new wood wagon for hauling cordwood.

We took out the bracing in the middle and tore apart the sides to preserve the axle, wheels and hitch.

Pretty soon we'll put our skillz to work constructing a gorgeous wagon!

Lambs!

I woke up yesterday morning after a busy night of checking the ewes every couple hours. Of course, labor started as soon as chores began and we were all awake anyway. By the time I got to the barn, the first lamb was already out and it's twin was about to be born.

I call this lamb in a bag:

Birth in action:

The older twin looking to nurse and the younger one still lying in its puddle of goo:

Luckily, everyone was healthy and are now happily spending a few days with mom before heading out with the rest of the flock.

Frost Seeding

We aren't just planting vegetables and we're not just planting in the greenhouse. We have to tend to our pastures as well. We spent a few days planting clovers to fix nitrogen into the soil and make our sheep extra happy. The seed, as you can see, is beautiful.

Bacteria does the heavy work of fixing nitrogen while clover simply gives the bacteria place to live. We mixed this lovely pile of bacteria into our seed buckets to inoculate the field.

And used super long sticks to stir.

Even though things still look dead and brown, hopefully we'll see our clover peeking up as the ground thaws.

Tomato Time!

Within our home garden, we each were assigned a few crops to research and chose varieties to plant. I got cherry tomatoes and asparagus. We'll receive year old asparagus plants soon and even though our class won't be able to enjoy them, future students will. I went with black cherry and green grape tomatoes, both of which came highly recommended.

Our neighbor, Maggie (of Maggie's Farm), is famous for producing the earliest tomatoes on our ridge top. She starts them at the end of February and lets them grow for a long time indoors so that they're rather tall by planting time. Since tomatoes are advantageous rooters, meaning that the trunk of the plant will take root, she digs a trench and lays them down in it. She then shares tomatoes with us a month before ours are ready.

I wanted to experiment with this so I started half of the cherry tomatoes early. We'll see what happens!

We're growing three more varieties for the CSA/farmers market so we'll have black, green, red, orange and yellow cherry tomatoes this summer! Yum!

Lambs are Cute

Lambs sure are cute. And rather delicious, if we're going to be completely honest.

Some of the middle schoolers at the farm are angling to name our new lambs (more to be born soon, I hope!) which makes me a bit uncomfortable. We're slaughtering them in a matter of months and I'm not sure about becoming so attached to an animal. I think it's a lot easier to keep that in mind throughout their lives, rather than give in to the temptation to cuddle with them and treat them like you would a kitten or puppy.

Growing Our Food

It's a little strange to think that that tupperware holds all of our produce for this summer. In addition to what we plant in the fields, we plant a home garden for our own use. It's a good way to grow varieties that aren't very marketable (like cherry tomatoes which split easily so they're hard to transport) or crops that don't do well here (cauliflower and sweet potatoes). We have just recently started planting some of these in the greenhouse.

It's pretty fun to watch our first planting of greens come up! I can't wait for the salad that they will turn into a few weeks.

Whoever can correctly identify this seedling gets a gold star:

Lambing

We have lambs coming! Two were born today and pictures will be coming soon. You can also check them out on Lee's blog.

The two nights that Theo and I were assigned to check on them nothing happened besides severe exhaustion the next day. We have four nights this week on 'lambing duty' so I'll keep every one posted if the stork visits our farm again.

A Harrowing Experience

Best morning ever! We drag the chain harrow behind the tractor to pull up dead grass, expose the soil to warm it up and break up clods of manure. To weight it down, we got to do this fun activity:

We weren't quite done by the time lunch rolled around so Olivier jumped on the tractor to finish. He picked up the speed a bit. You can tell the point where I almost fell off by the sudden lack of ability to hold my camera up:

If being a farmer means that I get to do this, sign me up!

It's that time again!

This sure takes me back. Same scene, different season. And please, don't continue reading if you're not interested in the nitty gritties of chicken slaughter.

We were culling layers which is quite an interesting prospect since they each had a few eggs left. The challenge is to capture their peak of production (which is in their first two years) and then cull them when that drops off to maintain a profit. You don't want to be feeding birds who aren't producing eggs and while that might sound harsh, many farms have been ruined financially by farmers unwilling to make hard decisions.

We found eggs in all stages of production which was a pretty neat biology lesson. A few were fully formed and could have been eaten right then, while others didn't have their hard shell yet. The ones to be laid in a few days were simply yokes getting progressively bigger before the chicken produced the white and the shell.

Chicken culling is always sad and it's nice to do at a farm like Maggie's since there's plenty of other people around to go through it with you. We saved all of our layers for stock (and cat food!) so they'll be put to good use even though their days running around the farm are behind them.

Vaccines!

In preparation for lambing, we spent some time vaccinating the ewes. I felt like I was on an episode of ER when I deftly pulled out my two milligrams of CDT (for tetanus among other common sheep ailments) and plunged them subcutaneously into my sheep. Of course, it was a lot easier with Theo holding her still and plenty of moral support.

Here's Brian taking his turn while Josh holds a ewe still.

Very easy and exciting.

Ta-Da!

Remember this? We hung the other door! And put on some very funky handles. I invite any and everyone to the farm to experience the sheer joy of sliding these beauties open. You won't be disappointed!

Shearing Sheep

Our sheep look so naked now without their wool! I got to do number 60 which is excellent since she bit my pants back in October. I haven't forgotten.

Here's us sizing each other up:

Me learning how to use the clippers:

And the wool getting packed up! I took this while sitting in the corner since I was so, so tired. Shearing is really really hard!

Just Kidding!

Remember all those nice pictures of spring? Guess what happened today:

Even Gus got snowy!

It's Spring!!!

There's less snow every day and bits of green are trying to push themselves up through the muddy ground.

Some beds are slowly being uncovered and we got to revisit our turnip crop:

We're spending lots of time in the greenhouse planting seeds:

And we're seeing the fruits (vegetables, actually) of our labors:

One of our first days here we planted winter rye as a cover crop and it has survived the snow! We were thrilled to see it peeking up as winter melts away:

We cleaned up the sheep area for lambing:

And finally, the chickens are probably just as excited as we are! They have been escaping from their run every day to revisit favorite places around the farm:

Bees!

Time to check on our hives! Bee keeping is something I'm really interested in. Not so interested in getting stung, but I'll do a lot for a constant supply of honey.

Jen of Crimson and Clover Farm came by to teach us all about our bees. We started inside learning about their life cycles and common problems we face with them. Then we headed out to one of the back fields to check them out.

When we got here in the fall they were already sealing their hives up for winter so we didn't want to disturb them. Even now we didn't open any of the active hives because it would have mean causing them extra work to weatherproof it again for these late spring days. It was nice to see some of them flying around all ready!

Sadly, some of them didn't make it over the winter. Colony collapse is very common and a reality of keeping bees. Mites are a huge problem and something to be very careful about.

I'm sure there will be more bee info coming soon!

It's Maple Syrup Time!

New England has a whole extra season that other parts of the country lack: icky late winter/ early spring. Nothing says March like dirty, crunchy snow that just won't melt and a forecast of 'wintry mix' for days at a time. To temper these gray days, the forests grace us with the first harvest of the year: maple sap.

We have taps all over the farm and eagerly peer in the buckets hoping to see some sap dripping into them. It takes around 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Alternative? Drinking it while it's still cold from the tree.

We filter the sap from the buckets and pour it into an evaporator. Here is Reid lighting a fire to get things going.

That's all steam rising from the evaporator. Sap starts at around 2% sugar content and you have to boil it until that reaches above 66%. It's got a long way to go which is a good excuse to sit inside a natural sauna instead of venturing out into these final snowstorms.

Seeding

Our first day back at the farm and it was greenhouse time! We started by breaking up all our frozen potting soil.

Next, we filled seed trays and planted our first seeds of the year: onions! So exciting to feel like spring might actually arrive someday soon!

Munich Surprise!

Saying goodbye to Italy and gelato, we flew to our connecting flight in Munich.

Little did I know that Theo is excellent at sniffing out deals and before I knew it, we were staying in Munich for the night since they overbooked our return flight.

It was a whirlwind of a trip but also exciting to get to visit a whole new city and country than we were counting on.

Pigs are Delicious

As an educational/ eco-tourism farm, Spannochia focuses on what they call their 'Noah's Ark' project. They raise Cinta Senese pigs which are an ancient Tuscan breed in an effort to keep them from dying out. They're characterized by their white band across their backs, they long snouts, floppy ears and one curl in their tails. They're also delicious.

We had a pork tasting class which started with talking about the live pigs and moved on to curing their meat. Spannochia does all the cutting and curing themselves and it was pretty cool to see all the steps in the process. These are legs of proscuitto that have beneficial mold growing on them.

We tried a number of different cured meats including lardo (salted lard), proscuitto, capicola, pancetta and a few others which I didn't write down (but admittedly should have).

We even had a boar's head watching the proceedings and ensuring we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.