12:13 AM, 28 March 2010Cool & overcast
The truck was loaded up and the trees gradually planted; another twenty in the ground, another farm milestone crossed. All the trees save those intended for the 'garden' are now in for the year, those already ordered.
The sheep are doing well, the lambs getting quite big for those no
longer considered 'newborn'; they're getting quite fat and sassy, in fact. In the all-ewe flock, some of the ewes have begun to get combative, battling it out for dominance. One got tangled in the fencing today and had to be rescued by the farmer.There are now over half a dozen eggs in the goose's nest under the porch, and she has two of her fellow geese attempting to run off anyone who comes close. Wimsey escaped out the door today and ran straight into a goose, who ran at him; he opted to try to reach the porch steps, from which he felt territorial enough to try making a stand. We put a stop to that; vet bills are expensive, and our curiosity as to who'd back down or win first isn't that deep.
The barn kittens appear to be entering their final growth stage, and every day they look a little bit more adult, sometimes startlingly alien compared to their kitten selves. They spent a little time bouncing through the grass today, and the black & white cat not only made an appearance but tried to claim the workshop as its turf. We're not sure how that was settled, but when we went to investigate, there was no sign of it.
Alfalfa has been seeded in some spots, to provide nitrogen to the soil and to offer a bit of forage. We'll see how it does. Tomorrow we go to pick up some hardware cloth from the farm store and possibly visit a neighbouring farm for some Jersey butter and cheese.
I had no idea there was so much activity at a farm! Well, I knew a lot went on, but wow!
ReplyDeleteAs farms go, this is a small and quiet farm, nowhere near the industrial scale of things. We have very few power tools of any sort - the only things which spring to mind are a few hand carpentry tools (jigsaw, drill), electricity for the buildings (which includes the well, so that we have running water), and the truck.
ReplyDeleteThe running water and the truck are the two biggies at the moment. Later we will probably get powered crushers and presses, but we just aren't a ten thousand acre row crop farm with a fat contract from Archer Daniels Midland Co.
That means that everything we do on the farm roughly amounts to one manpower, split between two farmers. That means we have to pick our priorities with some care, which in turn means that the minor details of a major farm's day, barely meriting mention, become comparatively major activities for us.
In economic terms, while we have obvious constraints of capital, and of land, our biggest day to day constraint is labour, which we attempt to offset with appropriate planning and information.
Here's a piece of crucial, key, need-to-know information: three foot tree guards are woefully inadequate against any deer we're likely to see here. Six foot steel mesh tubes staked to the ground are more promising.