November has rolled into December; but we haven't been idle on the farm in the slightest. The lab results have come in for five of our wine varietals, allowing us to be one step closer to getting them into stores. As you can see, Nibs and a friend are pleased as punch with this news, as are we. We have been in communication with our commissioned artist on the labels as well, and although the farm's cats may be sleeping off the snoozy wet weather, we are doing anything but.

 While the cats sleep, the elements have been unpleasant. Wet, muddy weather is the norm in this part of the world, but it hasn't been a particularly white winter; the cold wind and endless rain have caused numerous losses in our sheep flocks, which we've been dealing with as they arise. So far our best success stories have involved quick location of floundering sheep combined with judicious use of calorie supplements, blankets and hot water bottles. The trick is that many of them don't show signs of distress until it's just too late.

We did however have a white holiday. It didn't last long, but it was pretty while it did. The sheep were grateful for the respite and displayed absolutely no difficulty in getting around in the snow. Our goal is to see lambs in spring of 2013, and with a little hard work and a little luck, our wines on shelves around then as well. May 2013 bring us all the peace and prosperity which seems so sorely lacking in 2012's world, from us to all of you.

The previous weekend, we spent chopping and washing and crushing and pressing a lot of 650 lb of Granny Smith apples grown in state and picked earlier the same week. Having worn our muscles tired, we nonetheless greet the end results with great cheer. The pitch was made later on, and the honey shall be added in due course.

 It seems a fitting sort of activity for early November. The crispness of the air, the scattered clouds overhead, the last frenetic efforts on the part of local wildlife to fill their bellies, all proclaim the coming of winter in no short order. The last of the harvest must be gotten in, and any fattening not done for the winter must be done posthaste.

 The tailgate of the pickup truck made an excellent workbench for our efforts. The shortness of time lent vigor to our activities, with the need to be done before rain came, before daylight ended, before our all too brief weekend was spent, its wasteful hours not laid in vain but in honest toil, the sort of which the Puritans all too grimly spoke but in the end result of which we can proclaim our relief and pleasure.

 One farmer to wash and chop, one farmer to grind and press - much work in all too few hours!

 We shifted about halfway through from halving the apples to quartering them. This made the crushing and pressing go much faster in return.

 With hand-powered tools, there is no shortage of muscle wear!

 Of course, when setting off on a full day's labor, a hearty farm breakfast is essential - in this case, streaky rashers of bacon, oat porridge with or without a lick of strawberry preserves, scrambled eggs, and blackcurrant & crystallized ginger scones kept us going all day without need for lunch.

The grass is white.
The ducks walk across the pond.
The sheep stand huddled in thin, low rays of sun, waiting for it to warm their dark wool.

It's Winter.

Blessed relief

Perhaps it is hard for those who live in cities to quite appreciate the strain which unfortunate weather can put on farmers.  It seems like such a little thing, when radio announcers are confidently talking about glorious sunshine, beach weather and bright days.

We can't hope to communicate the situation in an entirely personal fashion, but watching a lamb nose around in dry grass for something succulent, watching the grass stop growing, and as it gets gradually grazed down, exposing the dust beneath, watching the water in troughs fall by inches every day as thirsty animals try to make up for what their grazing can't give them, fills one with a sense of impotence.

Dryland farmers are doubtless laughing at the idea that two or three rainless months are much trouble, and in the big picture they are right, of course, but when one's pasture consists of plants which are used to frequent water, and which quickly suffer heat and drought stress, even a single dry month can really change things in a hurry.  Three months is not catastrophic, but very troublesome.

The older trees have enough roots that they can water themselves from the water table, but we may well have lost a few dozen of the younger ones.  One hopes that the losses will be fewer than that, but dessicated leaves on young twigs tell their own story.

This morning at last the rains have come, gentle but apparently enduring rains which start to soak the earth.  We are trying to balance the activities of our grazers so that dust does not immediately transmute to mud, but in the end the rain is so welcome that this is a vastly preferable problem to have.

Hot and dry Autumn

August, September and now the first days of October have been nearly universally warm and dry.  Save for a little dew in the mornings, there has been no real relief.  The pastures are dry, and it is easy to pick out where water troughs have overflowed by the patches of greenery.

Some of last year's trees (which were largely seconds, not prime picks from the nursery) show signs of severe drought stress, and some will surely succumb.  Since we lack the permit to irrigate, we have to take it as it comes and accept the losses where they occur.

The sheep and the birds alike have been going through a lot of water, but we need no permit to water them.  This is good, because especially the sheep have been grazing the dry pastures and they need their water to keep up.

We are now past the autumnal equinox, and the days are rapidly growing shorter.  This gives some relief, and the days are cooling down, but it also means that we largely missed the late season growth spurt for lack of water.

There is some good news, at least.  All of our cultivated land is now enclosed, so that the sheep can engage in weed control all over.  We will have to have them inspected soon, and divided for the mating season.  Already the rams are showing signs of rutting temper.

We went to Oregon to obtain three ewe lambs of pure british blood for Bolivar, so that we can develop that end of our breeding strategy.  They are young, but in fine shape.

The rest of our flocks are also largely in fine shape, and we will be breeding more of our ewes than last season because of this.  This should help us establish the numbers to meet the needs of the USDA's scrapie export standards.

On the wine front, things are making gradual progress.  Having found that the micron scale filters clog too easily with merely siphoned wine, we have obtained a centrifuge for mechanical clarification.  Test runs have been very encouraging, so that we should be able to clarify and bottle wine in a couple of reliable passes.  We will of course have to have all our recipes certified by the TTB, but we have kept good laboratory notebooks throughout, and should be able to pass that hurdle without undue trouble.

The mead is light, very suitable for hot weather sipping, while the cyser we are making has more body and personality, and both are aging rather nicely.  As soon as the authorities are satisfied, we are sure to find some glad buyers.

We apologize for the delay in further posting; as you can clearly see, we were unavoidably held up. The summer has proven busy, and the cats have been stern taskmasters in keeping us focused on the work to be done at all times. Not that they have found it too unbearably arduous; even with such demanding work as keeping farmers busy at our purpose, they've managed to find some time to get some rest. Of course, not every restful nap is as sleepy as it looks.

What has kept us so busy beneath our feline masters, you may ask? Many things, not least of which has been further fencing in of acreage, rotating of sheep for pasture management, getting our porch screened in, baking countless loaves of bread, putting up gallons of strawberry preserves, guarding our chickens from owls and our ducks and geese from hawks, planting, weeding and generally maintaining our garden, and shooting not one but two skunks coming after our eggs.

The cats have been somewhat helpful in the last bit; one of our largest cats has shown great alertness and excitement when skunks show up, kindly informing us of their presence. Unfortunately, shooting them causes quite a stink - not so much with the neighbors as much as a more literal stink, which even now is still lingering, and in the hot August air, carries quite a ways. After the second one was shot, though, while we startled a raccoon in its stalkings, we haven't seen another skunk - yet.

The bees are happy that it is August, and put even we tired farmers to shame with their industry. Whether it's catnip flowers, daisies, or the humble dandelion, they can be seen almost everywhere, pollinating and collecting. Humble bumblebees these, for the most part, they present no real malice or menace, although the mosquitoes which have been showing up in the recent dry weather are driving us to distraction. Still, the fencing in of the porch means less duck and goose mess - which means fewer flies in the house. Always good.

There have been a surprisingly favorable number of ducklings hatched, although the percentage which make it to adulthood with our somewhat firm hands-off policy is fewer than we'd like. They are fairly adorable and tiny when they're new; by now, the first few clutches are only just beginning to pass out of adolescence, soon to be gaining their final adult plumage. The geese have taken a protective liking to the ducklings - inasmuch as the geese ever 'like' anyone or anything. They bully the ducklings, but not to extinction, and behave protectively of them while they are still small enough. The ducklings' worst enemy is always themselves, or occasionally an insufficiently careful mother duck; though the mother ducks can't entirely be faulted, when they've hatched out clutches of fifteen. Let it be noted for the record that however high ducks can count, it is definitely nowhere near as high as ten.

This moth was resting at length on the outer wall of the farmhouse. Its wings' patterning is reminiscent of Navajo or other tribal patterns; striking, and compared to the mosquitoes, if not welcome entirely then harmless. The cats however welcome the moths with great delight. Fun to play with AND delicious! This one at least was smart enough not to come into the house.

Our garden pear trees have finally borne us fruit! One pear apiece, to be precise, still hanging beautifully on the branches. As the trees are still quite young and have only been in the ground here at most 2 1/2 years (if that), we are delighted - and hopeful that next year will begin to see heavier crops. The volunteer apple trees all show signs of heavyish crops, despite the hot, dry summer we've had so far. It's a hopeful sign for our land and orchards in general, although we're keeping a watchful eye on our younger trees. The dolgo crabapples, however, are showing absolutely no trouble despite the heat and lack of rain, and are going like gangbusters. It's a promising development for the future production of our wines, and we have an order for some custom grafts of a couple of kinds of cider apples which we will be planting in the fall.

The garden is doing well also, although lessons have been learned; too many plants in too small a space, and while they're growing quite remarkably well, it's difficult to reach some of them. There are green tomatoes on the vines, there are pickling cucumbers coming in with increasing speed. There are pumpkin vines trying to take over everything. The beans, artichokes and peppers just never got big enough - possibly starved of sun too much by the pumpkins -  and the onions and potatoes seem happy as can be, while the cabbages, while not numerous, are showing every indication of forming heads considerably larger than a human's. We look forward to pickles and pumpkin puree and sauerkraut to keep us over winter, with tomato sauces and soups on those days when we haven't the time to do more than heat things up.

The skies have been lovely and blue - and lamentably clear, with fire hazard warnings everywhere. The sheep are not altogether thrilled with this warmth in their woolen coats, and we top their water off daily. A neighbor's dog had been going after tennis balls under the fence into the rams' enclosure; we've spread plenty of rich soil there and strewn it with pasture mix seeds to close off that opening. The dog, fortunately, wasn't malicious or violent in intention - but we prefer not to play roulette with the rams, who have been getting themselves into enough trouble as it is. In their efforts to graze, rub off wool, or otherwise stick their noses in where they oughtn't, they've been getting their horns caught on fencing with unusual regularity - fortunately, we've been working outside so much that we've been able to come to the rescue each time. It's an unusual thing, thankfully - but alarming if we weren't to make it in time.

Mosquitoes, moths and bees aren't our only nonmammalian visitors. This spider caused considerable curiosity until we were able to identify it as a fairly harmless local. It wasn't happy about holding still to have its picture taken, and thus has been immortalized in annoyance. Still, on the whole, as busy as we've been, summer has had its joys; now comes the real work of autumn, with sheep examinations and dewormings, garden harvest and canning and pickling, slaughtering and butchering the excess ram lambs and tanning the hides, planting hundreds more trees, finishing up fencing projects and fertilizing and examining the other trees, setting up the breeding roster for the next season, and winterizing garden beds and farm as a whole alike! It doesn't get much better than this; a purposeful life, involved in what we do and aware of our place in it all. And, usually, looking forward to bedtime.

Spring is giving way to summer, rather reluctantly. It has continued to be on the cool side, although not as cold so far as last summer had been. We have been keeping quite busy with consultations on wine label designs, animal management, planting and being completely dominated by cats telling us how adorable they are.

The bantams have been granted their own enclosure over the course of the weekend, along with some hens which proved to not be bantams after all being released into the general chook population. The sad news: both chicks have been lost. The first got itself into a water dish and drowned, prompting a revising of the watering system. The second was eaten by a skunk which was visiting the enclosure and may prove to have been the culprit who killed two of our hens a month ago.

The skunk was not allowed to roam free once more this time. A farmer managed to get off a shot from a distance, killing the skunk more or less immediately, although with predictable skunk results. The corpse has been put out for the ravens, who appreciate it and must have no sense of smell; the stench in the area in the enclosure is gradually fading.

Seedlings have finally been transplanted as well - cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins and beans being the primary but not only such. A lettuce bed is being planned, and there are some volunteer root vegetables - potatoes and onions - which will be planted soon as well.

Lambing has seemed to slow to a halt, although we are hesitant to say so for certain; we are at fifteen live lambs, which is all but 3 of the ewes in the breeding flock this year. As there is still our Miss Congeniality who jumped the fence this past winter, we cannot be entirely sure if we're done. But for now, at least, we have lambs aplenty. One of our ewes is vying for the title of Miss Congeniality in a more pleasant way - #15 of our flock is determined to get special treatment, coming up to us for treats, following us around (along with her absolutely adorable little ram lamb) and even once tugging on a pant leg when she felt there should be treats but weren't.

Onwards and upwards we continue - as does the grass. It's our hope to finish the big fencing project this summer, so that sheep may safely graze without constant supervision and running or swearing in their wake. And how exciting is it to think of preserves and stores for the following winter? We think it quite exciting indeed.