From the Farmers ….. February 3, 2011
I have been working on the seed order all afternoon today. Except for periodically getting up to put another log on the fire in the woodstove, I’ve spent the whole afternoon pouring over seed catalogues trying to determine exactly what seeds and amounts to purchase for this year. Looking at the luscious pictures in the catalogues, remembering what grew well last year (and the year before and the year before, etc. etc.) and what people liked or didn’t like as much, helps me decide what to grow and how much. Every year, it gets a little easier to know how much seed to buy without buying too much. As I select what varieties we will grow this year, my criteria are: 1) Varieties that taste good, 2) An assortment of colors (like pink eggplant, white squash, black peppers, rainbow carrots), 3) Varieties that grow especially well in our kind of soil and climate 4) Varieties that I think our shareholders – you- will enjoy – or learn to enjoy, 5) Several new varieties to try on a trial basis and 6) I do not order varieties that didn’t perform well for at least two years or we just didn’t like and 7) Varieties that simply appeal to me.
Soon the seeds will begin arriving and we will set up our first early germination rack with fluorescent lights in our home office and begin sowing the first early seeds – like the pyrethrum herb (we grow as a natural insecticide) that grows slowly and must be started very early in order to be big enough to do it’s job in the fields of keeping away those nasty squash bugs
Though the temperature went up to the mid twenties today and the sun shone so bright it turned all the snow blue reflecting the sky, with the wind blowing hard, it was still very cold carrying buckets of water to all the farm critters for their mid-day refill. All the farm animals were outside enjoying the sun, even the cows that seem to stay inside their shelter except when they are eating their daily grain and hay rations. The sheep seem to feel the cold the least as they have very thick wooly coats.
Another bale of hay from the barn.
Is that for me?
It's for all of you.
As the sheep belly up to the snow trench hay feeder every morning, I have been noticing that it takes a lot more length of feeder to accommodate all of their wide bellies. We have some very pregnant looking ewes among the group – though I am fairly sure that all of the ewes are bred. Our wool shearer will be coming to shear all the wool off of them in late February as we begin getting ready for the first lambs to be born in early March. Yes it is cold for them with no wool – and that is one of the reasons why we shear before shearing. If the ewes still have their thick wooly coats, they don’t think twice about birthing their babies in a snow bank; but if their wool is gone, they want to come into the nicely straw-bedded barn to give birth. Without their wool, they also need to eat more, and that is a good thing at the end of their pregnancy. It is also easier for me to see what their condition (how fat or thin) is without the wool hiding it – and when the lambs are born, they don’t have to find their way through a lot of long dirty wool to find mom’s milk.
Fill it up please
Our four dairy goats are hopefully also all bred. They have the same gestation period as the sheep and should also give birth the first week in March. We are quite excited about milking goats again. Well maybe not so much the actual milking the goats – but excited about having fresh goat milk to drink again. We have been purchasing store milk to drink for the last three months and it is just not as good.
Rocky
Our laying hens have been laying well all winter. On the really cold days, even though we try to collect the eggs periodically throughout the day, we’ve had a few eggs freeze before we could collect them. Our newest laying hens, the Aracana’s are all laying now – beautiful greenish-blue eggs which look lovely in the carton with the big brown eggs of our older Black Star chickens. We decided to keep a rooster this year and Rocky the Barred Rock has grown up to be quite majestic, yet very gentle.
We have been enjoying this real Minnesota winter with so much snow. Our neighbor Rick has a snowplow and has kept our driveway and yard scraped of snow. We’ve been doing a lot of shoveling keeping the paths open to all the animal pens and the sauna. We find it quite delightful walking on those nicely shoveled paths through the beautiful deep snow. We hope to continue to make time for skiing and snowshoeing even as the inevitable spring keeps letting us know it is right around the corner.
Until the next time………..
Robin
