Time to put on the big boy suspenders

My last day running the farm with Kate's help.  Tomorrow the Burchsteads will be returning from Hotlanta and with them comes some welcome pressure relief.  I'm not any less convinced I want to farm, but whew! keeping all sorts of animals while thinking about the future and making time management decisions in tandem with the predicted weather is draining.  As each day since Wednesday has passed, I have gained more respect and empathy for Jeff and Amy, as well as every other farmer out there.

Throw in the constant worrying of whether a ewe is going to give birth and my hands felt quite full.  Wednesday and Thursday of last week went smoothly as I mostly took care of projects like wrapping and freezing the rest of the two lambs we butchered, making a ginger carrot ferment, moving, cutting, and covering firewood, and preparing for market.  Then came Friday...

I was merrily doing chores and going about my rainy, farm business when I saw that a ewe was beginning to give birth.  Earlier I had noticed the ewe was standing off by herself for most of the morning, a probable sign that she was beginning to go into labor.  The amniotic sac was coming out and immediately I went to trap the rest of the flock so that I could eventually extract the mom and her lambs.  I went to prepare some warm molasses water to put in the greenhouse where she would eventually end up.

The first lamb was born and the ewe did not immediately start licking it to clear the mucus on its face so it could breathe.  I went to clear its nostrils and the ewe ran as far as she could.  I started to worry that it wouldn't bond with its baby; an important aspect of lambing and ensuring the survival of the lamb.  Eventually the ewe would pass its second lamb stillborn.  I tried to get it to bond with the live lamb by bringing it to her nose but she kept running away.  Trying not to get frustrated, I called it with a sheep call and lured it with grain into the greenhouse.

I spent the next two hours drying the lamb to prevent hypothermia and trying to get it to nurse despite the ewe's refusal to stand and the lamb's being so weak it couldn't figure out how to nurse when I put the teat in its mouth.  In between all this, I called Amy on the cell phone and got her guidance.  Eventually I got the lamb to nurse after cutting away some wool for easier access and Kate would subsequently come to help me get it to nurse while I held the ewe still.

We still had to pick up apples, do chores, and prepare for market before Saturday morning.  All told, we didn't finish working until 9 PM; managing to get the truck mostly packed so we could get up at 5 AM to do chores and pack the rest of the market items.  Oh yeah, we also had Kate's parents over for dinner for her mom's birthday.  They were gracious enough to bring some Thai takeout and ease a bit of our burden for the night.  Thankfully, the lamb was at least able to nurse with our assistance several times before we went to sleep and eventually would nurse on its own as its mom began to grow closer to its baby.

The next day would be rough for both Kate and I due to relative lack of sleep and a very long day lasting 12 hours.  She went to the Portland winter market while I ran the booth in Brunswick.  After the evening chores, we relaxed for a little while until we took Kate's mom out for dinner for her birthday; this time our treat.  That night we both slept deeply.

Sunday afternoon I was able to drive a different team of horses at Mitch and Penny's.  Their horses, Dick and Dock, are used to collect sap which they collect using buckets hanging from spiles tapped into sugar maples.  I got a tour of their sap trails and had a wonderful afternoon chatting with Mitch and driving his horses for a little while out in their hay fields.  All in all it was a long week with little much of a weekend, but I enjoyed it all.  I hope you all enjoyed reading this update and enjoy the lengthening days!

“Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

- William Jennings Bryan

Lambs in January!

There's so much to talk about between participating in my first chicken and pig processing sessions, to moving a 32 by 14 foot long hoophouse full of chickens 200 feet uphill.  It's definitely winter now in Maine as last night was a few degrees below zero and the yurt was about 45 degrees warmer than that despite our waking up three times in the middle of the night to stoke the fire.

There was an unexpected lambing last the Tuesday after New Years.  We expect most of the ewes to give birth in March; hence the "unexpected."  I showed up at the pasture that the ewes and ram were on at about 7:30 AM expecting to just feed them some hay and call it good for sheep chores.  As I approached their paddock, I saw two small, dark shapes on the ground in the distance.  At first I thought they were cats or racoons or some other small mammal.  While carrying a bale of hay towards them, I slowly realized that they were two lambs.  This was not such a big deal except it was about 20 degrees outside with a wind chill of probably 5-10 degrees less.  I quickly covered them up in my sweater and tried to encourage their mama, who was nearby, to continue to lick them dry and nurse them.  Unfortunately they were quickly approaching hypothermia, especially a very cute grey and white one.  I called Jeff and he came down and quickly made the decision to get the ewe and her two lambs over to the greenhouse.

Moving them to the greenhouse proved to be much more difficult than it sounds.  The ram decided it would be great to try to either mount the ewe again or try to ram Jeff and I while one of us were carrying the two lambs to the truck while the other was dragging the ewe along towards the truck.  I quickly put the lambs in the truck with the heat running while I helped Jeff fend off the ram while simultaneously dragging the ewe towards the truck.  Jeff lifted the ewe over the now turned off fence while I kept fending off the ram with kicks in the face.

When we arrived at the greenhouse, we set up a pen for the ewe and her lambs with some mulch hay as bedding.  The black lamb, which was stronger in the first place, seemed to warm up and after a lot of coercion and stripping the ewe's udder, we got it to nurse while we had the grey lamb in hot water to try to get its body temperature up to the average 101 degrees F.  Amy continued to direct Jeff and I on what to do and when the lamb's temperature was finally close to normal, we got it to nurse after Jeff trimmed the wool around the ewe's udder.  They two lambs are now healthy and happy; the grey one likes to make a little nest on top of its mom's back when she's lying down.

So other than that, Kate and I are slowly planning our move to my next farm up north in Knox.  Part of our plans are to raise pigs on Ken and Adrienne's land to till up some marginal land and land that they plan on turning into gardens.  We will be marketing them by the half or quarter animal with customers paying a deposit ahead of time.  Right now Kate and I are planning out a budget to figure out some numbers for customers.  Let me know if you're interested!  We plan on having pigs ready by September or so.  I can't promise updates more regularly, as some may have noticed, but I will try my best as always...  Stay warm, eat well, and love the special people in your life!

Don't Pee on the Electric Fence

Well.  As my friend Broder politely pointed out on my fantasy football league (yes, even though I don’t have regular access to the internet and haven’t watched a football game yet this season I still do fantasy football), I haven’t updated this blog in two months.  It hasn’t seemed like it since life has been so busy.  Such is farm life I suppose.

Seeing as it is almost November and it was 30 degrees this morning when I woke up, it seems that winter is near.  The lead up to today was quite a whirlwind of activity.  Harvesting and harvesting and harvesting we have been.  My left index finger has a crack in it that won’t go away do to continued hard use and drier weather.  My lower back has seen better days but has been feeling better now that I pay attention to my ergonomics some more and get very nice back massages from Kate.

What have we harvested you might ask?  We brought in all the rest of the tomatoes about a month ago as well as winter squash, sweet potatoes, and tomatillos (to make salsa) before the first frost of the year in October.  We have also harvested all the delicious potatoes and have begun to be able to harvest parsnips.  Of course there are still leeks (my favorite) and carrots.  Most of the rest of the time I have spent is dealing with various animal chores, setting up animal pens, and as our friend Ross says farming is, “Moving shit around.” 

As you can imagine, I spend most of the rest of my time trying to do nothing, but end up doing more food preservation with Kate, going out somewhere nice like Monhegan Island (a beautiful place to visit by boat from nearby Boothbay), or having to do chores for myself that I have put off all week.  Well, I’m off to make winter squash burritos with guacamole, salad greens, and sour cream.  I will update again soon since the winter comes and things are calmer.  Go Giants!

Oh yeah, photo below and more coming from this fall.

What it is

Not much time for introspection lately.  Most of my free time lately has been thinking about what is next for the future.  I am going to work on another farm next year.  Where I will be is still up in the air and depends on a few factors.  Continuing work on a horse-powered farm is my priority as well as being able to work together with Kate.  I would like to continue working for Jeff and Amy and am strongly considering it.  There are, however, other possibilities and what will be best for my development as a competent farmer in terms of education and experience play a strong role in my decision.

Despite my recent ruminations on the state of my future, I still love what I am doing and will continue doing it.  The constant drive for creativity, resourcefulness, deep knowledge, integrity, and ingenuity with a flair for the funky in farming keep pulling me deeper into sustainable agriculture.  My understanding and empathy for the tenacity of the small business owner has grown as I realize how a successful small business owner literally lives and breathes the ins and outs of their daily work.  There's nothing quite like putting hours of hard work into producing food and seeing people at market and CSA pickups enjoy and discover food with all of their senses.

If you don't have food, I don't know what you have.  Next time you cook a meal, take your time and enjoy the sight, smell, and texture of it as it gradually transforms from simple compounds borne from the soil, fungi, and bacteria to an amalgamation of subtle chemical reactions sending signals to your brain saying "Damn, this is good."  I truly believe that 95% of the meal happens before you actually eat it.  If you haven't yet experienced that first 95%, you should; it'll change the way you look at food.

Where do Americans get their Calories? (Click for an interactive graph)

Cheap food has its price

Summertime…the livin’s easy

Sike!  The days have blended together and I lost track of how long it’s been since the last update.  What with animals getting out twice in as many days a month ago, my she-devil girlfriend Kate, and being in my friends Kevin and Jenn’s wedding last weekend in Sunday, I’ve finally settled back into a good routine and the farm has basically caught up with weeds.  The garden is certainly a sight to be seen.  Right now there are plenty of shell and sugar snap peas, new potatoes, swiss chard, some broccoli and cauliflower, scallions, parsley, basil, and cilantro.  Oh yeah, we have carrots!  How I missed carrots.  They are so sweet, tasty, and worth all the hand-weeding we had done two to three weeks prior to beginning to harvest them.

Let me tell you a thing or two about weeding.  It is hard, hot work since the best time to weed is usually under dry and hot conditions.  The reason is that despite your best efforts to pull and cut weeds, they can and will replant themselves if they still have roots available and are somewhat covered by soil.  This is even easier if it rains the night after you weed.  However, hot and dry conditions severely reduce the chances of weeds replanting because if their roots are exposed, they will quickly wilt and die.  Yes, many plants die in the making of even your veggies.  As Elton John once sang, it’s the ciiiiiircle, the circle of liiiiiife.

Leah and I also trellised the tomatoes this week, back-breaking work if I’ve ever done any.  It isn’t time-consuming but requires a lot of stooping to wrap string around trellis posts and picking up plants lying on the ground.  Glad we’re done with that task.  Enough said.

There hasn’t been much horse work as of late since it’s mostly cultivation and that is generally quick work.  Horses are fly magnets though and I always feel bad for them because they are out on the pasture with no shade and not too much relief from flies.  Carl left which is good because he was the super fly magnet.  Since he was the weakest horse and lowest on the totem pole, he had the most flies on him.  Last week he moved in with his owner Django.  In any case, what is cool is that the horses do have a pretty good adaptation to flies; Bill, Millie, and Perry stand side by side, head to tail so that when they swing their tails, they shoo away the flies on the neighboring horse’s face.  Evolution at its finest.

Sometimes I wish I evolved the ability to stay cool without sweating gallons of water.  Thankfully it has cooled off a little bit today.  This weekend I have to do animal chores instead of working or going to market.  It’s a good arrangement: I plan on hanging out, cleaning up around the yurt, and building a solar heated shower.  I’m excited for the shower!  There is also an ice cream shop in Wiscasset that has the best ice cream I’ve had ever: ginger ice cream.  It is made with real, fresh ginger rather than candied ginger.  Leah and I daydream about eating it after work on a hot day, which has been almost every day the last two weeks.  Speaking of which, I believe I will go have some now.  Adios!