Farming in the shade

One day recently, The Farmer returned home from the farmers' market and headed out to check the crops. Here he is explaining something to our daughter, who took all these photos with her nice new camera. It has been very dry here, with almost no rain. Intensive cultivation not only keeps down the weeds, but it brings moisture up from below. Despite the drought conditions, he's pretty happy with how the corn looks. There is a saying among farmers that the corn should be "knee high by the fourth of July." Looks like the corn will exceed that goal this year.

As a rug weaver, I find some parts of the weaving process more fun than others. One of my least favorite parts of the whole deal has always been warping the loom. There are just so many things that can go wrong, and a less-than-ideal tension box held on with a frustrating clamp gave me nightmares and daymares about the whole deal. I dreaded the warping process. Until now. My father in law fashioned a new tension box AND a slide that clamps on the back beam and stays there through the whole warping process. When I need to move the tension box over two inches to wind the next section, I no longer have to unclamp the idiot clamp, move the tension box, refasten the clamp, drop the clamp and/or the tension box, and start the whole process over. Once I attach the slide, it stays on through the whole process. Small adjustments to the positioning of the tension box are now easy-peasy. Just slide the tension box slightly to the left or right. Yes, that is a sawed-off Goody comb serving as th...

Our sheep barn began its life as a chicken coop. Now it houses the sheep in the winter, and hay and composting sheep manure in the summer. Over the past few years, we've heard other sheep producers talk about curtains as a replacement for some of the barn walls. We determined this past winter that this would be a good idea for the back part of the barn. So the large fans were removed, and the steel side walls were cut out. The steel needed to be stacked up neatly for future use. We took the nails out of all the boards, preparing them for future use if they were in good condition, or for burning if they weren't. The fans were put in storage, waiting for a buyer. A sill was added to finish off the wall opening. The construction clean-up had to be done quickly to ready the barn for first-cutting hay. The curtain was mounted. We will roll the curtain up when we want fresh air. And then when we want the warmth kept in, it can be rolled back down. Either way, light is let into the fo...

Our family has been recycle-minded from way back. I was recently telling an acquaintance that my mom dragged us kids and our family's recyclables down to the city back in the 70s WAY before recycling was mainstream. People on both sides of our families were known for "making do or doing without." Part of that stems from them living through the Great Depression (or having parents who did). Some comes from our extremely frugal ethnic heritage. And some comes from the reality that it costs a lot of money to farm. Making do with older equipment and do-it-yourself repair jobs helps keep the expense side of the ledger a little more in balance with the income side. A side effect of frugality is that it keeps stuff out of the landfills. These are two shovels that have seen better days. One shovel head was worn out with much use in the composting process on our farm. The other shovel--the one with a broken handle--was rescued from a dumpster. There is no time right now for little ...

We finished up planting dry beans last Friday. We worked the fields several times, using different implements to work up and smooth the soil and to kill the weeds. Since we don't use sprays on our fields, we must work the fields over and over again with time for weeds to sprout or regroup in between each working. Being organic uses a lot of diesel fuel, so don't necessarily believe those who tell you that organic is "greener". It is, and it isn't. There is no perfect situation or perfect way to farm. Go back and read the beginning of Genesis (the first book in the Bible) to see why wresting food from the earth has always and will always be a struggle. Farmer Boy took his turn running the four row planter back and forth over the worked up field. Two of our children are working with us on the farm this summer, in addition to The Farmer, my father and mother, and The Farmer's father and mother. Many times last week we had 2 or 3 tractors working in different fie...

Somewhere around Saturday afternoon, we paused long enough to talk with each other. And we all agree that this past week has been about the busiest week that we can remember on the farm. I don't have photos to show you, because I'm on my way out the door to work. Maybe I'll work on that tonight. We can't even really remember exactly all we got done. (Oooh, my grammar police daughters will love that sentence.) We think it involved hay, both round and square bales. Unfortunately, it also involved a haying injury (strained knee) for one of our extended family members. We're pretty sure it involved a lot of fieldwork--plowing, discing, and field cultivating--all in preparation for planting. We remember planting black and pinto and 7 varieties of heirloom beans. It seems like there was quite a lot of tine harrowing and cultivating--post-planting weed control. We moved sheep, assisted with horse pedicures, and went to the farmers' market on Saturday. We fixed a lot of...

Somewhere in the past couple of weeks, we cut our first crop of hay. Yes, this spring has been a blur. This is the earliest we have ever cut hay, due to the crazy warm weather in March that jump-started spring too early. The past couple of years we've hired someone else to bale part of our first-cutting hay into round bales. This is purely for self-preservation. We estimate that these round bales would be equal to 1500-1900 small square bales. That's a lot of bales to put up on a hay wagon, and then stack up in a barn. This first-cutting hay will feed our sheep for a good part of the winter. The gathering and storing of these larger bales is more mechanized. They are picked up one at a time with a tractor and a bale spear. Each one is placed on a pallet or skid to keep it off the concrete floor. Hay that sits directly on concrete will rot. Then each skid with its bale is moved into position. A double row of them now fills the aisle of the sheep barn, front to back, with just a ...

A couple of weeks ago we dewormed the sheep. Every year we struggle to beat the intestinal parasites that easily kill sheep. It's mostly a summer battle, as the sheep pick up worms from their own fecal matter as they graze. We rotationally graze, which means we are constantly moving them from pasture to pasture. But we haven't been able to completely keep ahead of the worms just by rotationally grazing. So every so often we run all the sheep into a pen in the barn. The lambs get caught by hand (which is a good workout). We dewormed every lamb this time, giving them oral medication using a syringe without a needle. Open wide! The ewes get run up the chute. We only deworm the ewes that look like they need it. We pull back their eyelids and look at the inside. If the eyelids are nice and pink, and the ewe looks healthy, she gets a pass. But if the eyelids look white, this is an indication that she is anemic and has a heavy worm load. Meds, please. Again, orally. This time, we also...

The heavens declare the glory of God; The skies proclaim the work of his hands. --Psalm 19:1 NIV