Farming in the shade

But here is my best shot at it. We planted beans. No new varieties this year, unfortunately, and it looks like the Marrow and the Green Flageolet have have not sprouted well. I visited Chicago with our two oldest daughters. Daughter #1 had a conference for work, and so the hotel (the biggest expense in Chicago) was covered. We used the GO Card for Chicago to see several different attractions, like the River Architectural Cruise (above) and the view from the Hancock building (below). While we were gone, The Farmer mowed and put up part of the first cutting of hay. He hasn't mowed any more hay, as we've had a veritable monsoon since this hay was put up. It's either feast or famine with the rain here lately. We also celebrated the marriage of daughter #2, and son #1 moved back in to our home. Big changes; no pictures. We kept moving the sheep and cattle around on their rotational grazing plan. We continued to work on the barn, by installing a new s...

A couple of weeks ago, we set up temporary fence to move the cattle to new pasture. It was a Saturday evening, and we'd finished a day of farmers markets and farm work by eating supper around a fire. Just one last thing to do, and we could clean up and fall into bed exhausted. Everyone else was gone, and so The Farmer and I slowly moved the cattle to new grass. Here's where things went south. The parading ladies caught the attention of Mo, the bull, who is in solitary confinement while the calves are being born. As we were slowly walking behind the cows, I looked over and noticed Mo had his head between a gate post and a building. And he was pushing. I left The Farmer and ran over to him, waved him away from the gate, and rejoined the parade. But he was not finished. He was NOT going to stay in solitary confinement any longer. And before we could say, "I'm tired and I dearly hope this doesn't go south!" he broke the gatepost and was free! I have re...

It seems like every year I do a post on dying. Life is easy to share with you. New lambs, new corn plants, spring--it's all good! But you cannot have life without both ends--birth and death. And while I am usually pretty jazzed at the end of life of a corn field (harvest is a pretty exciting time), I am less excited about the death of an animal. Yesterday we found one of our barn cats had been hit, but was still alive. While we made plans to put her out of her misery, she dragged herself off somewhere to die alone. The past week I've been struggling with a lamb with a broken leg. He was too old to teach to drink from a bottle, even though I tried. For a while, we wondered if his mother was still caring for him. But we found his body yesterday when we moved the sheep to a new pasture. This little lady's mother developed mastitis. It went septic, and by the time we realized the severity and decided to treat her with antibiotics (thereby making her no longer organic), ...

Part of the reason for the barn renovation is to have housing for farm help. So, while you won't find drywall in most barns, you will in ours. The whole upper floor, as well as the ceilings of the lower level (as a fire break). I always say that some things are worth hiring out. We've done a fair bit of drywall in our married life, but this is a seriously big project. This is worth hiring out. See what I mean? We would still be carrying all those pieces of drywall up the stairs now if we tried to DIY! The drywall guys were wonderfully skilled, quick, friendly workers. The only grumble I heard was the one running this truck. He muttered, "They would have to give me a different truck on this job." He did a great job, despite his nervousness. Once the whole rack of drywall was suspended in midair, they put a plastic protector over the windowsill, and unloaded each piece through the window. So much faster than carrying them up the stairs! Now that th...

The fields have finally dried off enough to start working the soil. We have a hay field planted, have been working and reworking a field that had a cover crop of rye that just doesn't want to die, and we planted one field to corn. Here's our faithful Massey Ferguson 180 (circa 1970s) pulling the four row corn planter. Very few farmers use equipment this small anymore. But we are a small farm, and this is the right size equipment for the acreage we work with. The Farmer lifts up the planter at the ends of the rows as he turns around. At both ends of the field, we plant headlands. Headlands are a few rows that run perpendicular to the body of the main field. We want to plant the whole field, but when cultivating and harvesting, we need room to turn around. So we plant the headlands crossways, knowing we will lose a bit of that corn to being ridden over. In the fall, the corn on the headlands is harvested first, giving us room to turn the combine around at the ends of th...

We live fairly near alpaca farmers, and they are kind enough to let us bring our llamas to their alpaca shearing day. We need to borrow a trailer (despite the amount of animals on the farm, we still don't own our own livestock trailer), and load them up. Here's a shot of what they look like before their haircut, pedicure, and tooth check. Note: this is a full-service shearing day! Not just a trim for these ladies...  Here they are after their visit to the alpaca farm: They are ready for summer now! We have llamas because they help protect the sheep while they are out on pasture. They are naturally very curious, and can be a bit aggressive towards dogs and other canine types that would tend to want to hurt the sheep. In other news, we've been too busy working to blog. It's funny how when your hands are busy with fences or animals or tractor steering wheels, you forget to take photos. And when you come in at dusk, all you want is a large glass of water ...

A few weeks ago we made a quick trip to the wool mill in Frankemuth, Michigan. Zeilingers has been our go-to choice for wool processing for several years. We were picking up comforter batts, but poked our heads into the yarn making part of the mill. They just happened to have our wool on the machines.  This stage is called pencil roving. The wool has already been washed, and the next stage is spinning the pencil roving into yarn. The pencil roving is very fragile. It's easy to pull it apart, and yank it right off the machines. I am always amazed that such huge machines can be set to work so gently with such a fragile product. Gary is demonstrating the fragility here. After spinning, this wool will be sent upstairs at the mill to be machine knit into socks for us to sell at our markets.