As it was, once again, close to a full moon, I shoveled minerals out of one of the remaining totes into the wheelbarrow, and wheeled them upslope to the former pigpen, where I spread them over the spelt seeds. I understood why Chinese coolies would run while pulling their loads—the momentum really helps! And then I popped a tire, so I should look into the foam that you can spray into tires that then hardens. Makes it really hard to pop a tire, when it’s actually basically solid!
I also got impatient with my multiplier onions. I should probably have waited until around Thanksgiving, but who knows what the weather will be like then? So I planted my shallots and my potato onions, and my Egyptian walking onions. According to the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog, “According to the National Gardening Bureau, multiplier onions can produce a larger yield per area than any other vegetable except staked tomatoes.” (Trees and ponds can produce more, since they have the potential to stack.) The multiplier onions will, apparently, grow clusters of onions at ground level from the single onion bulb planted. The Egyptian walking onions I am excited to see: they grow like a green onion, then send out bulblets at the top, then another shoot, and more bulblets. Eventually (after two or three stories), they topple over and re-root. Perennial onions that walk around—that’s pretty cool!
Dennis Bessette came by to visit, driving his old farm truck. After he left, I was walking down the driveway, when I came across a tiny, living mouse in the center of the gravel, so small its eyes were not yet open.
It was breathing, but just barely, and it would emit teeny squeaks. Now I know that mice are nasty, that they pee while they run, and chew through purchased goods (car engines, chick feed), and attract other pests, like snakes. But the tiny perfection of this baby, and the certainty of its death, made me want to sit and watch it die, to be with it in its last, dignified moments.
But then interested children came to see and touch the tiny animal, so I picked up its tiny chilly body and hid it in the straw of our compost pile, where I hope it found some measure of privacy and warmth as it died.
That’s my life in the country: something profound and beautiful that passes in a slew of other events, almost forgotten. How fortunate I am that I have profound and beautiful moments.
I called the sheep breeder to tell her that we would like her flock. Although I had strong certainty until I called, after the call I had a bit of buyer’s remorse, wondering at the frivolous purchase. Miniature sheep with cashmere wool are not exactly stern, strong farm animals. They are the hobby farm animal of choice; an animal that makes a good pet or photography prop. How will they fit on our farm?
Thankfully Phil remained the voice of reason, reminding me that, rather than spraying our orchard floor with Round-Up, like the local orchards do for ground cover control, we will have natural lawn-mowers, who also produce wool, lambs, and, in a pinch, meat (though because of their cuteness factor, their pet quality would bring a high enough price that their meat would not be the best use of any offspring).
He is right, and I am excited about becoming a shepherd to a larger flock.
Phil spent Friday and Saturday building an adorable watertight hut around the pump’s pressure tank. Martin Bush came on Friday, while I was away, and helped Phil build the foundation and the framework, as well as offering suggestions and being a sounding board for ideas. That is not my strong point, at all.
On Saturday, Phil tarpapered the exterior and put up siding. The little hut is, so far, adorable, far more cute than our trailers. But, since it is more-or-less permanent, and our trailers are temporary, that is as it should be, I think.
Thankfully Phil made the hut water tight when he did; on Saturday night, it began to pour. It poured about two inches, and when we woke the next morning to pounding rain, we figured we would head to the Bessette’s sooner or later.
Jonadab is teething, which means he is more cranky than usual. And, when we eat bread or toast with butter and jam, he has developed the sweet/annoying habit of dipping his little pointer finger into the butter. Or the loaf of bread. Or he’ll pat the already-jammed bread. Or drop pattern blocks or pen caps into the jam jar.
If all those amusements are out of reach, he likes to charge Abigail and grab her around the waist, or by the shirt. He’s only 15 months old, but his grip is incredible, and I must pry him off of her, finger by finger. She, for her part, hates his charges, and defends herself as best she can, protesting his advances (loudly).
So with such shenanigans, and the high-spirited boys playing, and the loaf of bread I’d baked for breakfast coming out raw in the middle, I lost it for a few minutes, and found great relief in running up the driveway by myself, shrieking. Michelle Bessette later said that “You couldn’t have lost it that bad—we didn’t hear you.” I maintain that they had their windows closed against the chill and rain.
Amazing, though, what a shower, three and a half loads of laundry, children playing happily upstairs away from me, and adult conversation did for me by the end of the day. It was a good day.
And today, Monday, the weather was sunny. I worked and Phil took the children on a nature hike across Hog Creek. They helped him move the sheep and the goats, into a beautiful new paddock. The oats are up to about six inches in places (the rain has helped them grow significantly), with a lovely rich green. The small leaves on tree stumps are reds and oranges, and there are tiny purple flowers in the mix. It all glowed in the sun.
The one blot about the animals is that Annabelle the goat has a strange patch of hair on her neck, almost like someone has stroked her the wrong way. I looked at it more closely today (it has been there for, perhaps, a week and a half), and realized that the hair is actually gone in spots, almost like it has been chewed short. Looking in my book of basic animal problems, I wonder if it is mange, which would require medicines of some sort.
Do you buy medicine for a free goat?
I should figure out what that is before we get our precious sheep.
Current animal count: 2 pigs, 2 goats, 2 ewes, 5 keets, 49 Rhode Island Red chicks and 1 exotic, 1 cat that comes around (and maybe another feral cat), 1 pet dog that comes with us everywhere, and 6 sheep that will join us sooner or later. W expect to get the three lambs on Friday or Saturday and have the three ewes bred. To ensure that breeding is successful, we will get them about six weeks later.
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