I also tried extra teat removal, which is supposed to be an easy snip, not painful, with no blood (or at least, very little). Beatrice had a little extra, almost more like a mole, but the surgical shears I had didn't cut. Neither did the scissors I tried next. I'm not sure where to order sharp enough scissors, but that was one of the most distressing things I've done this year: to attempt what should have been a simple procedure without any success at all.
First thing Saturday morning, as we finished chores, Phil and I rolled a new hay bale into the pen (no animals escaped this time, thankfully). Phil then took a warped cattle panel, and a shorter piece, wired one side together, bent the whole wire around the bale, and used climbing carabiners for the other side. He snipped some sections off around the top for the cows, and cut little holes in the middle and bottom for the sheep, and we have a very effective feeder.
Unbelievable. After all that time, wasting 40% of our hay, to have a solution that worked in 15 minutes of time and maybe $25 in materials. Again, unbelievable.
We all spent the midday on our traditional October hike (we did one when we were camping in October 2008, when Joe was seven weeks old; one last year when we had Abigail, and now this year, too). We don't often make it to the back of the property, so it's always an adventure.
I made the mistake of showing the treats I was packing (lollipops and chocolate chips), so very soon after we left, the steady reminders of hunger and fatigue began. It made me laugh a little, and we did enjoy the treats: eventually.
With Phil hacking a trail with the machete (notice Isaiah holding it, below), we crossed onto the neighbor's land, and found an abandoned homestead, now just a fallen chimney. There's actually two chimneys on the neighbor's land, and an old wall on ours. It makes me wonder about the residents. Why did they choose this random location? For the fallen chimney, there is no immediately obvious source of water. Maybe they dug a well?
On the way back, we walked a trail Butch cut on his land. It was nicely cleared, but very steep, both up and down. Some of the sections felt like roller coasters: very steep. The division between his bottom land, in hay, is so pastoral.
Quite different than the neighbor's unused land.
Lots of room for improvement.
The October hike usually leaves me feeling overwhelmed. How little we've accomplished in a year: so little cleared, no home, so little fence. The to-do list feels endless.
I mentioned this to Michelle Bessette today, and she said, "Amy, what if you only had five acres? You'd get the five acres the way you'd like, and then there'd be nothing more to do. This way, you could spend the rest of your life making the land more productive."
That was an encouraging thought. I think, though, there's a part of me that wonders how much more we could pour into five acres. (Greenhouse? Raised beds?)
In the afternoon, I worked in the garden a bit. I realized I had neglected to plant cilantro, so I took my super-special bed I had begun earlier this year, the bed I put 200 pounds of sand in, the bed I had intended to double dig, though I didn't get around to it: I took this bed and planted it to cilantro. (For good measure, I added a few perennial Egyptian walking onions and a few elephant garlic bulblets. We'll see if they come up.)
To finish the bed, I dug into our compost pile, made from the last winter's dry lot.
I was pretty excited to see what alchemy occurred this summer, so I was disappointed to open the bed and find that the compost was filled with partially decomposed wood chips. The color was a rich black, but as I dug in, a few spots seemed to be mucky. One little spot was stinky.
Maybe not enough air? Maybe it needed more turning? It did hold water beautifully: still moist and spongy after our six inches of rain about ten days ago.
I put some over the cilantro, so disappointed in the texture. But as I spread, a feeling of joy and health sprang up. I wasn't expecting that. (Maybe that was the biodynamic preps, doing their job?) It made me quite enthusiastic for the compost for my garlic beds.
Phil finished the chicken pen, and we moved the broilers into it, only a week or two after they really should have moved. Then, we happily tried to catch our naughty feral chickens, that have been scratching up my soap on my barn-kitchen-counter, that have been eating cat and dog food, that have knocked jars off my table (and broken them). Bah! No more chickens in the kitchen!
Feral chickens are hard to catch until darkness fell. Then we could grab them off their roost.
One or two did manage to get out of the pen this morning (so resourceful), but how delightful to have them contained. The cat will be grateful, too.
Today, we had time to stop at the Bessettes for a while this afternoon. How delightful. We have missed them, and a little break from Bible study gave us the long-awaited opportunity to visit.
As we drove home from church, we followed up a tip and found downed road apples, or Osage Oranges. I have read several articles about living fences, the most recent in Mother Earth News. As I gathered some fallen "brains" into my car, a man stopped and asked, "Are they good to eat?"
No, but they should make a very nice living fence. Eventually.
I have heard that if you take the brains and cut them open and toss them in a building they keep away the spiders. Not sure if it is true, but it is some Kentucky lore.
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