The Blessing in Twenty-Six Dead Broilers

While my family visited, Phil was at a Grazing School (he learned lots). I had been managing all the chores, and felt so pleased that the animals were all doing well.

At 6:30, I went out to feed the broilers. Their pen is only about ten feet from the house, and I realized, with absolute horror, that there was a dead and mangled chicken caught in the fencing. Some predator had tried to pull it out of the fencing!

And another, dead, just outside the netting! And another, and another.

By this time I was sobbing, great wracking sobs. I had tried so hard, and I had forgotten to turn on the electric fence after we planted yesterday. It had slipped my mind after feeding the birds. And I was so tired, and the night so chilly, that I had shut all the windows and slept a deep sleep for six hours, that I heard nothing.

What kind of farmer doesn't hear birds in distress, mere feet from her head? What kind of farmer doesn't protect the animals in her care?

Twenty-six dead birds was an awful way to start the day.

What predator? There was almost no blood, so we weren't dealing with a weasel or a raccoon. The senseless killing of tasty meat suggested no fox. I don't know much about opossums, but there seemed to be no claw marks. Solely based on the widely scattered carcasses, my gut said DOG.

I told Butch about the deaths and he said, "Dog."

Phil got home, and he said, "Dog." So we're on the alert.

When my sister got up, I was sitting inside, stony, searching the classified ads for puppies. I have resisted getting a new dog because, loved though Chloe was, she had some bad habits: stealing food, strewing trash, spraying pee. Puppies require so much effort, and I don't have much effort to spare right now.

And puppies are expensive! A good labrador puppy, I noticed, goes for four figures. That's a lot of money.

But I was freaked out enough to want to never be alone on the farm without a dog again. (Even if I had woken up, would I have been able to chase away the predator? A haunting question, and one I aim to correct. Pun intended.)

Jonelle noticed something was wrong, and, after hearing the sob story, said, "We know that Satan comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. I think this is meant to ruin the memory of this fun week." And I think she was right.

So I chose to put away grief. We looked at the bee debris trays, and saw caps! Caps are the bits of wax that the newly emerged baby bees push off their little cells when they emerge. We have baby bees at Spring Forth Farm!

When my family drove away, I sang a blessing over them. And thus concluded their pleasant visit.

But what to do about a dog?

Incredibly, miraculously, there was a listing on Craigslist for a 7-year-old female yellow lab. Sweet temperament, doesn't jump, good with kids, trained.

So, not waiting for Phil to land (which was good, because his flight was delayed), we went and saw Bitsy.

She right away went to Isaiah, and let him throw her special Bumper toy. Isaiah was in heaven. Abraham started to laugh belly laughs. I realize now that Chloe was so old the last two years, she didn't really retrieve, at least, not so Abraham would remember. So he was laughing with the joy of her joy. She was doing what she was born to do. Jadon called her and she came to him. They were all so happy.

And so we brought Bitsy home.

She is smaller than Chloe, and softer than Chloe. She hasn't barked yet. She is more obedient, actually walking on leash. She doesn't lick with a great wet tongue (much more genteel).

I hadn't been looking for a dog. I only checked Craigslist today in desperation, and, seeing how many listings their are, I would have given up in despair.

But the dog for our farm was there, ready for us when we were ready for her. God is good. Only He can redeem 26 dead chickens and give, instead, a much-loved dog.

How My Garden Grows, April 30

My 21 flats of peppers keep getting larger. Since the temperature dipped into the 30s last night, I am happy to keep them in the greenhouse a bit longer, since peppers do love heat.

I am glad to see the size of my cilantro jumped with the inch of rain this week. I love cilantro, the only plant that chelates and expels heavy metals. Eat more cilantro!

The cabbages grew visibly while my family was visiting.

My lettuces, small just a week ago, have filled in the space between them. I learned this week that "cut and come again" doesn't mean that the gardener cuts off a few leaves every day, but that the gardener cuts the whole top off, about an inch from the ground, and lets the whole head regrow. That is pretty awesome!

The walking onions, now 18 months old, have set little bulbils. They are reproducing at the top of their stalks.

And the overall photos. The earliest planting.

The tomatoes, only half staked.

And the new planting this week.

Plant Till You Droop

Thursday morning we woke to heavy rain and soppy ground. We had planned to go to the awesome Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton, and I was thankfully able to get the van up the driveway without mishap. Our day there (with a Costco stop afterwards) was extremely pleasant: beautiful weather, interesting things to see, plenty of space for the children to run to their hearts' content.

Incredibly, when we pulled in the driveway, my mom and sister were ready to keep planting, so they got six more flats of vegetables in the ground in the two hours before total dark. This week's addition to the garden is looking really sharp!

By Friday morning, while the children slept in until almost 8, my mom went to plant a beautiful blueberry bush we'd bought at Costco. It fits in a little corner of the market garden, and I have hopes that it will produce for me even this year.

With the market garden closer to being "caught up," we went to plant 56 chestnut trees down the wooded path to the lower pasture. We had to cut down a few volunteer trees, and snip off lots of small growth. The chestnuts were leafed out well, and I have high hopes that we will soon have a chestnut path.

Their little pink markers get lost in the green foliage and the steep slope of the road, but up close, I love their cheery, "I'm here!" presence.

After lunch, we put 116 hazelnuts into the swales in the cherry orchard. And we were absolutely exhausted after that. What an intense few days of work.

A few fun photos.
The two little cousins, twelve days apart in age.

And just the sweet girl.

The full group (minus me), the first night. No one was tired yet!

We had a chocolate cake to remember my niece Grace.

I had asked for nice weather, but what we had during the course of the week was over and above what I could have imagined. A good amount of rain, at optimal times; sun, wind, overcast, all at the perfect times.

The goats did get out of the pen late Friday (they must have realized that the electric fence wasn't working, since the charger was up protecting the broilers), but we managed to catch them and contain them. In the grand scheme of animal issues, this was quite minor.

The Turkey's Not So Great Escape

I planted all day on Monday the 25th: 119 more tomatoes in the ground, two flats of basil (about 120 plants), and 50 raspberries. Fourteen trays; a record for me. These marathon planting sessions wear me out, especially when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. My greenhouse had 77 more trays calling for attention, and I was starting to lose hope. Especially when I went to heel in the hazelnuts, elderberries, and hybrid poplars: their roots were all dry. Were they yet living? I left them in water overnight to soak, and tried to heel them in better on Tuesday morning. Before I plant, I think I want to see a sign of life.

Our van's "Check Engine" light had come on. We had intended to bring the van in for servicing in early December (the day the truck pooped out and I necessitated buying new tires about 40K miles early), so we were well overdue. Phil was not surprised to find that the left side brakes had given out and needed to be replaced.

We got a rental car, since the van would be in the shop overnight.

Tuesday, as we drove down the highway to town to get our van, the largest turkey I've ever seen in the wild charged the van.

I watched the bird, now deceased, fly backwards past the car. Phil, more perceptive, saw bits of plastic flying, too. He pulled over: massive damage to the light and body of the corner of the car. Ah, if we had just purchased the insurance policy. (It's my personal policy never to do so, but maybe I will rethink that.) In some ways, though, such a random occurrence: it makes me thankful it wasn't our own car.

Both the brakes and the turkey run-in are unexpected financial hits, large enough that, a year ago, I would have been prostrated. Now I think I've reached a place of either trust or expectation: what will happen next? How will the Lord provide?

Driving home in our own van, the first song that came on was the last track of Handel's Messiah: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain and hath redeemed us to God by His blood." Amen.

My mom, sister, and niece all arrived for a short visit Tuesday night. They came bearing food (courtesy of Whole Foods catering) and ready to work. We were blessed with an overcast day, perfect for planting, and we put in the ground 32 flats of various vegetables and flowers. (A flat ready to be planted has between ten very large plants or 60+ smaller plants.)

We also entertained (and fed) five children, hiked for over an hour, held lambs, unloaded this month's feed delivery (almost two tons) and talked and laughed.

The Lord blessed us with several short, fierce rains, too, which watered our plants and our faces.

We are tired, filthy, but happy to be productive.

A Precious Life We Lead

Saturday, another day without planting, was filled with little needed tasks. I marked my 100 blackberries with pink forestry tape, so we would be able to identify them, compared with any weeds that would grow up. I was gratified to find that all 100 had at least a small leaf, but most had large leaves, clearly thriving despite some less than ideal soil.

I also marked the edge of my new permaculture border: chestnuts at the edge of the woods, then apples, hazelnuts, and raspberries. I planted right up to where the pigs are currently preparing the soil for the next bed. The chestnuts have all leafed out; the apples are doing splendidly.

Phil and I worked on staking tomatoes until we ran out of twine. Phil pounded in 48 T-posts in a very short period of time, one after another, raising the 35 pound driver over his head again and again. It seems that almost everything on the farm, from pulling weeds to hauling water or feed, requires a good bit of strength. Staking tomatoes allowed me to practice the clove hitch and bowline knots, over and over again.

By late afternoon, the soil had dried enough that Phil was able to plow a new garden bed for me. It still amazes me that the plow can rip the soil, leaving enormous chunks and the fluffy peat slightly mixed in, and then the tiller somehow combines the two. In the photo, the white-streaked land has not been tilled yet. (Phil did this despite a severe headache: he's decided to go off coffee after hearing that it is a major stressor of the adrenal glands. He's never thought coffee really affected him, drinking it because he loves the taste of the "nectar of the gods," as he calls it. But I think an unexplained headache the day he quit is a pretty good indicator that some sort of chemical dependency was going on.)

The boys, for some reason, decided to open a peat bale in one of the soon-to-be plowed and tilled beds and went crazy slinging the powder around.

Even Jadon, usually steady and staid, who enjoys an impressive vocabulary for an 8-year-old (Good Friday had "bleak" weather, he informed me), jumped in.

All four boys, covered in peat from head to toe, took long bath-showers. Jadon's ear didn't get very clean inside, I noticed as we got to church, but considered the amount of dust they could have brought, I was satisfied.

Little rejected lamb Catechism has developed a penchant for squeezing out of the sheep pen and grazing where she can: in the woods, among the clover. I think that because she doesn't have a strong tie with a mother, she feels much more free to leave the fold.

Obligatory Easter photo: Jadon is not smiling, but at least he's not grimacing. Joe, on the other hand, apparently just jammed his face into a sick poking out of the woodpile, and so he is distraught, but for good reason.

Sunday afternoon, Isaiah eagerly showed me something he found.

As he lifted the box off his caterpillar treasure, he said, "Spectacular, right?"

This is a precious life we lead.

How Does My Garden Grow: April 23

I was walking in the orchard and noticed that tiny peaches are growing! About the size of peas, they are there, fuzzy and swelling. I had figured all the peach blossoms had died in the frost, so to see some babies growing thrilled me.

The first lettuces I planted are large enough to harvest a few leaves. I had a delicious homemade Caesar salad for dinner. They are growing rapidly.

My cabbages, spaced two feet apart, are starting to fill in the large spaces between them.

The slope as a whole: the initial greens planted.

And the sunny center slope.

Teary Good Friday

When I went to sleep on Thursday night, with the temperature in the low 40s, I determined to get up after an hour or so and check the temperature. Almost $1000 worth of tomatoes seemed worth the bit of interrupted sleep.

I must have dreamed that all was well with the tomatoes. Suddenly, one of my Queen Bees flew into my dream and scolded, "Do your duty! Cover those tomatoes!" I woke up suddenly, sure that the mental telepathy that, apparently, happens between bees and man (at least, according to the sci fi book Ender's Game) had just warned me. And the thermometer looked like it read 34!

Phil, apparently not as bleary, read the thermometer as 38, and when he tested the actual air temperature at ground level for the tomatoes with his fancy device, the temperature was 45, so we returned to bed. Me: relieved, but a bit sad that I didn't actually have Queen telepathy. And thankful that we didn't have to figure out how to lay out torn garden fabric in the dark and cold.

With that background, we woke at dawn to grey rain. So often Good Friday has weepy skies, and I, too, was uncharacteristically weepy. I read in Jeremiah 35 that the LORD said to his people, "I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye hearkened not unto me." I think the entrenched rebellion of God's people, even to the days of Christ, when Christ wept over Jerusalem as he approached, riding on a donkey—it makes me want to be sure to live a life of responsiveness to God.

Isaiah was watering the chicks and ducklings and saw a sick duckling. He held it, and tried to give it water, but it was quite far gone. He held it as it died, and said in a surprised voice, "I've never held something that was alive and then dead." When asked if he was okay, he said he was and went off to play, but the reality of life on the farm is that we have death on the farm, and that seems a heavy burden to pass to my boys.

And yet, death is the end for us all, should the Lord tarry. A year ago, my niece was fighting for her life, and this first Good Friday since her death was especially painful. Christ defeated death, but we still live with it on the earth.

With this emotional charge as a background, life on the farm continued. We decided to stop moving the chicken pen every day (its heaviness over rough terrain made it increasingly difficult), so we put up electric net and let the birds go free. They seemed timid, but happy.

And the long-delayed metal building project took a step forward. We received tubes for concrete.

The workers excavated to put them in the ground.

And the first concrete truck ever on this farm arrived and poured the piers.

I went to Charlottesville for a dinner with friends and returned home, hours later, rested and happy, after crying and laughing and talking and sharing.

It is good to have friends, good to have a Savior, good to have life and death and richness of experience.

Bee Debris

Phil was up long past midnight finishing a big project. It's a relief to have that done. After daylight, Phil did the chores and went back to bed, so I calculated the spacing for the hazelnuts the UPS man would bring.

Phil didn't sleep nearly as long as I thought he should have, but when he got up, we went to work on the next twenty bee frames. They've been here two weeks, and I was getting a bit skittish about their living quarters. When bees get crowded, they swarm, and I had no desire to force a swarm from such new little hives.

Phil and I pulled the white board from under the hive. It gave us a sneak preview of what might be happening in the hive. Bee debris rains down: tiny black bee poo, large yellow globules of dropped pollen (which I tasted: delicious!), tiny shiny flakes that were dropped wax flakes, produced, I think, from the bees' abdomens.

Where the debris was most concentrated, the bees were most active above. Since neither white tray was entirely covered with debris, clearly the bees had not yet exhausted their living space.

And there were no caps yet: baby bees hatch after about three weeks, and push out the caps that cover their cells. Since we've only had the bees 15 days, it's too early yet for bees to be born. Next week, I expect.

Then we opened the hive, which was incredibly non-stressful. (And please do note the amazing shadow across the inner cover!) Few bees noticed us at all; their buzzing changed not a bit. All was happy and light, and Joe even moved in front of their door way a few times (don't do it! it's like standing on the plane's runway), but there were no unhappy incidents.

Although I didn't remove every frame, I could tell that work was progressing smoothly, that the frames were getting filled in. So we put on a second "hive body," the large boxes where the queen bee lays her eggs. That may have been premature, but I think that it will be okay.

Phil and I then spent a couple hours trying to figure out where to put the raspberries, chestnuts, hazelnuts, hybrid poplars, and elderberries that we have yet to plant. As we walked the land, we had some good insights: where to put a new road, where to clear for an eventual vineyard, where chestnuts belong and where they don't. I have renewed vision, and direction.

Then I went to work on the newly arrived hazelnuts. I got all 75 in the ground that I had hoped to, just before dusk. The first bundle I pulled out said, "100 hazelnuts." The bundle hardly fit in a 5 gallon bucket, but it was a bit disappointing: 100 little trees in a 5 gallon bucket? How many decades would I have to wait before they would produce!

Happily, the bundle was only 25. The hazelnuts appear to have good roots and good buds coming. I'm excited!

Phil went to work on plowing and tilling a new garden section for me. I have six or eight more flats that really need to go in the ground (I was sort of hoping today even). Joe sat on the riding mower and watched his Dad. Since we had dry lotted many of our animals there over the winter, the ground was quite deep with composting manure. Phil spent a couple of hours just plowing one small section: back and forth and up and down, trying to get traction and a good mix. Then he tilled.

He finished after dark, but reported a dark brown soil resulted, compared to the orange we've seen thus far.

Meanwhile, the boys entertained me with their antics. Jadon is an expert at standing on his head. Joe adores his big brother and wants to be like him.

When he gets a little tired, he is sure a giggle box!

The forecast predicts 42 as the low tonight. It's 42 now, and feels like 35 to me. I have 176 tomatoes and three flats of flowers that I hope will still be living tomorrow morning when I wake up.