Good Garden Growth

While I went to town, Phil moved the laying hens up into the orchard. (Too bad we didn’t have them there the day before, when we had chicken photos!) This year’s little laying chicks did not want to move. Now, 24 hours later, they are still running free. Unlike the older layers, they didn’t even settle in after dark. We’re not sure how to deal with that.

The ducklings overall are behaving well with the tiny new chicks. I'm amazed at how different their body feel is from the chicks. The ducks have soft and meaty chests and extremely teeny wings. And they are four weeks old and still covered with down.

I finished planting out the peppers yesterday. All 210 are in the ground. I had been worried about the space in the garden, concerned that we would run out of room, but we have a LARGE amount of space yet to fill up.

My original lasagna garden is growing, too. I picked peas from the two beds, and I am thrilled with the size of the Music garlic growing.

The Egyptian walking onions have beautiful bulbils.

The main market garden continues to grow. The beets (which probably should have been thinned).

The cabbage: huge leaves, but no heads yet.

Eight varieties of potatoes: some varieties obviously are a good bit more vigorous than the others!

The oldest, largest tomatoes, now all nicely staked (thanks to Ken and Cheri).

The newly planted section, with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and flowers.

And the lettuce and mustard greens we've been harvesting. I must admit that the mustard greens are a bit too bitter for my taste. Maybe I let them grow too much? I don't know.

We've eaten Caesar salad with the lettuce, and it is marvelous.

Promotional Photos on a Disheartening Day

We had our friend Tahni come to take promotional photos for our website. She arrived at 5:30, and before that, it felt like the farm was in a conspiracy to keep me edgy and tense.

Abraham was in with the lambs and said, “Mom, I think Cassandra is dead.”

Sure enough. Lamb Cassandra (number 13), so chunky and chipper, was recently dead.

Why? I have no idea. I had found sheep minerals the day before and given some to the sheep, but there’s no reason a little extra free-choice calcium should harm a sheep. Of the lambs, she was one of the plumpest, so she didn’t starve. The sheep had water (not dehydration), the weather was in the mid-60s (not overheating), she had some cud in her mouth and her throat appeared clear (not choking).

Her head was twisted back. Death pangs? Some sort of fatal fall off the compost heap? Inbreeding (her parents had the same father) causes congenital heart failure? No idea. So much of farming is simply mysterious.

Also, we had gone for chicks, which reached us well. We put them in the trailer, and opened the back a bit for ventilation, with chicken wire across the opening. Incredibly, the chicks fit through the teeny chicken wire openings! By the time I realized it, we’d had about five little babies break out. The dog found one before me, and, I’m sure without malice, took it in her mouth and killed it. (We have slightly older chicks walking the homestead and she now ignores them; I think she’s still figuring out what’s a toy and what’s off-limits.)

And I misplaced an important paper. I had hoped to plant sweet potatoes, but instead I turned the trailer inside out and still couldn’t find it.

But by the time Tahni came, we laughed and enjoyed the animals, and after three hours, we ate homemade lettuce with homemade Caesar dressing and sat and talked. So fun.

The end of the day was better than the beginning.

My Clean Barn-Kitchen

The thermometer stood right at 32 when I got up. I waited until the thermometer read 50 (early morning sun hits it, so I'm sure the temperature wasn't actually 50 outside!). And although there was frost on the peat around the tomato beds, persistent enough that I made a hand print in it, every one of my plants came through just fine, blossoms, small fruit and all.

Thanks be to God (and to the Acres USA MP3 where I first heard that BD 507 can help raise plant temperatures just a bit).

Today, while Ken and Cheri cared for the boys (making mounds and mounds of pancakes), and Ken cleaned the motor home stove, which was filthy from all my uncleaned up spills over the last year (!—bless him; it took nearly all day, because it was a horrendously scrubbing job, that even required a trip to the store for more robust cleaning supplies than the homestead offered), I tackled the barn.

Our metal shed, used as kitchen, chick brooder, and feed storage shed, has been much neglected lately. As the weather heats up, though, the motor home will be less pleasant to cook in, and I want to move back outside. But 18 months of stuff accumulation needed some serious sorting, scrubbing, and disposing. The walls themselves were bespeckled, and the surface of the two tables was completely buried. There are no "before" photos, because potential customers might read this post at some point, and I wouldn't want them to turn away in disgust.

It took me all day, and Cheri helped a great deal, but my kitchen is sparkling, my farming supplies are actually stored in their own places. Since we no longer store feed in the barn, I had more storage space than I realized! What a great feeling.

First Flower Blooms

After 1.1" rain fell in the night, I wasn't eager to head out to do chores and plant. I just cuddled with the boys for a bit, and those five or ten minutes of pure joy felt like the first really mellow "do nothing" moments in a long time.

On heading out, though, I found six dead chicks and three close to death. What happened?! The electric fence was on, and there were no scattered feathers or bloody bodies like last week. Probably not a predator then. The rainy weather could have chilled the chicks, since they are only four weeks old, but three week old chicks officially can handle freezing temperatures. Was the wet the problem then? Those nine chicks, out of 72, were simply not ready for the cold?

Or could it be some form of noxious weed? The area they are grazing is mostly white clover, which isn't toxic; perhaps one of the other weedy species is? What a mystery! What a frustrating mystery. (Phil's vote: chicken pneumonia. He's probably correct.)

The other bit of disturbing news was that the temperature tonight is supposed to be 39, but feel like 32. Is that cold enough to freeze all my tomatoes, flowers, melons, and the 60 pepper plants? I'm not taking chances, so I did the only thing I could think of: sprayed Biodynamic Prep 507, basically an herbal homeopathic spray, that is supposed to raise the temperature around the plants by one or two degrees. Lord willing, all will yet be alive and thriving tomorrow.

Cheri cut up potatoes, and I planted until I finished the full bed. Then Ken and Cheri staked the rest of the first planting of tomatoes.

Some have little green fruits already! So neat!

And my Gomphrena, or Globe Amaranth, has teeny blooms! It's hardly May, and there is beautiful life, grown from seed, springing forth.

I also decided I would rather plant my second blueberry bush on the other side of my little garden path, making it "Blueberry Row."

Such a nice day!

Jadon's Rain Prayer

Now that the majority of spring planting and transplanting is over, and it appears the last frost date came three weeks early (hallelujah!), I realized that it's time to begin summer planting. After filling 99 trays in the greenhouse and gradually transplanting their contents out to the garden, I realized I had some resistance to filling the trays again. Doesn't the work end?!

Of course not. We need to eat every day; why would I expect that there would be a plant that would grow for months without maintenance? (Actually, some do, like tomatoes and peppers, but plenty of others, like greens, need new plantings through the year.)

So I planted out the rest of the melon seedlings, all way, way overdue. They've been held over in the greenhouse since sprouting in mid-February, so bless them for still having leaves and not giving up the ghost. I said to Phil, "I think I might just chuck these," and he said, "Might as well plant them."

I said to my sister, several weeks later, "I think I'm going to just toss these," and she said, "You might as well plant them." So, with unanimous support, I planted those plants, and if they take, I'm thrilled. For now, I have good exercise for my hope muscles.

I started more melon seedlings, some new okra seedlings (yay!), and summer squash, too. My zucchinis grew to about 4" last year, then curled up and died. Was it a blight in the soil? I don't know, but I hope we do better this year.

As we prepared for Phil's parents' arrival, we took 100 pounds of seed potatoes out of the motor home where they've been waiting for their turn for planting. The potatoes I've been watering and loving in the greenhouse (again, holding them a good bit too long), have teeny green sprouts. The potatoes in the boxes, neglected and ignored, had enormous white sprouts. How counter-intuitive.

Phil finished tilling a few beds, and then helped me plant 60 bell pepper seedlings. I dug the holes and he popped them in the ground. It was the first transplanting he's done. "This is so fun! It beats plowing any day." Not all transplanting is quick and easy, but this was marvelous fun.

While Phil tilled, I took Phil's parents around the farm to see the progress we've made since last September. It was exciting to show all the new animals, the new plants, the new growth.

Phil also took a load of garbage to the dump. We had gone in early February, and while it grieves me to have a truck load of trash every three months, I don't know how to get away from it. Yet.

The boys also made a large pile of paper, and we lit a bonfire before the predicted rain. The fire was just about done when the winds picked up. I watered the embers and Jadon kept the hose from kinking, but embers blew all over. Jadon started to cry out in a loud voice, "Lord, we need rain. We need rain NOW!" It was such precious praying, spontaneous and heart-felt, and within a minute, the rain had started to fall.

Post-Travel Detox

Any travel is so rough on Phil. Since he has such a strong MSG reaction, he slept much of today, trying to get rid of a headache. He still did the chores and made up an invoice, helped me move the 71 little broiler chicks to their new home outside (two more, on the lam for almost a week, yet elude capture), went to the lower pasture to water the cows, brought hay to the sheep, and went with me to get whey for the pigs.

It just wasn't anything else.

Except that, perhaps due to his headache, he misjudged how to bring the hay bale in for the sheep. He wanted Jadon to be in two places at once, and within seconds we had a full-on jailbreak, with all 12 larger sheep making a run for the orchard. "It could hardly have gone any worse," was Phil's comment.

We ended up carrying most of the sheep down the slope to their proper corral. They are surprisingly heavy. (Off topic: it is odd to think that a full-grown pig weighs as much as one of our cows: about 900 pounds. That hardly seems right, but pigs are super dense.) Some sheep managed to put a halter on and drive back. It was hot, stressful, strenuous. But we were all working together, and it was exciting, so I suppose that counts for something.

It was chilly this morning, but by midday had grown hot. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to open the greenhouse door. The peppers were happy, but I think everything else wasn't thrilled with the oven I'd created. I put two flats of potatoes in the ground, and they were hot to the touch as I cut them. Many had black hearts, but fine green sprouts. Will they grow? I'll find out.

And I planted out some muskmelon and watermelon, both long-overdue to be outside, poor things. I hope to start some new melon seedlings and get them planted out in a much more reasonable time frame.

I also ground up six hams to make sausage (since I prefer to eat sausage than ham), mulched around the 116 recent hazelnuts planted, and peeked in my beehives. The bees have not yet touched the second levels I added. There were maybe ten bees total in the upper levels: it was really empty.

The bottom boxes, though, hummed with activity. I could see glimpses of beautiful comb, and stored nectar. At some point I should probably open the hive and check on them more fully, but right now, I'm not feeling compelled.

A Few Photos

Jadon passed out at church today in the middle of worship. Apparently, skipping breakfast causes low blood sugar. Blech. Phil ran to the nearby Food Lion and bought some bananas, grapes, and wheat-free crackers, and he managed to get through the rest of church without passing out again.

Honestly, the amount of drama we have in this family! Gracious!

Our affection for Bitsy continues to grow. The boys spent most of the afternoon playing with her. They threw the Bumper toy over and over until her tongue grew raw. She was still eager and cheery, but I told the boys to give her a break. They walked around with her then.

A few other photos from this week.
Jadon tied a rope to the door handle, so the littler boys can open the door when they want to.

Young calf Cleo is always a bit of a loner, but she is sweet.

What a nice face!

At Phil's grazing seminar, the presenters explained that, when you calve in tune with nature, the bulls do not breed the heifers too young. The presenters run all their animals together. (They aren't doing dairy, so it could be there is a difference, but it sounds like I need to learn more about seasonal dairying.)