Comfrey Bits and Watermelon Poisoning

Poor Phil! I forgot that last year he had an allergic reaction to the spray on conventional watermelons. Yesterday he ate a good portion of a watermelon, gnawing down to the rind; today he slept off a raging migraine all day.

I started planting the comfrey root cuttings. I soaked and planted 150 at foot by foot spacing in the greenhouse. I intend to transplant them when they grow; perhaps it could be a long-term transplanting possibility, until we get the floor of the orchard into comfrey ... all two acres. Some day.

Joe came to help me towards the end. He got a cutting out of the water, noticed it had roots, and knew to plant it root down. Except, since the whole thing is a root cutting, it's supposed to be planted flat. Perhaps I shouldn't be amazed that he's picked up the proper way of planting, just like I shouldn't be amazed that he scolds me if I say "dirt" instead of "soil," but I am amazed.

"I love to help!" he said. After a while, though, he started to drop two comfrey cuttings in a hole. And then he took my shoe and dropped it in a puddle (we were both working barefoot). So perhaps the love of helping has a shelf life. But for the time he was enthusiastic about proper placement, and entire weed removal, he cheered me with his little jokes ("This isn't comfrey ... it's a bucket!" Three year old jokes: they're only funny because the child is three).

I had 100 goji sprouts large enough to pot on, and I am getting close to the end of bed-making in the moon bed.

The boys also had a good time in the mud. We had almost two inches of rain in about 24 hours, so there was much moisture and mud to play with.

Several Days of Stories and Photos

My computer had reached a state of memory overload such that I couldn't download any more photos. I missed posting pictures, and I missed writing, so I'm happy to have memory and a bit of time on this rainy night to catch up.

On Friday, Phil realized that the grass in the orchard was a bit out of control, reaching a good foot and a half in places.

He mowed it with the tractor. Because we have the metal building blocking the entrance to each row, Phil has to drive down each row, back up all the way, and drive down the next section. Horribly inefficient. We eagerly anticipate the day that he can make a beautiful, winding line around the orchard without backtracking.

I planted the remaining flats of flowers down by the bees. Many of my nasturtiums, planted a week or two now, are growing well. I'm pleased with the parts of the moon bed that are done, and I'm keeping up on weeding—so far.

Phil mentioned that he had dug in a pile of woodchips near the compost pile, and uncovered ten worms with each shovelful. How exciting! I've wanted to seed the greenhouse with worms, so Isaiah and I dug up worms, and then I dropped them along the plants in the greenhouse: lettuce, tomatoes, various other experimental plants. After I did that, I read that generally seeding with worms doesn't work, as the worm population self-regulates. However, if we've killed many worms through tillage, perhaps adding a few wouldn't be bad.

(To round out the worm story: the red wrigglers that I got from a friend over Christmas are finally multiplying well. But the large container of nightcrawlers I've been hoping for have mostly, it appears, died. I did not provide them the optimal environment: too much moisture, probably too much manure. Of the dozens of nightcrawlers I've added over the last few months, I found about eight. And since, apparently, worms decompose rapidly, the rest of the worms appear to have entirely vanished.)

Friday was an exciting day for me, too, because my ten elderberry cuttings arrived. I put them in pots right away, but they will grow. Wyldewood Cellars, where I bought them, plants theirs five feet apart, with ten feet between rows: and the elderberries can grow into one huge shrub if not kept trimmed. The Wyldewood variety is supposed to produce about 40-60 pounds of fruit per bush annually: pretty impressive and about three times the average elderberry. (If you're interested, call Marge at 800.711.9748. She is a delight to talk to, and sounds like a sprightly 60-year-old. She's actually 84, and takes no meds but a tablespoon of elderberry syrup every day. I don't know many people age 84 on no meds: good for her!)

Friday Abraham also mentioned that his tooth felt strange. He has a permanent front tooth poking up, and hadn't even noticed that his baby tooth was loose!

Saturday saw Abraham's transformation into a cowboy.

A happier cowboy you would never hope to see.

That day Phil continued mowing: between orchard trees by hand, then with the tractor all around the former market garden, now in cover crops.

We also sold the remaining three sheep. Ashley and Acorn have been with us since shortly after we moved, the longest animal residents here. Phil is excited to have extra time not moving them daily.

K. van Bourgondien, the bulb importer where I ordered such good daffodils last fall, is having their end of season sale. I bought some asparagus plants at a great price, and some other bulbs and flowers just for fun.

At some point last week, I heard a terrific crash from the barn. I think a cat was chasing a mouse and knocked a clay pot off the upper shelf. I found the pot a few days later. I had taken two cuttings from my little fig tree when I planted it, and stuck them in a damp sand-perlite mixture, covered with a plastic bag.

Since the cuttings had been knocked out of their place, I was pleased to see the little fig rootlet poking out. Incredible, how things grow!

The jujubes, too, in their little pots, keep getting bigger.

Last night a gentle rain began to fall. It fell all night, and this morning, when we got a call from the post office that we had a package marked "perishable" (600 comfrey root bits!), Phil couldn't get the van up the driveway. He took the truck. Then the UPS man delivered 200 little blueberry plants: it's like spring has really sprung here.

Sheep in the Kitchen

When I went out to make bread for breakfast on Wednesday, I noticed the sheep, pen-free since Monday afternoon, were all oddly clustered around the door of the barn. They're usually more people averse than that.

Imagine my disgust to find that they had nudged aside the lid to my bulk buckets of rice and oatmeal and were gorging on the grains. Gross! The oats especially appeared quite moist on the surface. I'm hoping it doesn't create an ideal environment for mold, thus spoiling the lot.

While I'm frustrated by the expense and the ick, everyone I've told just laughs. And there is something unusual about sheep in the kitchen. But still!

In happier news for me, it was finally the day to check my bees! I have been holding myself back, so I was ready. The first frame I pulled, on the outside of the Daffodil hive, the entire wax and honey fell off as I was pulling it out. I think I was as gentle as I thought I could be: either they had built up too much for the amount of connection, or they weren't doing the best job. (The frame right next to it had some lovely comb filled with pollen ... on the bottom of the frame. I had to scrape it off.) Other than that, Daffodil looked like it was thriving.

The Damaris hive, with the upper level added from Celestial, looked pretty good. The Celestial bees hadn't built up much, but since they were excluded by a paper barrier for the week, it makes sense that they didn't have much to work with. The queen hadn't laid any eggs in the upper level, but I removed the paper, and noticed her beautiful laying pattern on several full frames below.

And then the moment of truth. The Celadon hive, apparently queenless, with a frame of brood added from Damaris: would they have started a new queen cell? Or gone another week closer to annihilation?

I pulled out the the frame I'd inserted, nearly empty of hatched brood. No queen cells. But the next frame had capped worker brood. And so did the next. Apparently, I had had a queen the whole time, she had just been slow to get laying. (And now I get to wonder if I accidentally killed her, if the frame I inserted with another hive's bees balled the queen. Phil said, "Why even think about that? Do you just have to have something to worry about?" Maybe.)

Phil spent much of the day unloading his massive boards from the trailer into their current resting place. He had hoped to return the trailer, too, but there was a lot of wood, and he had to cut stickers (the little pieces of wood that keep the boards apart), so it took a while.

I have been rejoicing and rejoicing. My gingko seeds, wrapped in moist paper towel in a plastic bag, had a sprout on Wednesday. No more, but one is encouraging!

I wondered, too, if it would be better to remove the pawpaw seeds from their soil blocks and put them in moist paper towels. When I pulled 21 seeds out of blocks, I found two with tiny sprouts, and a few more that were cracked a bit and ready to emerge. How exciting!

The 1000 teeny goji seeds have been gradually sprouting lately. I plant 25 or 50 a day, which is a great pace. Rather than making 1000 blocks, then putting 1000 seeds into place and having half not grow, I can put them in place once they are growing. It's revolutionary for me.

The Siberian pea shrub seeds rotted under their moist plastic covering. Too much heat, I think: they cooked.

The goumi may have still been viable, except something came in the night and cracked each seed and ate the innards, leaving only a husk. No sprouts from digested partial seeds. (And I hope that mouse-or-other gets caught by the cat soon.)

I ordered some new Siberian pea shrub and goumi seeds, and will try the paper towel method, hoping for better success.

Today I pinched all but one sprout off the 265 grafts. Most have two or three grafted sprouts (meaning I could have had similar success with smaller rootstocks), but leaving two or three to grow would weaken the tree down the road.

So I pinched off all but one (usually the top, which was generally the most vigorous looking).

Two or three must not have been grafted onto first year wood, as they have little apple blossoms! I pinched those, too.

There are a few that have not leafed out yet, but when I scraped their skin a bit, they all showed green cambium: they have the potential to grow, if they're not actively growing now.

On one of the rootstocks, I found a grasshopper, so freshly emerged from its former skin that it remained stationary long enough for me to run and get the camera and take a photo. I've not seen that before: so beautiful.

Also, with good appearance, Jadon.

It's been a good couple of days.

In Which I Corral a Cow on My Own

During our lengthy cow wrangling on Saturday, Phil put Toots on a lead rope, and I put her baby on a little rope, and we led/tugged the cow and calf to the current sheep fold. They enjoyed waist high ryegrass for a few days.

Today, though, Toots was bawling. Phil was away, and so I extended her pen.

A bit later I came out to make breakfast, only to find Toots wandering near the greenhouse, bawling to her calf to hurry up and join her! I guess I hadn't made the pen quite secure enough.

Happily, Toots really just wanted to reunite with the rest of the herd, so she headed right where she needed to go.

Unhappily, there wasn't a good access point for Toots. I would hoist the electric line high enough that she could walk under, but that was too odd. We tried three times: she would come close, I would hope up the line, she would turn away, I would chase her down and turn her around.

It was aggravating. If there was someone behind her to give gentle pressure, I think she would go in, but there was no one else.

In the end, I changed tactics and made a little corridor for her. Even this had no guarantee of success, but at last she and her baby joined the rest of the herd.

Seed Sprouts

Phil mentioned this morning that he had to change the filter on the well last night. He had changed it Saturday evening, caked with silt. But after letting the water run for a day, the filter had filled again. I'm just so thankful that we have running water!

Although he sat up until 2am, the predator didn't show up last night. Phil moved the chicken pen near the house again, and we have electric net wired again. I had a bad moment when I went to close the chickens in: I didn't see Tux! Just the seven Leghorns and Chanticleer. This was not good.

But Tux was there! She's just harder to spot in the shadowy hen house, blending her black feathers in the corner.

It hasn't been good weather to open the beehives, but I noticed there were bee cappings from baby bees already last Saturday! So fun to see that the virgin queens are already productive. I continue to have another five or six little scions poke out in green every day. It has been fascinating to watch the rate of emergence.

Speaking of emergence, the 500 Siberian pea shrubs and 500 goumi seeds don't look terribly good. After soaking for a day, I put them in little soil blocks, then covered their flats with plastic to keep them from drying out. That may have overheated them. Time will tell.

On the other hand, I put the goji seeds in wet paper towel in a plastic bag, and I've checked them every day for the last week. I had about 25 little sprouts today, and that was very fun. The white mulberries have a few sprouts, too. Perhaps in the future, I'll plan to sprout my seeds in wet paper towel.

Seeds don't run away or need corralling. Seeds might die, but if one does, it's not as emotionally draining as mammalian loss. I like seeds.

Dry Well

Phil got up to find a dead chicken in the hen house. The predator has followed the hens to the homestead, and, I expect will pick them off, one by one. (Brilliant, in a way: take what you need for the day, and leave the rest for another day.) We bought a spotlight and shotgun shells, and Phil has been in wait for two hours out in the dark. I know he loves being a farmer, but the times like this make me glad he has the roles he does. I don't have the patience.

This morning Phil also went to move the cows, until he noticed that they hadn't eaten much of their paddock (since their move yesterday took all day, rather than the hour or two he was expecting). Somehow he must not have hooked the water line back up correctly.

We had an early church meeting, and by the time we made it home, late in the afternoon, our well was dry.

By night, Phil was able to get a weak flow, so we have hope that the pump is not burned out, that the pump simply needs to recharge for some time.

But a dry well is not a pleasant thing to find. Ugh.

Thirteen Hours of Animal Wrangling

Phil was up at 6am, setting up the long cattle move from one neighbor's property to the other's. Other than short breaks for breakfast and lunch, he was on his feet, trying new things, the next thirteen hours.

In one of those hours, we sold our last three Babydoll sheep. I heard from one of last fall's purchasers that she had FIVE babies out of her two ewes. We were happy to have two living babies at the end of the season. I am happy that the sheep are so happy with her.

What brought Phil from pro-sheep to no-sheep? He scythed a patch of ryegrass, between a few experimental blueberry plants. Phil has never really scythed just grass before. He's scythed woody weeds and brush, but that is more a hack-hack than an easy swish. When he saw how quickly and pleasurably he could mow grass by hand, and calculated how much time he spends setting up sheep netting and taking it down, he realized he wanted to be done. At least for now.

We still have three full-sized sheep on the property, but in the afternoon, we had a former Polyface Farm intern stop by. He could not have had better timing (more on that in a minute), and he'll be back sometime next week to take the other three.

I posted six sheep for sale on Thursday night. I would not have expected to be sold out by Saturday afternoon. Clearly, it was time for the sheep to go.

The rest of the time was spent with the cows. Early on, we moved 14 cows into their first section of pen. Baby Dorothy was not there. How could Toots leave her, so callously? As we pulled up stakes and Phil wound up the electric line, we searched the entire paddock diligently. No sign of her.

We've lived this scenario before. Not the day following a severe predator attack (total chicken mortality this week: eight white Leghorns, fully half of our flock of layers. I am grateful to have eight yet, grateful for the sole guinea, grateful to hear Chanticleer's call, and especially grateful that Isaiah's pet Tux were not taken). But missing calf with calm mother: we've been there.

With almost every task completed before the herd moved on, Phil found Dorothy, lying in the unfinished basement of the neighbor's house, calmly curled up on the gravel floor.

And so we drove the fifteen cows to the edge of our field, where Phil had set up a cattle chute. These chutes allow a rancher to deal with an individual cow in tight confinement. The cow walks into a little stall, then the gate in front opens and the cow walks on.

Today, this was needed because several calves have no collars, and the two bull babies need their collars loosened. It's also just good management, to have cows go through chutes periodically.

And so the marathon began. After a half hour or so, we had a few yearlings go through in fairly quick succession. Fern, always eager for new forage (and perhaps remembering her AI experiences) proved brave enough to test the chute. Phil carried baby Dorothy through, and then held her with her little leash on until Toots, hesitatingly, walked through, too. Hornless Catherine, finished with the flying horns from stressed out cows, finally wandered through. Her son Clover soon followed. He jumped and tried to lunge out in several different ways, but Phil managed to loosen his collar and he moved off, no worse for the wear, and considerably freer in throat. I put a leash on Bianca, and tugged her through. It was like milking: she planted her feet, I tugged until she moved.

And so we were two hours in and had six of 14 through, and eight stressed out animals to go. That was when the former intern arrived, precisely when we were scratching our heads most. Why were the animals so completely balky? Was there an obvious fault in the set up? Even Snowman, generally the most gentlemanly of bulls, shook his horns at Phil (who made a truly astounding vertical leap over an electric line, well out of harm's way; I was still thinking, "Snowman's behaving aggressively," before I processed, "And Phil's ten feet and an electric line away).

No, he said, it seemed like it should be functional.

Sometimes the most helpful thing is just to know that you're not an idiot.

Phil wondered if perhaps the cows were so hesitant because he had used the boundary fence, which usually has a live electric line running the length, as one side of his chute. The line was, of course, turned off for the moment, but cows wouldn't necessarily want to cozy up to an electric line.

So he made a second chute, right next to the first. And after a break for lunch, sure enough, lead cow Bethany sauntered right on through, as did Snowman's current flame, Beatrice. Snowman headed in next, and, to our horror, his shoulders proved about two inches too wide. The original chute would have been the perfect size, I think: the second one was just a tad too small. He had to somehow ungracefully back out, and he was one shaken fellow by the time he could breathe free. A bull that big and that terrified felt particularly menacing, so we cut him out as quickly as possible and let him out a different way.

In the end, we had two that simply would not go through. Cheri and I both ended with hurt hands from Charlemagne charging through one of the electric lines. Charity spooked so badly she started breaking free of the holding pen and running around the hill. Ken got a shock from touching a line. Phil got shocked holding an insulator: he wondered if it arced onto his hand.

It was almost six. All the other cows had walked to their new pen. Fern and Bethany came back, calling for their foolish children. And so Charlemagne and Charity did not experience the wonder of the chute and the headgate. Some other time.

Phil took down fence and line for another hour or so, and at 7:30, thoroughly beat down, he sat down. A long day done.