New sunburst siding on the Well House store! Designed and built by our good friend Casey Mullen.
Planting cover crops and starting to put gardens to bed for the winter.
New batch of fall chicks to start laying in the spring.
Last falls chicks enjoying some summer sunshine
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Sorry for the lack of posts for the past 5 months or so. We had some issues with being able to access the page editor.. and something to do with summertime gardens, hay and everything else seems to have distracted me from trying to figure it out. Anyway were back online and summer is in full tilt. It’s been a pretty good summer for us so far with the gardens and animals. Dispite a small setback with a broken hand, we have no complaints. Anyway, the hay is cut so I’ll make this short and promise to put up some recent photos soon.
Last week Jenny Sunshine’s first calf showed up on Tuesday night at 11 P.M. Somehow we knew it was going to happen at night, and on a freezing cold night at that. She did a great job and gave birth to a big healthy bull calf with no complications, although we weren’t able to get him quite dry enough to stop him shivering and had to bring him in to spend a few hours by the wood stove. The next morning he was on his feet and ready to start bouncing around on those long and awkward new legs!
A week later and the calf (Alfred) is healthy and getting stronger every day, and we have really started in on milking. Jenny is giving us around 40 lbs. of milk a day right now and we have begun experimenting in butter, cheese and yogurt. What an wonderful thing milk is!
The weather continues to be crummy for sugaring, so far we have finished almost 2 gallons of syrup. Still waiting on some strong sap runs hopefully soon. Dispite the weather, the greens in the high tunnel are growing with the growing daylight hours. The spinach is as sweet as candy and the kale is throwing new leaves all the time. In a month or so I would expect the tunnel to be in full production.
I am continually amazed at what is possible inside of the new high tunnel where these greens are growing with ZERO energy input. Nothing but winter time solar gain and unfrozen ground. In fact they didn’t even require a drop of water from Thanksgiving through February!
Here’s the first picture of many I am sure to show Luke and Land, our new team of draft horses. Annalisa and I picked them up just recently and they are a pair of 9 month old Suffolk Punch colts. While we continue to work the older teams of horses on the farm for all of the field and hay work, we will be training these two alonside for the next 2 years or so before they are set to the plow. So far we have had leaps and bounds of success gentling, and settling them to our routines and environment. They are both very curious, attentive, open to learning, and kind. All attributes that we could have only prayed for to find in a young team. The breed of Suffolk Punch draft horse is rare and unique in that they have been bred only for farm work throughout their history. While other breeds of draft horses are bred for different reasons like the show ring, or pulling contests (both of which we find to be much less about the animal and actually more about human ego) these Suffolk’s with their beautiful chestnut color, short stature and stocky build are the ideal work animal. They are full of enthusiasm, energy and willingness to get the job done. One of the current teams on the farm is Vicky and Poppy who are also of the Suffolk breed. They never fail to amaze me with their eagerness for the work and desire to do it well, once they have figured out what it is that needs to be done.
I just came across this picture of Annalisa raking hay this past summer with the Queens. Though the snow flies outside right now I find this very warming.
Its seems as though most of our Fall projects actually got finished up before the snow set in on us this winter. We welcomed the snow by celebrating the Christmas season with lots of friends and family. We successfully dried off Nightshade the goat and since Annalisa gets a break from school for a month we decided we had better take the chance to run off for a few weeks before Jenny the cow has her calf, and we are chained to a milking schedual and the fast approaching neccesitties of the upcoming growing season. By the goodness of friends and family alike the animals were all looked after while we had a great trip up to Maine for some hiking, camping, visiting and some amazing cross country skiing. Now that were back we have a lot to look forward to and work for before the season starts. Jenny is due with her first calf almost any day now and she really looks the part. The greens in the high tunnel are starting to pick up and we had a really nice harvest last weekend for our winter farmers markets.
With the ground frozen and a snow pack were able to get back into the woods also to salvage any of the decent pine logs that we can from that crazy blow last March. Nice to get behind the teams again and see those logs coming in to the mill to supply all of the building projects coming up this year.
Right now one of the projects is building a walk in cooler off of the Well House for milk and egg storage this summer. Our faithful abode, The Well House was the home of Annalisa and I for almost three years. We moved into the main farmhouse this fall and decided to try to keep the well house in our daily use so it doesn’t go to rust, and decided to make it our milk and egg handling room. Also this summer it will be open for the public as a small store front to buy milk, eggs, produce and seeds.
We are carrying High Mowing Seeds again this winter and the racks are full of little packets of hope, decorated with memories of summer and garden plans. You can find us at the Newmarket and Derry winter farmers markets for the rest of the winter or call ahead if you want to stop by. Newmarket is the 3rd Saturday of everymonth and Derry is the 1st and 3rd Sunday.
Annalisa and Nissa on vacation.
The ultimate oven! www.tinderhearth.org Very motivated group of kids in Brooksville, ME who have created a great space for creativity and sustinence. Lots of really good bread, and music.
Here are a a few shots of our new bicycle powered grain mill rig. We bought the mill from Country Living Grain Mills this fall and just finished the conversion to power it from this old exercise bike instead of hand cranking it. We have begun grinding the Flint Corn into cornmeal as planned and are very pleased with the results. Winter farmer’s markets started yesterday Sunday Nov. 7. The market took place in Derry which will be hosting the market every first and third Sunday of the month all winter long. We will also be attending the Newmarket Winter farmers markets every third Saturday of the month. We brought along yesterday our first bagged and labeled packages of Cornmeal for sale and had a good reaction to them. We’ve embarked on our own journey of baking with the cornmeal in different applications and will continue to experiment but have been really enjoying it so far. If anyone has any favorite recipies including cornmeal we would love to hear them to try them out and post them on here for others to try as well.
We have also just started construction on the new High Tunnel that is going up on the Tuckaway side of the farm. It will be the same as the tunnel that went up this spring.. 30′ X 76′ and will be full of greens early next spring. Now we just have to race the snow and hard freeze to get the high tunnel up and a few different concrete pourings done!
An exceptionally large and beautiful head of garlic that weighed 1/4lb. all by itself!!
Garlic planting time usually means cold fingers and there was no exception today. It sure felt like fall today when the sun dropped behind the trees and the wind got up! Time for more layers! This years saved seed weighed in at 275 lbs.! Were trying a new idea with our garlic plot this year and are really excited about it. Garlic is typically a heavy feeding crop and needs lots of available nutrients which are usually supplied by fertilizers, but our new system incorporates the naturally occuring fertility of the manure from the horses, dairy cow and our flock of pastured laying hens. Aided by the nutrient recycling and mineralization properties of beneficial cover crops, and minimum till techniques. I will be writing an artical on the whole process after we are done planing, complete with pictures and will follow through to next seasons harvest with updates.
Nina, Annalisa and faithful companion Nissa working with cold fingers and lots of big cloves of Garlic!
Here are a few more garlic pictures that have been long overdue to be posted from the Garlic Pull Party back in July. Hard to imagine it being so warm now! Thanks to Joe for taking the beautiful pictures of such a great day.
Thanks again to everyone who came out! The garlic pull party is definetly on for next year…including food drinks and live music!
Here are a few pictures of Annalisa’s beautiful flower bed just before we had to pull out the flowers to prepare for some winter greens. She grew beautiful Zinnias, Status, and Love Lies Bleeding, and did such a nice job with them and enjoyed sharing them with friends and family so much I had to document her work to remember the colors of summer to look forward to next years flowers.
A few shots from around here recently…
Young Bourbon Red Tom struts for the camera
some of the barnyard family
Up close view of the Oats/Forage Pea winter cover crop coming in nicely with an underplanting of Tillage Radish coming up through
Another view of the same..note the Tillage Radish coming through on 2′ centers in the broadcasted Oats/Forage Pea cover crop. The idea behind the Tillage Radish is to plant in the late summer for it to put on as much growth as possible before it gets frost killed and left over winter with the rest of the winter killed cover crop. In the spring the radish rots in place and leaves holes drilled in the soil from its long taproots..in this case we are experimenting with the radish to effectivly “bio-drill” though a hard pan that is in a lower portion of one of the fields. Last spring this whole secion of field was standing water for a few weeks, so the idea is to promote water infiltration without soil erosion and to break up the hard pan naturally to help the root zone of future crops.
We just harvested our Abenaki Flint Corn which we plan to be grinding at farmers markets this fall for corn meal. After harvest we set the pigs out to forage on dropped ears, stalks, and fresh grass. They were having fun…That is the new pig house on a trailer in the background, were really pleased with how it has worked out to be a comforable and spacious shelter for the pastured pigs and makes moving them around to different locations much easier and stress free. Just close the door at night and move the trailer in the morning to greener pastures. One pitch of the roof props up for ventilation and human sized access to add fresh bedding.
Happy pigs..happy end of summer! Tomorrow is the first day of Fall!
