Farm Odds and Ends

 

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I don't have any one thing to report today, but there's a number of littler things to chat about.  

Caleb and I spent the weekend getting the garden almost wrapped up for the spring.  Good timing since it's officially summer today :)  First off, I tilled some areas that had been garlic and planted some bush beans.  I'm wanting dried beans, and they'll be done in 80-90 days according to the package, so they've got plenty of time to mature between now and late October.  I also tilled two beds that had been planted with too-old sunflower seeds and were only growing weeds, and replanted those to two more types of dried beans.  In all, I planted Black Coco, Hutterite (navy-type), Cannellini, and Calypso.  The last one is pretty cool, it's black and white, in a yin-yang design.  

We got into the hoophouse early on Saturday and dug the potatoes.  I had about 8 plants of purple ones that did pretty well, and a good bit of German Butterball that did quite well.  Those were an experiment.  I think I read years ago that you should save the best potatoes to get the best ones next year, like garlic and most things - bigger, better seed makes a bigger better next generation.  Well, I had several handfuls of pea to marble sized potatoes last year.  On a whim, I planted them to see what they made.  They did great!  There were some small ones, of course, and lots of medium, and a good number of quite large, almost baking size, even though German Butterballs are actually a small potato.  So, this morning I replanted several dozen of this year's peas and marbles - as with the beans they should have plenty of time to grow by fall, and should last that much longer into the winter for not already having sat through the heat of the summer months.  

We also did some major weeding - my beets were coming in pretty nicely, but absolutely drowning in weeds.  The downside to not having very hot compost is that it's all inoculated with weed seeds. I really should just farm them as a green manure crop the first year after I spread it in the garden, repeatedly tilling them under until they've all sprouted, but I can never spare the plantable space.  So, every morning and evening for 3 days we've spent a good while delicately weeding those beds.  Beets are so hard to weed around when they're small, they need to keep their roots underground, and they tend to pop out when something is uprooted right next to them.  Also, their leaves sneak into the weeds, and when I pull up the weed the beet next to it comes right out too :(  They all end up looking dead, flopped over on their sides, but they perk up by the next day.  I almost finished the last beet bed this morning before I just got too hot - even watering myself when I watered the new bean beds didn't last long enough!  

I spent Thursday and Friday mowing, and we also did a little over the weekend, around the garlic and barley beds, and were able to remulch most of the tomato beds with the grass clippings, as well as the smaller asparagus bed.  I mostly mow as a way to generate grass mulch :)  More importantly, we've grass-mulched our single poison ivy patch out of existence!  

Caleb also transplanted the baby asparagus I'd potted up earlier this summer, when I was waiting for the peas to come out and free up that space.  We now have a second bed completely asparagus - that'll be so exciting come spring!

In animal news, we moved the milk goats' pen, they'd been in the same place for 2 weeks and had about eaten it up.  They always love to get a new pen with all kinds of green candy - clover in particular.  Their production is starting to drop after 2.5 months - early on I was getting over a quart between the two girls, and it's down to about 3 cups now.  Still worth it, we don't have to buy milk and I can make more soap when I get a chance.  I'm not making cheese right now, though - our local cow milk exchange is on hiatus for a few weeks, so we're drinking the goat for a while, and that doesn't leave enough extra for cheese.

Darcy had her calf on Saturday, a gorgeous gray girl.  Darcy is the only of our cows that is a gray-brown color - I don't know my animal color terminology very well, but she's not the red-toned brown of the others.  This little girl is a color we've never had either, a slate-gray, just striking.  We're still working on a name - any ideas are welcome!  That leaves Myra and Bridget still to calve sometime this summer... 

Snowball also decided to join the new mama group, having a cria this morning (Monday).  Caleb thinks it's a girl, but Snowball tried to bite him when he got a little too inquisitive for her taste:)  She?'s a nice red-brown color like Reba, so we'll need an appropriate name for her.  Anybody have a suggestion for a red-headed female country singer, preferably a classic?  That just leaves Annie to finish off the cria season - I'm so glad they are doing this in June rather than the fall, I don't like heading into winter with babies.  

ETA:  Never mind, it was a boy after all, and Caleb found it fatally tangled in the fence this evening. This is just not our summer for animals :(

Lastly, a final goat update.  Spots finally faded out Friday afternoon, as I said there's just not much you can do when a goat stops eating.  The vet came back with some research, and believes the cause was over-eating on black locust.  They absolutely love the stuff, but apparently ingesting over 1% of their body weight, especially bark, can cause problems.  The pasture they were in had a large patch of locust - and not much else - and they'd never grazed that one before, so it had tons of low growth for them eat, including twigs and branches rather than just the few leaves they can reach from the previously grazed patches.  We lost two goats last year in a very similar area, at the same time of year, and I suspected black locust poisoning then but couldn't find anything conclusive online, other than a horse death or two.  Frustrating to be proven right in such a hard-hitting fashion.  Next time, in these newer areas, we'll either run the cows through first, or only, since eating 1% of their body weight in locust is much harder to accomplish!  

Well, that's a brief glimpse of our weekend, I hope ya'll had a good one as well!  Happy Fathers Day to everyone!  

Comments

good news and bad

So glad to keep hearing these regular reports, Amy, and humbled by how you all handle the vagaries of farm life. Thanks, as always, for the peek into life on the farm. HOpe it was a good Father's day for Caleb!

name

Bonnie Raitt?

never mind - just read the

never mind - just read the next sentence :-(

Good name suggestion

Yes, that was so disappointing, I never actually saw him alive. I do like the name, though, I'll bank it for the next red girl - thanks!

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