Sheep Shearing: A Picture Diary

Today was a big day for the sheep - they finally got to shed their winter fleeces. High time, considering that it's been in the 90's all week.

We on the farm do not shear the sheep. Susan hires someone specifically to do this. His name is Matthew, and he's a senior in college, studying biology. He also happens to know how to cut the fleece of a sheep in a timely manner, without damaging them too much.

Hopefully, the little sheep will now be much more comfortable.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch... er, farm.

Due to some unfortunate events at home, I was in Indiana all of last week. Thus the blogging moratorium.

Although I wasn't present to witness it, the farm kept operating. Plants grew, animals ate, people harvested. And despite my (relatively) short absence, I was faced with plenty of changes when I returned yesterday.

For starters, Juanita the Spanish Meat Goat had her baby - a single boy. I don't have any pictures of him yet.

Second: two of our remaining three ducks ran a-fowl (hee) of a predator in the night, and are now swimming in that big lake in the sky. The last duck has been put in the aviary for protection... where she will soon be joined by the cute little bevy of ducklings that arrived while I was gone. (The red light is from a heat lamp.)

Third: plants grow fast. Really fast. The potatoes, which were a few scant inches tall when I left, are now a foot at least. The buckwheat now reaches my hips, despite being merely knee-high a week ago. And the heirloom tomatoes I planted the other week? Take a look.

This must be what having children is like. One second they're seedlings... and before you know it, they're bearing fruit of their own. Where, oh where, does the time fly?

We also have strawberries now. They are delicious.

And, judging by the numbers of Kermit look-alikes leaping about, it is well into frog mating season.

Sadly, I will be leaving the farm again on Thursday, to return on Monday. Hopefully, there won't be too many more changes in my absence.

The Blog, It Is A-Changin'

So, I figured it was finally time to change the background picture on this blog. Norway is lovely, but I thought something a little bit more evocative of farm life might be more appropriate. And since I've now been here for two whole months, I finally have a nice backlog of photos to choose from.

The picture I chose may look familiar to some of you. It was taken back in April.

So long, Norway... until we meet again. Sooner than later, I hope.

Baby Goats, Extra Fresh

Last Wednesday, Blanca finally had her kids!* Three of them, to be precise. No wonder she was so wide.

The next morning, we had to do the goat kid check in. You need to do this before they can walk enough to run away from you. It involves checking the sex of each kid, giving them a selenium injection (a trace mineral they need), and cleaning their umbilical cord type thing with iodine.

Since there were three kids and three interns, everyone got one.

Despite my innate hatred of putting up pictures of myself because I never like how I look, I posted these because the goat kids are just too darned cute. They are only twelve hours old in these pictures.

Just one pregnant goat left. It appears that each goat is a cycle apart - a goat estrus cycle is about three and a half weeks, and Juanita just does not look ready yet. So look for more baby goats in the future!




*I would have posted these much sooner, but due to the epic fail of Blogger for two days, I couldn't do a thing.

So Many Elderflowers, So Little Time

Today, I probably spent upwards of four and a half hours working with elderflowers: harvesting, shucking, and starting a batch of elderflower wine.

When I say "shucking," I mean the process of removing the tiny elderflower blossoms from their stems. The stems are quite bitter and, according to Wikipedia, contain cyanide... so we try to avoid them. Shucking is an activity best done with several people and AC/DC playing on the radio.

Or, as the case was this evening, while listening to Dean give a wine tasting to some tipsy people who were conducting a winery tour in the region. One guy was making meowing noises to the cat while the inebriated lady on the end said things like, "Which one is this? I hate this one! I need to remember this one, I like it so much! I'll be quiet now! Ooh, a puppy! Come here, puppy! She has grey whiskers, is she old?" as Brian, Autumn and I silently guffawed into our elderflower blossoms.

The elderflower isn't really worth a whole lot by itself, but Susan and Dean have managed to whip up an entire array of value-added elderflower products: wines, cordial, tea, and jelly among them. Speaking of which, I made some elderflower jelly the other day, with some blossoms sprinkled in.

Look how pretty!

The best part, of course, is that I took that picture and uploaded it to Picasa from my phone. Ain't technology a wonderful thing?

Soil Blocks II: The Heirloom Tomato

Today, we continue the saga of the little soil blocks that I planted back in early April.

This week, I started transplanting the tomatoes into one of our greenhouses. Susan grows a lot of tomatoes – we have nearly 600 tomato plants in soil block form. The farm sells them to Fresh Link, a local wholesale outfit that supplies restaurants in DC, and at local farmers markets. We mostly grow heirloom tomatoes, although Susan does have a couple hybrids that she likes.

I was planting Purple Cherokee and Mortgage Lifter tomatoes, which are both heirlooms.* The first step is to water the soil blocks with fish emulsion mixed with some water. The fish emulsion is brown and chunky and smells rather a lot like fish, which gets all over your hands as you plant so you smell like you took a swim in Baltimore's Inner Harbor for the rest of the day.** 

While the starts were soaking up their meal of fish guts, I prepared the beds by setting up the irrigation hose along both sides of the two rows I would be planting. For tomatoes, we use a drip tape that slowly releases water at one foot intervals along the hose, for a nice, gradual soaking that allows the water to reach the roots.

Then, using my trusty trowel, I dug pretty deep holes every foot and a half or so…

…then planted the starts.

The reason the holes have to be so deep is that with tomato starts, you actually want to plant them up to their “neck”, or right under the crown of leaves. The stems underneath will sprout roots, which gives the plant a bigger, better root system.

The next day, I got to mulch these little guys in with old hay, but here you can see them peeking out, all happy and green in their new home.

*The story goes that the guy who developed Mortgage Lifter tomatoes was able to pay the mortgage on his house with the proceeds from his work.                                                           

**Good thing I didn't come to the farm expecting to get my MRS degree or anything.

Happy Mother's Day!

My favorite mom in the world - thanks for supporting my crazy decision to go work on a farm!