Hurricane Farm

With the end of the maple sugarin' season come and gone, it is time to start cleaning up the pails and buckets and taps.  There is lots of equipment to dismantle, carry in from the woods, and clean.

Yesterday, Erica spent 6 hours at least scrubbing, washing, and rinsing the buckets, pails, spouts, tubing, and holding tanks.  We'll have some photos of that later.  For now, here are some shots taken by Liev and Violet of Mom out in the woods gathering all the maple gear.

Not bad shots for a four and five year old!

Yuck!  Look at those critters in that bucket.  Always a sign that the spring is really here and the winter is gone.

It sure looks different out in the woods without the snow and ice.  I almost forgot what it looked like out there.  Actually, we moved in here last May, so we never experience the "naked" spring woods without all the growth of the late spring...

Check out the size of that oak tree! 

We finally cleared out the space for the orchard and the bee hive!  We pulled out some great firewood for next year and have cleared out a nice sloping area for our fruit and bees.  Unfortunately, there are still tons of roots from grape vines and remnants of prickly bushes all over the area.

Solution:  Bring in the rotor-tiller.  But this is not your average gas powered machine.  This one (four of them, actually) runs on weeds, grubs, and whatever else you put in the path of its powerful snout.

We purchased four more piglets and they are busy at work in a movable pen that will eventually clear out the leftover mess in the soon-to-be-orchard.

They are hard at work tilling up the soil, eating the roots, and also composting the soil with their manure!

We picked up an old calf hutch that was for sale on the side of the road and it will be a perfect movable home for these little guys.  We can also use it later when we start letting the lambs and their mothers out into the pasture.

Here are our little ones trying out the hutch.

Here I am admiring the fine work that the pigs are about to do.  We used 4 livestock panels, some old metal posts, and a handful of zip-ties. 

Now, along with the 5 gallon pail--as our readers already know of--the zip-tie is an indespensible item on the farm.

See how handily they fit into one's upper pocket?  And oh, the colors!  They can't be missed when dropped into the muddy ground (like screws, nuts, and bolts always are).

Even a four year old can master the zip-tie.  Above we can see Liev attaching one of the livestock panels to a post.

Fine work was done by all.  Including the pigs (eh hem...tillers) who have just about cleared out that area.  We are planning to move them over today or tomorrow.  The bees arrive in a week or so and the plan is to have the pigs finished in this area and moved over to the garden by then.