Pleasant Valley Farm

Recenly I've noticed a strange visitor to the flower garden in the back yard.  To me, it looks like what would happen if you crossed a ruby-throated hummingbird with a crayfish from a nearby creek, but there it was, flitting among my bee balm like a bee.  I called Dan over, as he has spent most of his life on this farm and is well aquainted with everything that lives here, but he was as surprised as I was.  After some research on the internet, I found a picture that looked like my little creature...it is called a Hummingbird Clearwing moth.  Among the food sources listed for this insect were bee balm, mint, butterfly buish, red clover and lilac, all of which all grow here on the farm, so I'm pretty sure I have a positive ID.  I know in recent years honeybees have become scarce, we have notice far more bumblebees acting as our pollinators, so my first guess was that these moths have moved in to take the bee's place since they are benificial pollinators too.    However, I was thrilled to notice that all the melons, squash and pumpkins were being pollinated by real honeybees this week.  I've seen limited amounts of the bees, mostly on the clover that grows in the yard, but not as much in the garden.  It makes me hopeful that maybe our space, free of chemicals, really is benifitting the local wildlife.  I'm not the only one noticing the moths though- a local gardner snapped a photo that ended up on the front page of our local newspaper just yesterday!

We are anticipating a busy weekend here at the farm stand.  Tionesta's Indian Festival ends this weekend with a big parade on Saturday.  If you're in town, we will have the stand open from 10-2 and our special this weekend is fresh sausage made right here at the farm.  We'll have our secret family recipe loose breakfast sausage, plus mild and  hot  Italian sausage links, perfect for cookouts!  We hope to see you Saturday!

The weather just has not cooperated for us this summer, and it seems like a month since I've been able to garden or make hay.  The plants seem to be loving it though, and I'm just hoping for a bit more sun so all these green tomatoes and ears of corn will hurry up and ripen!  I've got lots of plans for them, and LOTS of people in this part of Pennsylvania have been experiencing tomato blight early this year.  It's a scary thing, by the time the leaves start to turn yellow, there is nothing you can do to save your plants but pull up and burn the affected ones. The only preventitive is to hose the plants down with fungicide weekly, but being organic that's not an option for us anyway.  But I'm crossing my fingers and hoping.  I planted 3 heirloom varieties which I bought as seeds from Seed Savers Exchange- a grape, a Brandywine and a Roma.  They seem to have just as many blooms coming on as the hybrid varieties, I'm really curious about comparing them.  I'd like to switch to more heirloom varieties in the coming years.  Many people don't realize it, but there are hundreds of varieties of plants and livestock that are endangered of becoming extinct.  Agribusiness only cares about the bottom lines of production and storage for transport, so unique, tasty and valuable strains die out because they don't grow fast enough or ship without wilting before they get to Wal-Mart.  Aniamls such as chickens or pigs that can't handle the confinement of factory farms suffer the same fate. So I'm very excited about the success we've had this year, we have a wonderful lettuce called Grandpa Admire's and the squash and other gourds seem to be growing like wildfire.  My goal is to find varieties that will grow well on the farm and help us pay the bills, but also to find ones with history and heritage, because that just fits our horse powed farm.  And watching an heirloom seedling sprout, or seeing an endangered chick hatch makes you realize that you don't have to go to the North Pole or the Amazon to save an endangered species...it really is possible right here at home. 

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to see us at the stand's reopening on Saturday!  After being closed for over 3 years, we weren't sure what kind of turnout we would have.  Once the stand opened, everything ran smoothly, but we did have a little more craziness than expected that morning.  Frankie Blue Eyes, a rabbit, has been on the loose for about a month, but as he was doing no damage, we didn't try real hard to catch him.  Of course, Saturday morning he discovered the cabbage transplants we had set out 2 weeks ago and was systematically eating them all. After catching him, which required both Dan and I and a large net on a pole, we had to catch the other 2 boys from that pen.  They have not been out since we put wire on the floor of the moveable pen months ago, but not only were they hopping through the yard, but the cats were chasing them.  Now the cats have never chased Frankie, but the other boys must have looked like lunch because the cats were really being aggressive.  Finally the rabbits are put away, the stand is stocked, and I go to change into something a little nicer than muddy jeans and wet sneakers.  Having a few minutes to spare, I thought I'd go into the barnyard and cut a bit of chammomile to pretty up the checkout counter.  As I, in a skirt no less, am cutting stems, around the corner of the building comes Wilbur, our boar hog.  Now the last thing I wanted was a mud covered 800 pound creature coming to rub all over my nice clean clothes, but Wil thought I might be interested in scratching his back like usual.  I'm not sure he understood my threats of turning him into bacon if he got any closer, but we settled on a compromise...I scratched behind his ears and decided that I had enough flowers!  

I got to the stand and hoped my animal excitement was over for the day.  However, Puff had other ideas.  Puff is a great big fluffy housecat that I raised by hand after his mother was killed on the road.  Puff was 3 weeks old then and is now 8 years old and spoiled rotten.  Puff strode into the stand as if he owned it, and being carried back out several times did not deter him.  He thought about jumping up on my table of sauces, probably because they are all in glass jars and they'd make a great mess if he knocked them onto the cement floor.  Luckily for me, that was too much work for a lazy cat.  Then the people started coming in.  I was excited to have customers and Puff was excited to have visitors!  He lay in the very middle of the floor and seemed quite pleased to have new friends to pet him.  Apparently there were too many new friends because he jumped into the horse drawn sleigh and went to sleep.  After awhile he'd feel more sociable and be back down oon the floor, then back to the sleigh again.  I will be back at the stand on Saturday from 10 am-2pm and I imagine "Puff the Farm Stand Mascot" will be too.  We hope to see you there!

What is a scruff hen? At our farm it's a hen that came to us that we weren't really looking for.  As in, I buy a particular chicken at an auction and it comes with another, less desireable chicken.  One such gal came to be know as "Super Scruff Hen" as she looked to be molting when we got her, and was in no hurry to get her feathers back.  She's a small gold and black barred bird that lays white eggs quite consistantly.   I think she's probably a Campine.  We were going to take her back to the auction, but she just kept laying eggs.  Then we moved her to a pen that, unlike the first, was not completely enclosed, and she became a barnyard bird as she could figure out a way out of the pen daily, no matter how short her wings were clipped or what you did to the fence.  But, being the extremely cagey bird she is, she would see me at chore time and follow me back into the coop, where she would safely spend the night.  Several weeks ago I stopped seeing her, and I was sad, but we had lost quite a few hens to the predators, and all seemed to be my favorites! We found out what happed to Super Scruff Hen this week...she had relocated herself to a secret location in the haymow and made a nest to sit on.  I found a rather soggy chick last night and put it under the heat lamp to dry, but we couldn't find its mom.  Super Scruff Hen reappeared today, with two more tiny chicks in tow!  Now if I can just lure her back to the henhouse...

I sit typing this as my first "full time farmer" activity.  Tomorrow is my first day of being laid off, so I am keeping my head up and making the most of it...it's a great time of year to be home on the farm!  Tomorrow Dan and I plan to put the finishing touches on shed cleanup and we'll be set for the grand reopening on Saturday from 10-2.  I've canned some dilly beans, blueberry basil vinegar, and a Thai sweet and hot dipping sauce to sell and I intend to get some mustard made in the next day or so.  I hope to see some of you there, but I must go now...time to mow while the sun shines to make the place look presentable!

On Tuesday, our neighbobr stopped by to ask if he could used our recently cut hayfield to work his new team of Haflingers, a small draft horse breed.  We had no problem with that, and shortly thereafter we saw them in the field.  The ponies seemed to be working well pulling a small two wheeled cart, and after watching for a minute or two, Dan and I went back to our evening chores.  I was harvesting salad greens in the garden about an hour later when I heard our neighbor commanding his horses to "whoa" loudly and repeatedly.  He was standing beside the wagon, and soon the horses got so upset that they took off running at full speed, luckily leaving him behind in the field.   They started running toward the road, and the wagon began to bounce high in the air behind them, and I could hear the sound of equipment breaking from a long way off.  The field ends and there is a 4 ft drop to the road, so the ponies swerved and started heading toward our barn.  When they came to the large wooden pasture gate they tore through our cornfield and back up into the field where they started.  At this point I ran to get Dan and we took the truck up to that part of the field to see how we could help.  Our neighbor is older and our first concern was that he wasn't hurt.  At first we though the ponies had run back to their barn, but as we rounded the bend in the road, we saw them at the far side of the field, against the fence where they had gotten stuck.  We parked the truck and began walking to avoid scaring the ponies, and let our neighbor walk up to them.  Then Dan helped to unhook them and drove them back to the barn while our neighbor caught his breath.  One of the ponies has a cut on his back leg but they were otherwise unhurt.  After returning the ponies, we took the truck around the fields and collected the pieces of the wagon and surveyed the damage to the corn field.  Luckily, they made only one pass through and stayed to the perimeter, as the corn in thoer path was destroyed.  We were also thankful that they didn't run through any of the fences.  We returned the wagon pieces and tried to piece together what happened.  The ponies were 3 and 4 years old andhad only been hitched to a wagon twice before.  They could have gotten spooked by something no one else noticed, maybe they were just fed up after an hour of work, or possibly something on the cart broke before they ran away.  All I know is that it really makes you aware of how dangerous a large animal can be and that even with a trusted team like our Belgians, one must always be aware of what is going on at all tiles to avoid being seriously hurt. 

Hope, our Boer/Saanen cross female, had twins last night, bringing our total to 11kid goats born this month!  We have had some torrential rain this week, and although Dan found them safe and sound in the barn last nigh as he was shutting in chickens, I haven't seen the babies yet.  The rain looks to be letting up so I am headed out there now.  The other babies are doing wonderfully, I truly think there is nothing cuter in the world than to see them playing and running about in the barnyard! 

The official opening of the farm stand is set for Saturday, August 1st from 10 AM-2PM!  We will then be open every Saturday through the fall during those hours. We are excited to see some of Pleasant Valley's returning customers and meet some new ones!  We will still be carrying fresh, organic produce and a limited amount of chicken and pork.  I'll be introducing my fresh organic herbs and some sauces, including the blueberry-basil vinegar I prepared over the weekend. I also want to thank my mom, who came to visit over the weekend.  She gladly helped us clean out the stand.  Since it has not been used by the public in 3 years, it was full of stuff and dust!  Mom's organizational skills really did wonders putting it in order and we'll have it ready to go in no time now!

The goats' "maternity ward" is getting even busier.  On Saturday, Caramel, Mocha's twin sister, delivered her own set of twins, bringing the total number of kids born up to 9.  Another first time mom, Caramel is doing well so far taking care of her babies.  She is still in a pen in the barn, but we hope to let her out soon.  The smaller twin, a female, was pretty weak at birth, but seems to be hungry and growing, but we want to give her the best start so we'll wait until she is a bit more steady on her feet before turning them out with the other babies. As for the rest of the kids, they're growing like weeds!  Even the little triplet, who we were so afraid wouldn't make it, is happily bouncing about the pasture.  All the babies have discovered that it is fun to climb up on a pile of firewood stacked between two trees in the pasture...it is really amazing to watch them do this, knowing they are less than a week old when they are able to use it as a jungle gym!   Mocha has craeted her own schedule when it comes to her kids.  Unless we keep her locked up inside, she jumps the gate and trots out to join the rest of the goats in the larger pasture.  I thought she missed her twin, Caramel, but even with Caramel in the small barn, Mocha still escapes out to the fields.  However, in a few hours she hops back in and calls for her babies.  The twins spend the time she's gone either playing or napping and don't really seem to mind.  As long as everyone is happy and healthy, I'm willing to let her keep this up.

Monday was a real emotional rollercoster.  I found out the agency I work for (away from the farm) is laying everyone off for the month of August due to the fact that as the Pennsylvania state government can't pass the budget, so our agency won't receive the grant money they use to pay us.  While  I feel for the families who depend on our services and the employees who rely soley on that paycheck, I am kind of excited to have a whole summer month to be on the farm.  Dan and I had just been discussing plans for reopening the farm stand, so for me, the timing couldn't be better. But knowing I still had to spread the bad news to the employee I supervise the next day, I started evening chores with a lot on my mind. The animals always seem to have a way of taking your thoughts back to the present though, and this day was no exception.  I heard the sound of newborn goats as I was tending to the chickens and found both Lolly, a Boer, and Callie, a Boer/Pygmy cross, had kidded.  In the same spot.  The babies were all mixed up.  But Dan and I got everyone down to the nursery barn, both mothers and all 4 babies.  We determined that Callie again had a single baby and that Lolly had triplets!  However, Callie was feeling so maternal she wanted to take care of all 4 babies, even the little triplet who wasn't looking so good.  Sometimes when there are 3, one is weak and won't make it.  This appeared to be the case- the poor little guy wouldn't stand and appeared he might die before we even left the barn.  So we put him in with Callie and her little girl, figuring if she had an interest in him, he might have a little better chance of making it.  But as he was on death's door, we didn't think it mattered very much anyway, so that was pretty sad.  But chores needed to be finished, and the suprises were not over.  I found a litter of 5 healthy baby rabbits!  And as we were finishing up the chicken chores, Dan asked me "Why do I hear peeping?"...a little bantam had been sitting on a nest and hatched a little bantam chick, who was making all that noise!

After dinner, Dan checked on the goats again, and I expected to hear that the little guy had died.  But when Dan checked on them, he was standing on his own, nursing.  I'm happy to report that as of last night he seemed to be healthy and doing well, although I always hold my breath and usually don't name them for the first week or so.  They always seem so frail!  But the 3 born on Thursday are doing splendidly.  Mama's little girl is the picture of heath and quite possibly the cutest thing ever born.  Mocha has settled into motherhood as well, and her twins are also healthy and active.  We're even getting a fair amount of milk from Mama, so it looks like one less thing I'll have to worry about buying while I'm laid off, which is always good.

We are looking to open the farm stand, located roadside at the farm, on Saturdays for the remainder of the summer.  We are hoping to open July 25, but are in the process of rearranging some other commitments.  I will be posting dates and times on our website, www.pleasantvalleyfarm.weebly.com, as soon as the details are finalized. 

Normally, spring is the time for babies.  But we're entering our second baby season now! Early spring was full of chicks, goslings and lambs, but we were dissappointed in the goats, as only 2 gave birth, and the babies just weren't as healthy as we would have liked.  The problem was our male goat.  He was 6 months old when we bought him early last summer, and although a bit small he seemed to be from very good stock.  Unfortunately, he just never grew, we suspected he may have had internal problems, possibly from worms before we got him.  We replaced him with a beautiful, registered Boer buck named LLP Warlord's Dream. That was the very end of January, and as goats carry for 5 months, he was very busy as soon as we let him out with the ladies, because we had 2 births last night and some more getting very close!

Mama is an Alpine goat, we bought her last spring with a little Boer looking baby by her side.  Most Boers are white with a red head, but Baby Lightning has a black face and white body.  His new sister was born yesterday afternoon at chore time and looks just like him.  We had noticed Mama and Mocha had spent the day in the goat house instead of going out to pasture, which was very unusual, as Mama is the leader of the herd.  As her name implies, Mama is a great mother and had her little girl up and nursing in short time.  I noticed Mocha, one of our twin Toggenburg does, was definately showing signs of labor too.  This is her first time giving birth, and she just acted like she couldn't figure out what was going on.  When we next checked on her, she had a little one on the ground, but wasn't licking it, although she was answering its cries.  Then she dropped a second kid!  She still just wasn't sure what to do.  We let her go for a short while, but then had to put her in a pen with the babies.  She wasn't letting them nurse, but after we held her still and put the babies under her, she calmed down a bit.  Everyone made it safely throught the night so we're hopeful she'll take care of the twins, a boy and a girl, so we don't have to bottle feed them.

It finally stopped raining here in Tionesta just in time for the 4th of July weekend.  I was finally able to get around to weeding my herbs.  I was thrilled that Dan and I were able to find some lime basil under all the weeds!  Now that the little seedlings will be getting some sun, I hope to be harvesting some leaves before too long, they smell delicious!  I was a little disappointed that we didn't find any Thai basil sprouting, but herbs from seed can be fickle and we've had some real extremes in both precipitation and temperature this spring and summer so far.  I was able to harvest the spent chive flowers and have a nice collection of seeds for starting them indoors when winter approaches.  I've got extra if anyone is interested in starting their own.  Many of my other herbs are bolting quickly this summer, so I spent a good bit of time trimming the cilantro, thyme, basil, sage,and oregano to keep the production in leaves a bit longer. I especially want the sage to keep producing leaves.  Not only is it one of my favorite cooking herbs, but I dry the leaves and use them in the sage sausage we make from the hogs we raise.  It worked so well last time that hope to dry enough to use in all our sausage orders this time! 

The sky is blue, with big puffy clouds right now, so of course we're preparing to make another field of hay.  The nice weather is supposed to stick around for a few days.  This will pretty much wrap up all of our first cutting hay.  We'll then wait a bit to cut second cutting, which simply means making a second crop in the same field.

The old farmer's adage is that corn should be "knee high by the 4th of July"...in this case we are in great shape, as much of it comes nearly to my waist!

Although we've been hopeful that the chicken killers are no longer with us, we have been shutting the doors to the coop in the evenings.  On Saturday, we noticed that although  the chickens were safe, one of our Pekin (duck) hens was missing from our little flock. The ducks don't have a pen to be shut into at night, so I was starting to worry about how to keep them safe as well.  On a happy note, she was safe and sound and sitting in a little nest I hadn't noticed in the front yard of the house.  Pekins aren't known for going broody and she gave up sitting on the 5 eggs in a few hours, but after the rancid stink bombs I cleaned out of the Cochin's box, I'm ok with just using the incubator!

We've been trying to proctect the henhouse from any further attacks, so this weekend we put a trap by the door just in case there was still a problem.  We awoke Sunday morning to a horrid smell wafting through the open windows.  SKUNK.  Yep, we caught a skunk and he was not happy about it.  Even after getting rid of the actual animal, the scent lingers.  Not much we could do after the spray but close all the windows in the house, light scented soy candles, and I guess I won't be hanging laundry outside for a few days!

If you'd like to learn a bit more about the farm and see some picture of the critters, please check out our new website at www.pleasantvalleyfarm.weebly.com.  It lists what's currently for sale (with prices), FAQs, and I'm working on descriptions of the animals as well as their pictures.  Be sure to sign the guestbook too!

We went to a farm auction on Wednseday looking to pick up some equipment to make haymaking easier.  Although the hay loader went out of our price range, we were able to pick up a dump rake. It was quite the conversation piece; many of the older men gathered around it to reminisce.  One gentleman, probably in his 70's, came up to tell us how he had not run one since he was a little boy, and seemed very happy we were going to use it rather than use it as an antique yard ornament.  It made me laugh a bit inside, as he was Amish and has been using more current technology for years!  But the dump rake is home and worked great for Dan yesterday.  We'll have much less hay wasted by being left in the field, and it will be much simpler to load several piles of hay than forking up long, narrow windrows.

On a much sadder note, we've had some deaths in our chicken flock recently.  We eliminated a raccoon who had eaten several of my best layers and though it was over.  Three of the 4 killed were my Ameracauna girls, so I'm having a bit of a blue egg shortage at the moment although I do still get one or two a day.  Unfortunately, one of the feral barn cats has developed a taste for chicken and last night killed her 7th hen.  She has got all our adult Giant Cochins, both my Porcelin bantam girls and a mother Phoenix died defending her babies.  We have no choice but to kill her, as she is wild and would not be a candidate for the local humane society.  It makes me sad though.  So I just want to remind everyone out there that farmers do not need extra cats.  Over the years many midnight feline drop offs have occured here because people assume that if they can't give away kittens then they will have a happier life on a farm than if taken to a humane society.  I have 4 "bitty kitties" that came to us in this way in October.  Please know that not all have a happy life- established barn cats, a new road, lack of food if they don't know how to hunt...many other kitties don't make it long.  So let me just channel Bob Barker for a minute and remind you to spay or neuter your pet if you personally can't handle a litter of suprise babies.  I can't take care of them either, and it breaks my heart when I have to destroy one!

Summer is officially here! The garden is so close to full production I can almost taste it when we go out in the evenings. Actually I guess we have tasted it- I've been able to make a few small salads with fresh greens, spring onions and a few baby radishes, served with a delishious bluberry-basil vinegrette from vinegar I made myself! Delicious!  The peas are blooming, as are the tomatoes and zucchini and last night we put up trellis for our rapidly growing pole and lima beans.  I have a few hot peppers that are getting to pickable size, now I'm busy looking over my canning cookbooks for a good hot pepper relish. If you have a good recipe, I'd love to hear about it.  I can't wait to get started canning for the summer! 

Hay production is going well, as of last week we had 2 entire fields dry and put up in the barn, which put us exactly 2 fields ahead of where we were last year! Dan spent yesterday cutting more, and if the weather is as beautiful as the forcasters are predicting, we will hopefully be done with our first cutting hay by the weekend, including the oat hay which I cultipacted much earlier in this blog.  The fields that have already been cut are growing back at an amazing rate, and we fully expect to be getting a good second crop later this summer.

Our broiler chickens have done so well out on grass, despite the unpredictable weather, that they've reached butchering size in just 7 weeks.  We started processing the first ones last night and hope to wrap this batch up by the weekend.  Chicken is the one thing we butcher start to finish here at the farm, but I don't mind too much.  Dan and I each have jobs to take care of during the process, and it runs pretty smoothly.  We have had orders rolling in for our chicken so if you are interested, contact us soon.  We're already sold out until mid to late August, so don't miss out!   For me, the first real taste of summer comes with some absolutely fresh chicken cooked over our charcoal grill with a wonderful garden salad. 

Today was a first.  Although we've hatched hundreds of chicks this spring and a good number of ducklings and geese, we've never hatched quail before.  This morning I had 2 in the hatching tray of the incubator.  They are so small!  The books describe them as the size of a bumblebee.  I would say our little bobwhites are a tad bigger, but not much.  Even all streched out, the head and body was no longer than my pinky finger!

Although we've had rain the past 24 hours, haying is going well.  We are almost done wit hthe field by the road and soon we'll be moving on to the field by the woods and then on to oat hay.  I'm on vacation from my Even Start job the next week, so I hope to get lots of hay made while still taking some time for a little relaxing!

The major task of spring, planting corn, is over so we've transitioned into the work of summer- making hay and keeping the weeds under control in the garden and fields.  As it is just Dan and I putting up hay this year, after much thought and discussion we decided to make loose hay instead of hiring someone to help us bale it.  Much of the process is the same-Dan uses the horses to mow the field, we pray for 3 days of clear weather and watch the hay dry, and then use a horsedrawn hayrake to pile the hay in the field into long windrows.  At this point, we would have been dependent on someone else to come and operate the baler through the field and we would have taken the wagon out into the field to collect the bales.  But I would have needed to drive the wagon and stack all the bales, while Dan would have been walking the field and throwing them onto the wagon.  Then each bale would have been pulled off the wagon and stacked again in the hay mow in the barn.  For those of you who've never picked up a bale, they usually weigh about 40-50 pounds each and we plan on making 1,000 or so to get us through the winter. Each bale must be handled twice, and that is a whole lot of weightlifting for just 2 people!  So, after the hay is dry, we will rake it more than once, meaning instead of several small windrows across the field, we will have a few larger ones.  Then I will drive the wagon alongside the windrow while Dan uses a hayfork (like a pitchfork, but with only 3 tines) to load it onto the wagon.  My other job is to keep the horses from snacking on the new hay while they are working! 

Once we have a good wagonload, we drive down to the barn and the wagon is backed up inside.  Then we let the claw do the work for us!  Up in the rafters, there is a track with a scary-loking contraption that operates in much the same way as the claw arcade games where you try to win a stuffed animal.  The rope is lowered and the 4 prongs are pushed into the pile of hay on the wagon.  There is a rope that runs through a series of pullies and is hooked to the horses.  When they pull it, the rope lifts the claw and hundreds of pounds of hay clear up to the barn rafters.  When it meets the track, it slides over to the side of the barn over top of where the hay will be stored.  Then, when another rope is pulled, it triggers the release and the hay falls to the floor.  The wagon is unloaded in minutes and with very little labor.  It's an amazing piece of machinery to see in action, all the more so because it works flawlessly despite the fact it was installed when the barn was built- in 1894. 

We already spent an afternoon putting up hay, it looks like so much, but as it's not compressed it probably equals out to about 75 bales or so.  But it is beautiful hay and fills the barn with a delicate scent.  We were so excited that the weather held up and we were able to cut the hay in its prime and have some in the barn on June 1!  Today is the start of 3 days of anticipated clear weather, so we hope to be making lots of hay Saturday.

Last Sunday we had baby chicks born on the farm.  While during the spring we usually hatch 50 or 60 chicks per week with our incubator, these were hatched by a hen.  This is fairly unusual, many of the chickens used for eggs today have been selected over time to produce eggs all year round and not defend the nest when the farmer comes to collect the eggs.  Because of this, most common breeds of chickens no longer know how to hatch babies: we've bred the mothering instinct out of them.  We have a variety of breeds, about 12 different breeding flocks over the spring months, and each have thier own special qualities.  The Phoenix roosters have long beautiful tails and the hens are more colorful than the average female bird.  I noticed one hen sitting on eggs one day and guarding them fiercely from me, so I let her go.  They lay smaller white eggs that I usually don't sell anyway, so I saw no harm in letting her give it a try. Then another hen joined her in the nest box and they sat out the 3 weeks it takes to hatch the eggs.  All together, they hatched 12 little chicks and have protected them from the hungry barn cats for about a week now.  It's pretty amazing to see.  I'm  keeping a close eye on my Giant Cochin hens, 3 of them are sharing a box right now, and I hope they have as much success as the Phoenix girls did! 

The fields and garden are nearly planted.  The only major planting task left is to finish planting the last of the field corn.  However, with the rain we've had over the last few days that may have to wait until the weekend, the field is too wet to be worked right now.  But the corn that is in the ground has sprouted; we can see faint green rows across the fields getting a little taller every day.  It is amazing what warm weather and rain can do!  The transplants that survived frosting and the ones we set out this past weekend are thriving.  There are blooms on the peppers and beans, lettuce and peas sprouting, so produce will be coming soon.  I will keep everyone posted on what is available.

The animals are loving the lush pasture this time of year.  I love it too, it means so much less manure to move!  We have 6 little goslings following the proud parents around the pond and fields.  They did better than we did in the incubator!  The little ones grow so fast, I joke that they will only be cute for another 24 hours or so.  All the little lambs are doing fantastic on pasture too, and the bottle baby calves we are raising are chewing thier cud more every day.  Pretty soon we won't need to be mixing up milk replacer every 12 hours. 

Even the hogs are getting out on grass! We have been pleasantly surprised how easy it has been to put our boar and two sows on a rotational pasture.  Believe it or not, a single strand of electric fence about 8" off of the ground is enough to keep a 6oo lb animal where you want them.  If only goats were so easy! But the hogs seem to enjoy the new space and have been grazing and not rooting it up too much.  Most of the piglets are gone, we sold the ones we needed to last night at the auction.  We kept 5 to raise and they have moved out of the hog house into the pig tractor.  The tractor is a 16' x 8' pen with no floor.  We will be moving it onto fresh grass as needed.  It has all the comforts of home: sides and a roof over about half the area, a nipple waterer so they can drink fresh from the garden hose and a feeder full of piggie chow. So far it's working well, and soon we plan on doing some major renovations to the hog house, so we're glad that the pigs are happy on pasture.

The chickens are getting plenty of sunlight and grass as well and are laying beautifully.  We're not incubating much besides duck and quail eggs at the moment, so we have eggs for sale.

It is a beautiful time of year to just take in the view of the farm from our back porch in the evening while we're grilling dinner.  It's my favorite activity this time of year.