Pleasant Valley Farm

We are busy preparing for July 24th, as we are a stop on the Western PA Buy Fresh Buy Local farm tour.  We will be open extended hours that day, from 10 AM to 6 PM.  We will also have a short walking tour so our guests can get an up-close look at the poultry we raise, fun facts, and a better idea of what it takes to successfully care for birds in an organic, cage-free environment. We're excited to be a part of this year's tour, and wanted to give some helpful ideas on what we, as farmers, expect from you, our visitors.  Becoming a valued customer of a local farm doesn't take a lot of money.  It involves following some basic etiquette rules.  Here is the inside track!  (These apply the farm stand visits on non-tour days as well, and are good to keep in mind no matter what farm you are visiting.)

Know what time the tour is going on/stand is open.  Arrive early, and we'll be in the fields picking the day's fresh produce or tending to morning chores.  Arrive late, and we're likely to be tired or just sitting down to a meal.  Neither is ideal.  Respect your farmer, and if you absolutely can't make it on time, at the very least call to see if you can make alternate arrangements, and stick to them.  Don't show up Sunday at dinnertime if we agreed to a Monday morning pick up because you were in the mood to take a drive.  If you don't know your farmer well enough to expect them to drop by your house unannounced for a cup of coffee, don't drop by the farm unannounced because you're in the mood for bacon.  

Butt Out.  Unless you see a designated area, assume smoking is prohibited. Wooden barns, hay, sawdust and the like are all flammable and fire is one of a farmer's worst nightmares.  Animals don't know what a cigarette butt is, and, still smoldering or not, may try to eat it.  It's also not a nice smell around the fresh food we have for sale.

Respect Privacy.  I'm a private person.  I really don't like strangers wandering though my back yard and don't imagine you would enjoy it either. Please remember that a family farm is a home as well as a business, and if you're unsure which areas are private and which are public, please, please ask before taking a self-guided tour.  "I'm from the city" is no excuse to wander around without permission, even if you think you might get a better view of the cows from under my laundry line.  Especially if it's after hours and you're smoking a cigarette.

Find a Pet Sitter.  We love animals, that's why we choose to farm.  However, we can't  guarantee the safety of your pet when you bring it here, nor are we sure it won't get loose and chase the livestock, which can cause injury to our animals or a day of fixing fences for us.  I also don't want to feed my table full of free samples to anyone other than the human visitors, so please leave your pooch at home, or at least in the car.

Ask before you taste.  Unless it is a U-pick farm, please don't help yourself to the produce. (and even then, be sure to follow the rules of where to pick and how to pay for those tasty treats!)  A farmer might just be happy to give you a free sample of something, but please don't pick up a pint of blueberries, taste a few, and then put it back.  The next customer will thank you too.

Kids are welcome.  But please, make sure you are supervising them. That wide open space that looks fun to run across may just be a freshly planted field that would be harmed by little feet. Little ones can be in danger if they get through a fence near large animals or wander towards farm machinery, and no one wants to see anyone get hurt on a visit.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. We are really proud of what we do, and want you to understand where your food comes from and how it is produced. Don't see what you are looking for? Ask when it will be available, since many times it depends on the weather, unlike a grocery store.  Understand that a late frost, hot weather, or hungry wildlife may have changed the date when the crop you are looking for will be ready.

Some of these ideas may sound silly, or like I'm making things up, but every single one has happened to me in the past year.  I don't think any of the folks meant to cause problems or bad feelings, they simply didn't think.  I promise, this will make you stand out in the mind of your farmer, but we'd much rather remember you for pleasant conversation and great questions about how your food is raised.  Follow the easy steps above, and you're well on your way to being a farm stand V.I.P.!

 For more information on the Buy Fresh Buy Local farm tour, which is taking place Saturday July 24 and features 24 Western Pennsylvania farms and 11 restaurants for just $10 per carload, check out http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=116297249299054396449.000488370651d72096061&ll=42.803462,-77.871094&spn=4.247492,9.876709&z=7 for an interactive map with all the details!

Lots of excitement going on here at the farm!  We have 3 new Dexter cattle here as of yesterday afternoon.  Mark & Edlyn Muir were kind enough to loan us a few!  We met these wonderful people last fall when we purchased Fiannait from them.  This time, they brought us Finn-Bar,  one of their impressive bulls, for us to breed Finni to.  (So far, they've hit it off quite nicely!) Although Dexters are not tall, he is a beefy, solid, well-built animal, and gentle enough to follow me into the barn calmly when we put them in away from the heat of the day this morning. He gladly followed me, but it may have had something to do with the feed bucket in my hand! As the Muirs sold us Finni knowing we were hoping to milk her in the spring, they were disappointed for us that a calf never arrived.   So Lil also came with them, along with her calf.  They were kind enough to loan Lil to us for the summer so we could have a family milk cow for a time, and the calf is ours to keep as a replacement for the one Finni didn't have this past spring.  It is just amazing to deal with breeders like that!  Plus the cattle are so tame and easy to work with, even the bull, that they are a true joy to have here.  I'm excited to try my hand at milking a cow for the first time ever this evening!

I was also thrilled to check the incubator this morning and find three newly hatched peachicks!  We set every egg the peahens laid this year, but being that these were the very first eggs they had ever produced, I wasn't expecting a great hatch.  Sometimes it takes a few tries before a bird will produce a hatchable egg.   So, I'm just tickled pink with 3 out of 5 hatching!  That's probably all for our first round, but there are more eggs in the incubator, and I'm confident that there are more chicks on the way.

The garden is looking amazing. Saturday we were able to have the first of our green peppers for sale, and more are on the way this week.  I spy some jalapeños and other hot peppers as well.   I see tiny zucchini, yellow zucchini, and crookneck squash, as well as cucumbers, that should be ready for this weekend.  The new crop of lettuce, spinach & other salad greens are going strong, although I may give them another week before I start cutting.  I have green tomatoes appearing on more plants every day. I should have green beans by now, but the deer have been munching on them and the peas, so we'll see if there are enough to pick by the weekend. We often don't have enough hot weather to grow melons properly, but these past couple weeks have been ideal.  Even the seedlings that didn't look so hot at first are thriving. This year, I'm trying 3 varieties of watermelon (2 heirlooms), a honeydew, a cantaloupe, and an exotic French heirloom melon (Delice de la Table) that I didn't have success with last year, but sounded so intriguing I had to give it another shot.   I have herbs sprouting and otherwise just going crazy in those beds as well.  I'm headed back outside to do some more weeding, so among the weeds that took over some of the earlier plantings, I'm hoping to see kohlrabi, pac choi, beets and Swiss chard, hopefully of picking size. 

It's hot and humid here, but the chance of rain looks fairly low for the next few days, so Dan is out mowing hay.  He mowed some a few days ago, so hopefully it will dry out enough later today or tomorrow to get it into the barn.  We had hay in by the beginning of June last summer, but this year it's so far been next to impossible as we need 3 rain-free days in a row, and June hasn't cooperated much!  I like to help with the horse drawn equipment, so I'll probably be raking hay, as well as driving the haywagon again when we load it.  

Another pig left us this morning, so we'll be making sausage by the end of the week to have fresh sausage to sell this weekend.  I'll also need to make a seperate trip to Hirsch's to pick up our beef, which will be available for the first time since last fall.  Plus I have more vinegar to bottle, and more bottles should be delivered tomorrow.   These is so much ripening and coming in that I may need to get another table to the stand before the weekend to have a place for all of it!  What a great time to be home on the farm!

A new season is here at our farm!  Yes, it's officially summer now, although it's been pretty hot with lots of thunderstorms for some time now.  As I mentioned in my last post, we're transitioning to a new season in our lives as well.  Tomorrow is my official last day of off-farm work.  I'm excited, optimistic, and yes, a little nervous about where this will lead.  I'm walking away from what I've known for the past five years, but during the "test run" of a 3-month layoff last fall, I came to know, without a doubt, that this is really where my heart lies.  Will I have to find another day job or will the farm be enough?  I don't know.  I do know I have a vision of what I'd like the farm to be someday.  A teaching place.  A place where anyone can learn about how food is grown. How it is possible to build up the soil rather than destroy it while producing your crops.  How to raise animals in a way that is humane, sustainable and healthy for the creatures, the people and the environment.  How to partner with horses to work the land like Americans have done for generations, before our dependence on oil put a tractor in nearly every field (and why this part of our lives doesn't have anything to do with being Amish).  What an heirloom plant or heritage livestock breed looks like, what it tastes like, why it's valuable and how we can save them.  I'm not sure exactly how this will work or what it will look like.  I am excited to take a small step in that direction July 24th by being part of the PA Buy Fresh Buy Local farm tour.  I'll be showcasing the poultry on a short walking tour, letting people see our birds and letting them know more about what we raise and why.  We'll see where it goes from there!

The garden is thriving in this weather.  My heirloom lettuces, Grandpa Admire's and Crisp Mint Romaine, have taken the heat well so far and didn't bitter like some of the other varieties.  Peas are here, both sugar and shelling.  The borage (a beautiful herb that tastes like a cucumber) is in bloom already.  The green onions are rapidly growing into big onions. Tiny zucchini and summer squash are appearing with the promise of being plentiful as always. Little green tomatoes have appeared, and so far no reports of the blight that plagued farms in our area last year.  More treasures appear every day.  I swear you can see the corn stalks' growth between morning and night!   The hay fields are also more than ready, and with a break in the predicted thunderstorms we'll be mowing hay Friday with any luck. A great time to be in the fields.

All the animals are thriving on pasture.  We recently got a couple more beef cows that have joined the herd without incident.  This weekend we're anticipating the loan of a Dexter bull along with a Dexter cow to milk and a calf to raise.  One of my doe rabbits just had 6 healthy babies.  The spring lambs are growing so fast on the lush pasture, some of the boys are nearly as tall as their mothers.  The turkeys are growing by leaps and bounds, with the males attempting some hilarious-sounding teenage gobbles.  While the peafowl are finished laying eggs for the year, the eggs are in the incubator and I'm anxious to see if we have a successful hatch. A wonderful time to have animals.

I've begun canning garden excess, so far I've made 2 rhubarb jams- one with oranges, the other with ginger and oriental spices.  I have new batches of homemade vinegars fermenting, and I'm excited to try some  herbal or fruit infusions with them when they are ready.  There are new mustard recipes to try, including my quest to master a good champagne-dill one.  I was trying to use Google to find an alternate recipe last night, and I had to laugh when my blog entry about my utter failure with this earlier in the year was the #4 result when I typed "champagne dill mustard recipe"! A superb time to use up the bounty of the garden, to try new recipes, to create my own.

Tomorrow, I'll come home and put the khaki slacks away.  (ok, I'll wash them first.)  I'll put on my jeans and barn boots, and begin a new day, a new season.  I don't know how long it will last or what storms lay on the horizon, but I'm excited.  I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be, and I can't wait to have more time to put my hands in the dirt. 

I've really been looking forward to this week for some time now.  I've planned to take vacation days from work and have the whole week off for what I like to call "Birthday Week!" While I don't plan on going anywhere, it's nice to catch up around the house and farm, or try some new recipes for my canned goods.  

This past week, though, I found out I'm going to have a lot more free time to do this after the end of June.  Budgets are tight, and the non-profit agency I have spent the past 5 years working for decided to eliminate a position in my office.  I did not want to take over the revamped position (essentially doing more work for less money) , so as of July 1, I will officially be a farmer with no other day job.  As I did have the experience of being laid off and able to farm for 3 months last summer, I know it's where my heart lies.  I actually feel busier, more purposeful, and more productive here than I do at the office, so I know I'll be anything but bored.  Including the commute, it's like getting 50 free hours back, but I know they will be filled.  I'd like to think that the stalls will be cleaner, the garden will be weeded better, I'll have more canning products for sale, and the blog and website will be more up to date.  I also have "me" projects like catching up on some good books or painting again.  It's exciting and I'm so happy to have Dan's support in this.  It was a big leap when he quit his job a year and a half ago, but that worked well for us.  He's now much happier to be working with his brother. (shameless plug- for those of you in the Tionesta area in need of a licensed, insured contractor, Matt's Construction will do any job, call 657-8400 for more info!)  

I don't know when or if I'll be back working somewhere else, but for now I'm excited to put my efforts into making this the best year on the farm it can be.  One of the ways I'm hoping to make that happen is by being part of the Western PA Buy Fresh Buy Local farm tour day, July 24th from 10:00-6:00.  Watch for more details, and we hope to see everyone then if not before!

A few days ago, we moved our heritage turkey poults to an outdoor pen.This has an open bottom for access to fresh grass and a small ramp leading to an enclosed, raised floor where it is always sheltered and dry.We’d been carefully watching our little birds for the first few days, making sure that they came inside towards dusk and if it looked like rain.

Baby turkeys, at least the commercial broad breasted whites, are noted for their stupidity; it is not uncommon for them to drown in less than an inch of water or starve to death even when the feeders are full!The solution is to put a few healthy chicken chicks in with them until they get the hang of the basics.Although they did start out with chicks for companions, our heritage poults seemed pretty bright, and not only figured out food and water quickly, but were using the ramp in no time once moved out by themselves.After checking on them often the first two days, they seemed perfectly capable and we let our guard down a bit.We had fairly severe thunderstorms yesterday, and when the rain finally quit and I began evening chores, I saw what looked like multiple wet, dead turkeys piled in the lowest corner of the outdoor run.Devastated, I called across the field to Dan that half our poults were dead before rushing off to turn on the heat lamp in the brooder to dry the survivors.I was thankful that I had cleaned out the brooder and only needed to plug in the heat lamp and add some shavings to create a warm, dry environment.Grabbing a shoebox, I rushed back outside.Some of the poor little things were drenched but standing upright, obviously chilled.I scooped them up and put them in the box.One was laying on its back, legs twitching as if in the final stages of death.It wasn’t dead yet, so I figured there was no harm in picking him up, too.(I’m a softie, and have a hard time admitting when a baby is a lost cause!)The ones in the soggy pile of dead-looking birds were in terrible shape, but none had actually expired, so they went in the box too.The rest ran from me back upstairs, so I let them go as they seemed ok.(My guess is that they were smart enough to get in out of the rain in the first place.)

Under the heat lamp, it looked like life was quickly returning to about half of the eight birds I rescued.The other four were at least laying on their bellies instead of their backs, heads upright, so it was an improvement, but they were wet and cold to the touch.Like any reasonable person, I decided I needed to do more to get them warm and dry ASAP. I decided to grab the soggiest, sickest looking one and take it inside the house to try and blow-dry it. When Dan came in the house, I was in the bathroom, hair dryer running on warm, turkey poult on the bathroom counter.Actually, it worked so well, I was drying the second turkey by the time Dan was done feeding the pigs.I love that he doesn’t question my slightly eccentric ideas; he just poked his head into the bathroom to ask how the “turkey makeover” was going.The little things would stretch out their wings in the warm breeze, and were dry and nearly fluffy in just a few minutes.I blow-dried three in all, by then the rest were upright in the 100-degree brooder.They were quickly dry and active, so I unplugged the heat lamp and placed fresh food and water in the pen.It seemed to be a miraculous comeback, but I hesitated to get my hopes up too high.The common wisdom with raising turkeys is that a “chilled poult is a dead poult” so I was still expecting losses. We also locked the rest of the turkeys in the dry upstairs portion of the outdoor pen, hoping they’ll remember that as their home and run to it the next time it pours!

This morning came and, despite my dire initial assessment, we did not lose a single baby.  Not one.  I am just amazed that you would never know the birds were on death’s door 12 hours before.Had I been 5 minutes later in finding them, I don’t think I’d be able to say the same, so I think I’ll be extra watchful when we let them back outside!

Only 9 more days until we reopen for the year!  I'm excited and overwhelmed all at the same time.  I'm glad I was able to take 2 more days away from my day job next week, because as it is I put in almost a full day every evening after I get home.  There is so much to do!

I bottled my first homemade vinegar this week.  It's champagne vinegar, made with nothing but champagne (ok, domestic sparkling wine) a little water, mother of vinegar, and time.  It's fantastic!! I'll have a few bottles for sale and I've already started the next batch, but it will be a few months before it's ready.  I've been drying herbs in my little food dehydrator, so far I've packaged chamomile and some oregano.  I need a bigger drying space!  

We got some quail eggs and set them in the incubator last night, along with some Delaware chicken eggs from my girls here.  If all goes well, we'll have quail eggs & meat for sale by mid summer.  The Delawares will be to increase my laying flock, because those are my most productive and favorites of all the breeds we raise.

I was going to transplant some zucchini and pepper plants just now, but I see a wild turkey at the edge of the garden right now.  They are so neat to have around, I'll let him clean up some insects before I go out to plant, as I still have a few hours of daylight left. 

We still need to clean up the stand, but the fridge is plugged in and full of cheese.  Tom, Dan's father,  picked up our first order of raw milk cheese from Whispering Brook Cheese Haus, so we're set to go with that again.  New this year (for us) is a cheddar made from goat's milk and an Italian cheese with sun dried tomato chips, basil, and garlic.  We also got a lot of the Dill & Bacon cheddar which was so good we sold out of it the first day we had it last year.  We also have Longhorn (Colby), Mild Cheddar, Smoked Sharp Cheddar, Jalapeño, and Horseradish again this year as well. So now I just need to forget it's down there so there is some left to sell!  

I've been working on updating the website page with products and prices.  A good portion of it is already live, but I'm holding off on listing the veggies yet.  I don't want to advertise things only to find they just didn't ripen in time for the first weekend.  I do try and go out to the garden nightly while I'm tending the rabbits... maybe if I just stare hard enough, I'll magically make the peas ripes or something...

I've also been working hard on getting the June e-newsletter completed.  It's almost ready to go out, hopefully I'll have the time to get that out next week.  We also participated in donating wool & hair for the oil spill, but that's a story I don't have time to type out tonight!  There is still so much to be done, and I won't get it finished if I'm blogging.  We hope to be seeing you next weekend! 

Today is my 4th day off in a row, and by "off" I mean not commuting to my day job, because as usual, I've been busier here than I am at work!  Friday, Dan and I worked until 1 AM getting the butcher shop finished.  Although the Stevensons have always done some of the processing here, the kitchen was in need of a good cleaning and a coat of paint.  Not only did we paint, but we also put down a new tile floor, added much needed shelving and built a larger butchering table.  It turned out wonderfully, will be easier to clean, and if yesterday was any indication, a better workspace makes the whole process easier and more efficient.  We'll be butchering 3 more hogs today with the help of Dan's father, Tom, and that will complete our freezer pork orders.  Soon we'll be moving on to hogs we'll be selling at our stand when we reopen for the season on May 29. 

Of course butchering hogs & making sausage makes for busy days, but I've also been working hard on getting other things ready.  This weekend alone I made Honey Mustard, Cranberry-Peach Compote (like a chunky jam, but with almonds too!), Thai Hot & Sweet Dipping Sauce and repackaged all of my flavored vinegars into the new bottles.  Today I hope to bottle a bit of the champagne vinegar I made, buy more champagne because it turned out so well, and split the mother of vinegar to make some real white & red wine vinegars as well.  I also have some Blueberry Basil Vinegar that's nearly done and will need bottled in a week or so as well as some Dried Herb Vinegar, so I think I need to order more bottles too!  I filled some of my new herb containers with dried chamomile and the oregano in the dryer should be done today, so I'll package that and set more oregano on the racks to dry.  

The baby turkeys arrived, but they must have had a bad trip because only about half survived the 48 hour period after we picked them up.  There was a guarantee though, so Welp's hatchery sent us replacements.  There weren't enough turkeys to ship safely, so they filled the box with extra chicks so everyone would stay warm.  They look like Barred Rocks, so I'll gladly keep any hens and add them to our egg laying flock, since that is a breed we have here.  To date, the new turkeys and the survivors from the last batch are doing great and growing like weeds! We also picked up a batch of broiler chicks Saturday, and they are all doing well too.  We've been getting to know our postal workers pretty well, because this morning we went to the office before they opened again, this time to pick up hatching eggs.  We're going to try raising Cortunix quail for eggs and meat, so if they hatch well we may be offering those products at the stand by the end of July!

Most of our plants survived the early frost, so we're anxious to be offering things like rhubarb, spring onions and lettuce when we open.  But for now, I've got to go, we've got lots to do today! 

I'll be watching the mail carefully, as we've got some exciting packages scheduled to arrive this week!

If all goes according to plan, I'll have my new vinegar bottles and herb jars delivered tomorrow.  I've got a new batch of Blueberry-Basil Vinegar to package, but I've been waiting on our new containers.  I think these salad dressing-style bottles will be easier to use than small canning jars.  I'm also very excited to finally package some of the champagne vinegar.  The mother of vinegar has been working for the past few months, and it's finally ready!  I'm excited to try it in some of my favorite recipes. If you've enjoyed any of our flavored vinegars before (we also sell Dried Herb and Mulled Blackberry) be sure to look for them in the new containers as well.  Once the herb garden gets going, I hope to have some new varieties this year too!

The oregano is growing rapidly, thanks to the warm temperatures and the gentle rain we got this weekend, and I'll be putting some in the dehydrator this week.  I'm hoping to expand our line of dried herbs from the organic coriander and dried basil we offered last year, and oregano seems like a great place to start.

I'm really excited about Friday though, because that's when our turkey poults will be arriving!  Dan and I have talked for the past year or two about getting a starter flock of heirloom turkeys.   While we have raised the regular broad-breasted white before, and will have some again this year,  they are a completely artificial breed.  To satisfy the American taste for white meat, the breasts on these birds grow so large, they cannot even mate naturally.  All eggs are fertilized via artificial insemination.  While I like to think I know my birds quite well, that's more up close and personal than I'm willing to get with a turkey!  Happily, there are a variety of heirloom breeds of turkeys.  While not as fast growing or large breasted, they have the ability to breed naturally, they have the "motherly instinct" to sit on a nest until the eggs hatch, do well in free range & pasture based systems like ours, and are an intelligent, beautiful bird.  The hardest part was deciding which breed to raise.  I quickly decided on the Bourbon Red.  A native of the Kentucky area, this breed is a beautiful reddish brown with edges of white on its wings and tail.  Dan, however knew from the beginning that he wanted the Royal Palm, which has a stunning black and white pattern.  What to do?  Since we just couldn't agree, we decided to order some of both.    Our broiler chicks are now three weeks old and have gone to an outdoor pen, so the indoor one will be cleaned and ready for our little turkeys when we get the phone call form the post office telling us to come pick them up!

I feel like I've been neglecting my blog, but it's just been so busy here!  We've been busy planting, and with the much needed rain we're getting this weekend, I'm sure the potatoes, onions and other seedlings will be sprouting in no time!

I did take some time earlier this week to finally get around to watching the movie Food, Inc.   Honestly, I didn't think I'd learn much by watching it since I've got Fast Food Nation, The Omnivore's Dilemma, and several of Joel Salatin's books on my bookshelf, but I was wrong.  It's a great movie for anyone, it's very approachable for folks who don't have a lot of prior knowledge about food safety or agriculture.  Parts of it certainly are depressing, from a mother who lost her child to e. coli to the seed-cleaning farmer who was sued out of business by Monsanto- my heart broke watching. However, it was the ending that has really stayed with me- a hard working farmer telling the camera that farmers want to do the right thing, all consumers have to do is ask, and America's farmers will find a way.  Watching that part, I felt so empowered.  

The Gandhi quote "Be the change you want to see in the world" keeps running through my head.  Our animals are raised naturally and humanely, free to enjoy the outdoors, where they can express their pigness, cowness, chickenness...where a row of potatoes may veer to the side a bit because it seems unnecessary and cruel to run the rototiller over the killdeer's nest for the sake of symmetry...where the stream that runs through the pasture is able to be a great habitat for trout and frogs downstream...where the food is safe, honest, and healthy.  All these things are so important, and so often overlooked.  

When I was studying for my Master's in Social Work, I learned about lots of great people who changed the world for the better- women's rights, civil rights- and the fact that a group of caring people changing the face of our country always struck me as so inspiring.  I thought that I would never have an issue in my lifetime that could be so revolutionary as desegregating schools or getting women the right to vote. It seemed like all the good causes were already taken, so to speak. The more I learn about the way our food is mass produced, and the effects it has on the citizens of this country, especially children, the more I come to realize that this is my issue.  And it is something I'm fighting, every time we plant an heirloom vegetable seed here, every time we sell a dozen eggs we collect by hand, every time we sell meat that was raised and processed like a living creature rather than a protein-producing machine.  I can get up every morning, look in the mirror, and say "I am the change I want to see."  It's powerful, and awe-inspiring.  You can help be that change too, every time you choose to buy your food from a farmer or a restaurant that gets its food locally.  If we all do it often enough, we really will change the world.

For weeks now, the temperatures have been summer-like and the entire landscape has been turning green.  So although it may seem strange that we haven't been letting all the critters out to bask in the spring sun, until this week only the sheep were outside full time.  This is how we overwintered our farm, and although the fields were starting to turn green, it wasn't quite time.  While it may seem like a no-brainer to let the animals out as soon as there is something green out there to eat, if you do that you will run out of pasture quickly.  While we love to let the horses, cows and goats roam free and relieve ourselves of the stall cleaning, pasture takes maintenance too.  

Our farm is only 50 acres, including woodlands, house, barnyard, hog yard, hayfields, gardens and pastures. That doesn't leave all that much pasture for 4 horses, 4 cows, 15 sheep and a half dozen goats, plus the pastured poultry and pigs.  So we need to manage our pasture according to how many animals we have if we want it to last the whole summer long and into the fall.  The first step is by not turning everything out as soon as possible.  We need to let the plants get a bit of a head start so they have enough energy to keep going.  We will also close off parts of the pasture at different times during the growing year, allowing one part to be eaten down while the other part grows lush again. Another benefit is that we have a diverse herd.  Goats love the brushy stuff-scrubby trees, multiflora rose and other browse the rest of the animals won't touch.  The horses select the plants they like, such as clover or alfalfa first, as do the cows.  Sheep eat all the soft grasses down nearly to the roots.  Each has its own preferred food, and when you graze all of them together, it grazes the field down in a nearly even manner.  If you had only one species grazing a spot at a time, it is easy for them to eat their favorite plants up until they were no longer present in the field.  Like any of nature's environments, the pasture thrives on balance.

So how do we know it is time?  For starters, when we let the horses and cows out in the evenings, they refuse to come back in!  The lawn needs mowed already, and in some ways, the pasture is the same; the more you cut it, the more it grows back.  So we let the goats out to play last night too.  We've gotten away from the goat breeding business, but have 4 favorite adults and twin kids here still.  

What happens if we're wrong?  Maybe it is too early, but we'll monitor the pasture growth by walking through the fields.  If the grasses are being eaten down too much, we can always restrict the fields that the animals are allowed into, or put then back in the barn for a week or two.  It's a fairly forgiving system as long as you keep a close eye on what's going on.  The other side of the coin is that if you don't let the animals out until the grass is tall and lush, they go and gorge like a kid with a basket full of Easter candy.  While the child will likely suffer no more than a bellyache, for our livestock, the bellyache can result in digestive upsets (colic in horses, bloat on the others) which can actually kill the animal if not treated properly.   So the wise farmer strives for a balance between letting the grass get a good start, but not so much that the animals are knee deep in food they haven't seen in months.

It's a busy weekend here, as the first weekend of trout fishing weekend means lots of our seasonal residents are here.  If you're one of them, feel free to slow down when you pass the farm.  There's lots to see in the fields these days! 

Anyone who has come to visit our farm has likely seen some of our more exotic-looking poultry.  We raise Polish chickens, with crazy crowns of feathers that look like a wig, Golden Phoenix roosters have tails that can grow to be two feet long, and Cochins whose feet are completely obscured by feathers, making them appear to be wearing slippers.  All these birds are kept in a pen visible from our parking lot, and the do get quite a bit of attention.  However, they are not the most attention-grabbing birds we keep.

Two summers ago, Dan and I bought peafowl.  Most people know these beauties as peacocks, but that is really only referring to the males of the species.  Our ladies are properly called peahens.  The babies, not surprisingly, are called peachicks.  We got our birds as chicks, and peafowl are slower to develop than many birds, as they are long lived...they can live to be 50 years old!  Our males are developing the first real tail feathers with the characteristic eye spots, and although they will get longer still in years to come (up to 6 feet!) they are beginning to be beautiful.  Our hens will lay their first eggs this year, and we hope to hatch them in our incubator.  However, peafowl can fly well and we worried about them escaping, so it's taken us some time to get a proper outdoor run set up.  We were able to do that this weekend, complete with a roof made of netting, which makes it look like a real aviary pen.  It's also located right along the road, which I'm sure will slow traffic going by!

 

It took our birds a day or so to get used to leaving the safe confines of the barn, but they truly seem to enjoy being outside now.  We're thrilled to get them out where we can enjoy them as well, and it's a great time of year to be able to watch them.  The males have been strutting, trying to impress the hens.  Like turkey, they are able to raise their tails into an impressive fan.   They can also vibrate them, which makes an interesting soft rattling noise as they follow the girls about.  When all four peacocks start, it's quite a show!

 

They also make a variety of sounds, especially around dusk and dawn.  The one noted in books as sounding like "help"  does sound a bit like the word, but is an eerie, haunting cry.  I'd be pretty worried if I were outside by myself around dusk and heard it without knowing the creature making it!  There is also another cry that sounds...well, the closest I can come to describing it in print is like a bicycle horn!

In other farm goings-on, Dan broke ground for the first time this year with the horses.  After discing under some cornstalks, he began plowing the cornfield and garden areas near the road.  There are many more days ahead of working Dixie and Dolly to get our fields through spring planting, and it's always exciting to get that process underway! 

It was a very busy weekend here.  Thursday night I heard the first peeps coming from the incubator, we kicked off hatching season with a Delaware chick followed by many more Delawares, some Barred Rocks, Buff Orpingtons and a few Polish and Blue Cochins.  My favorite part of hatching season is opening up the incubator in the morning or after I get home from work.  When I pull out the hatching tray, it's just amazing to see little fluffy chicks where solid eggs were just a few hours prior.  Even after hatching hundreds of chicks, it never grows old for me.  In fact, this is later in the year that we started hatching previously, and I really missed it!

Another successful event this weekend was Friday's Farm to Table conference.  We only got a little lost on our way to the convention center!  It was great to finally meet Mia from PASA, I feel like I know her since we've exchanged so many emails.  She was really great in person, truly excited about local foods, and I look forward to meeting her again.  We had samples of my Black Forest Preserves, Carrot Cake Jam, Horseradish Mustard, Ginger-Garlic Mustard, and Thai Dipping Sauce available to all who walked by the PASA table.   Although all were well-received, the Carrot Cake Jam was the hands-down winner.  My favorite quote from the conference was a woman who not only wanted to buy a jar, but wanted me to make a whole bathtub for her so she could "just soak it all in!" I was amazed, even in a big place like Pittsburgh, about half of the folks who stopped by knew where Tionesta was.  We hope to see lots of them at our stand this summer!  It was a great place for farmers and other vendors to network as well.  Although I had quite a few requests to carry my products at other locations, for now the only place they will be available is at our stand here at the farm.

I was pleasantly surprised by the edible Allegheny table as well.  The magazine had contacted me last year about advertising in it.  Although it was a bit too expensive to fit into our current advertising budget, I offered to host them if they ever cared to do a story here.  I was told that only farms that advertise would get stories published about them  This really soured me on the magazine, because it is a beautiful publication that states its purpose as supporting local farms and seasonal eating, but I felt that if they only profiled advertisers, they were misleading the audience about the true availability of local food by ignoring small producers.  One of the women at the booth asked if I had heard of the magazine before, and when I relayed this story, she told me that it was not true at all, and that she was in fact the editor of the publication.  I gave her one of my cards, and whether or not they ever want to do a story here, I'm excited about the magazine now.  I'm looking forward to sitting down with the issue they handed out at the conference and to seeing the subscription come to my mailbox.

It's a crazily busy week here, I'm on a break but won't get away from my day job till well after dark today & tomorrow.  It all works out for the best though, as I will have enough hours in that I won't need to use a precious vacation day to be at the Farm to Table conference on Friday.  Dan and I will be leaving Tionesta bright and early after chores are done to head down the the David L Lawerence Convention Center in Pittsburgh.  We're going to be one of a only a few farms featured at the PASA (Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture) table.  They'll be helping us display some of my mustards and jams, and I'll have a small supply on hand for folks to purchace while I'm manning the table.  It looks like we'll be present pretty much all Friday morning, so if you attend, be sure to stop by and say hello!  Just look for the table with the big "Buy Fresh, Buy Local" banners!

The weather here has been beatuiful, the mud is drying and we have even more beautiful farm babies!  Lambing season continues, we now have a total of 6 healthy little lambs...5 rams (boys) and one ewe.  Last years we fininshed the season with 4 ewes and only 2 rams, so I guess it's just the boys' year this time!  We also have three more ewes who we are watching closely, as they have yet to deliver.

Both our sows have delivered their piglets, with Fern giving birth a few days after Char.  We have a grand total of 19 healthy little piglets!  Wow!

The incubator is filling with eggs and our first chicks of the season will hatch next weekend.  I've missed the soft peeping of chicks, so I'm excited about that, too.  I also spotted the first goose egg of the season this week.  This goose found a nice spot under the rabbit cages in the back yard.  It's fairly out of the way, but I can watch from my kitchen window, so I'm hoping she sticks with this spot for hewr nest this year.  I noticed this location as I moved the bantam Japanese chickens from that rabbit cage back into their summer home.  It is a bottomless pen called a chicken tractor, and now that the snow has melted, I can put those birds back out on grass.  It sure is nice to see them in the yard again!

The plants are coming to life as well.  I noticed the first glimpses of crimson popping up through the mulch covering our rhubarb patches.  The blueberry bushes are showing little buds and it looks like my rosebush survuved the winter.  A few early leaves of green mark where the oregano, thyme and lemon balm are in the herb garden as well. The daffodils are poking up and I'm sure the forsythia and lilac bushes will be blooming soon, as the buds are starting to swell on the branches.

Besides all the spring excitement, I'm also looking forward to the Farm to Table conference set for next Friday & Saturday at the David L. Lawerence Convention Center in Pittsburgh.  While the cost of a table for the 2 days was a bit out of our farm's advertising budget this year, we belong to the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, aka PASA.  They are featuring member farms and giving free samples of products at a table there, so I've already sent them a box of our jams and mustards.  Dan and I are planning on attending on Friday as well, and if all goes according to plan, we'll be at the PASA table when our farm is featured to answer questions and have some of our products to sell.  I think this is really neat, but I'm also just as excited to check out what other farms in our region are doing.  When I find out the actual time our farm is scheduled, I'll be sure to post it so that you can stop by and say hello if you're there!

Although the weather is a bit gloomy, the rain did get rid of the snow.  Even though it's still muddy, at least the water has stopped coming in to the barn.  The hog house has stayed wonderfully dry with its new roof, which is great since we have so many new piglets!  Charlotte had her litter Thursday-11, a new record for her.  While we lost a few the first few days, if she raises these 8 it will still be a successful litter.  Her sister, Fern, gave birth last night.  She had a whopping 12, but 2 were stillborn, which often happens with such large litters.  Again, we're still thrilled.

We though there would be a lull in lambing season as the 4 ewes still outside are young and historically, the youngest give birth a bit later on into the spring months.  However, looking out my kitchen window into the pasture, there is a new lamb who will need to be brought into the nice warm barn before nightfall!  The other five are growing at a record pace, and we can't wait for the pasture to dry up a bit so we can let them out!

We are super busy inside the house too.  We had tons of home improvement projects on the to-do list to get done over the winter.  Spring is here, so we're trying to do as much as possible while it's still too muddy to plow.  Once the outdoor work of planting and field prep begins, major inside projects are pretty much on hold!