Pleasant Valley Farm

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. 

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. 

Well, Memorial Day weekend is here and has brought summer's heat!  We planted lots of seedlings last night.  The peppers have a few blooms and I can't wait to be picking them! We hope to do some more work after the heat of the day and I'm planning to get my herb garden seeded for this year's annuals.  I'm planting Queenette basil, a Thai variety I was very pleased with last year.  Some new ones I have this year are borage, white mustard and lime basil.  I'm trying catnip again and hoping it does better than last year, it didn't really germinate.  The oregano, chives, parsley, sage, thyme and lemon basil all overwintered well and are really taking off.  I'm also glad to see peppermint coming up neat the creek, and my pineapple mint is coming back despite the prunings the goats gave it last year! I can't wait to be picking fresh vegetables too! 

Well, last Friday we planted a few seedlings in the garden.  Some of the heritage zucchini, squahes and melons were getting a bit crowded on the kitchen window sill.  We put down black fabric to cut down on weeding and put the plants in.  A gentle rain fell all night and the temperature stayed in the mid 60's.  Sounds like a great start...until the wind started on Saturday.  The black cloth ended up wrapped around the moveable rabbit pen at the edge of the garden.  I'm not sure how or if we'll get it back where it should be.  Plus last night was the 3rd night in a row we had to cover everything with floating row cover because of frost.  Happily, more than half of the seedlings appear to have survived their traumatic transplanting!! My flower bed and herbs seem to have weathered through well. Some of the potatoes got nipped a bit by the frost, but they'll be ok, and the rhubarb seems to be indestructible at this point.  It's beautiful but I just don't have enough time right now to be making anything with it.

Alicia, our only ewe born last year, had a little ram lamb on Monday.  She's a dedicated mother and he seems to be doing just fine. She was born last year the day after Mother's Day, and had her own baby the day after Mother's Day this year! It's been cold the past few nights, so I put a little fleece blanket on him.  I think it makes me feel better than the baby, but it surely isn't causing any harm.  I started making the "lammy jammies" this February when most of the lambs were born out of scraps of fleece material I found on discount at Wal-Mart along with a few clearance-priced buttons.  It sure beat the prices in the livestock supply catalogs, and they were custom fit.

We'll be weaning the piglets this weekend.  The sows are going a bit stir-crazy in thier pens. They both escaped out into the boar's run this weekend.  I would have loved to have seen the 450-lb sow climb over the 3 1/2 foot stall divider. Twice. Luckily, no pigs were hurt during this stunt.  The babies are also getting very good at pushing the hog house door open and escaping into the main barnyard and pasture if the door isn't shut VERY tightly.  A cinder block propped up on the outside works too.

  Dan is done with the plowing for the year.  There is still much fieldwork to be done before all the field corn is in, but everything is moving right along.  Tom, my father-in-law, is coming to help us out again this weekend so I'm hoping for clear skies! I am also hoping to work my horse a bit behind the harrow this weekend.  Dan has worked her a bit, but she's acting a bit barn sour and I think he's a little too easy on her when she starts to throw a fit.  But I am excited to get her used to her new harness.  We were at an auction and found a gorgeous show pony harness with both a collar and the ability to hook up to shafts for a buggy or sleigh for a price we could afford. When it was brought out, I was in love with it and was sure it would go too high, but it must have been meant to be!  It is beautiful and covered in metal dots which will be shiny once I find time to clean and oil it. When we tried it on Sara in the barn, it fit like it was custom made.  I only had to adjust one buckle on the whole thing! The leather is in fantastic shape, it's just got a good layer of dust accumulated on it.  It even came with an ornate piece of leather that fits over the hames and collar just for decoration.  I told her she'll look fancier than a Budwieser Clydesdale!  The only thing I was nervous about is that the bridle has blinders on it, which Sara has never worn.  However, Dan used the new bridle with the old harness last week and said she acted like she'd worn them all her life.  Now if I can just get her used to the straps around her hind end without a royal kicking fit...

Well my little Morgan, Sara, got her first taste of being a "work pony" this week.  Dan had her pulling a harrow through the garden and she did really well.  She's going to need some time getting used to the traces rubbing a bit when she turns, but overall it's going well.  I'm like a proud mama, she's been my baby for 17 years now.  I just think it's amazing that she's done so many different things in her life and now is working towards being a great field work horse.  Not bad for a little pony no one wanted whom I got through the Equine Rescue League.  It just shows the old Morgan bloodlines really are an all-purpose breed. 

 Everything is starting to turn green!  I swear when I looked at my flower bed on Sunday, there were just small buds and plants coming up, but last night my bleeding heart flower had not one but two blooms on it!  The rhubarb is really growing fast, if anyone is interested I have lots for sale!

We transplanted seedlings this weekend and I am always amazed at how fast they grow.  Everything we got from Seed Savers Exchange sprouted exceptionally well and I can't wait to taste the vegetables!  Our other seed orders are all in now, with the exception of some shallots I was hoping to plant but were sold out.  We're going to start the rest of the indoor seedlings this weekend and hopefully plant the rest of the potatoes.  We should have lots, we're planting 50# of Yukon Golds as well as reds and whites and I'm trying a heritage all-blue variety.

It's a beautiful spring day here in Pennsylvania.  I'm looking forward to a productive weekend on the farm. 

My husband's parents are kind enopugh to help us with the butchering of our hogs, so I am looking forward to seeing them this weekend.  We are doing 5 hogs this weekend, so I'm not sure whether I'll be grilling pork chops for dinner or if we'll all want chicken!  This will be my 3rd time helping with this particular farm activity, and since we send the piggies to a USDA facility for slaughter, the sides of meat we pick up from Hirsch's don't look like any creature I'm used to feeding.  That makes it a bit easier for a new to farming girl like me. (I never even had a vegetable garden until I met my husband...my mom can't believe that I pluck my own chickens now!)  This will also be the first time I'll be doing hogs that were born on the farm...the last 2 times we raised up feeder pigs that we bought.  I am looking forward to this weekend though, my freezer was quickly emptying after a long winter.  I am excited to make sausage this time.  I was let in on the 2 "secret family recipes" for sausage, a brown sugar breakfast type and a sage variety, and as a cook I can never just follow the recipe without trying to make my own adjustments.  I grew my first ever herb garden last year and dried some sage that I'm excited to used in the sausage.  If it turns out well, I'll use it in all the sage sausage we make and sell in the future, but for now I'm only going to try it with what my husband and I will be eating.  Lucky for me, he really enjoys sage, so if it comes out a little strong it won't go to waste.

We also have 15 adorable little piglets that will be 2 weeks old this weekend.  Our 2 sows, Fern and Charlotte (yes, the boar's name is Wilbur...I'm a family literacy teacher by day so some of the creatures get literary names) have done a great job with thier piglets, both this time and with the last litters.  We give our piglets iron shots at 3 and 10 days of age to make sure they don't become anemic.  I was happy to finish that up last night.  Char is as sweet as can be and makes some noise when you handle the babies, but dosen't cause any trouble.  Fern, on the other hand, well, you have to admire her motherly instinct.  On the other hand I really don't want a 350 lb sow biting me for trying to handle the babies.  So what works for us is to lure her just outside the hog house with a little feed and shut the door!  We can quickly give the babies the care they need, clean out the pen and no one gets hurt.  She's ready to come back in when the door is opened. 

Other than that, I plan to keep up the spring cleaning and help Dan in the fields if possible this weekend.  He hopes to finish up planting the hayfield today before I get home.  This weekend is the opening day of trout season in PA, which means lots of campers and former customers will be driving by.  It always amazes me how many people will stop on the road so they can talk to you...I guess seeing someone working a team of horses in the field dosen't register to most people as work, but rather something you do for fun.  It sure makes it hard to have a productive day though.  We bought a work collar and adjusted a harness to will fit my little Morgan mare, Sara.  I hope to try and work her in the garden this weekend. (it dosen't border the road!)  She is my baby, I adopted her from a rescue society when she was 6 and I'm proud to say she is an unbelieveably healthy 23 now.  I hope to teach her to do some light field work to keep her in shape as I don't get to ride as much as I used to. She's been a 4-H show horse, a trail horse, a pet that didn't get ridden when I was away at college, we taught her to pull a buugy and sleigh in the past few years, now it's time for something new for both of us!

After getting home from work, I checked Scotchie's nest box and she had 8 babies after all!  I am so excited that my first-time bunnies have been such good mamas.  Both Scotchie and her sister have raised 8 without any losses.  I am just anxoius to see the new ones hopping about in their pen, they should open thier eyes in a few days.

We are expecting piglets soon too, possibly as soon as the weekend.  Both sows had 7 each last time, and raised a total of 13. But we're hoping for even more this time around!  However, we only keep as many babies to raise up as we have orders for pork.  They just eat too much :(  So if anyone reading this is interested in a whole or half hog please contact me for more information!  

I am so excited, our seed order from Seed Savers Exchange came on Monday.  The packets show such beautiful plants, I can't wait to start them.  I was also impressed because each packet tells you how to preserve seed for next year.  I did some last year, but only green beans and sunflowers, so I appriciate all the information I can get!  We hope to do that this weekend, but first we have to finish a chicken coop & run, as we wintered over our Phoenix chickens and a few Delaware pullets in the greenhouse.  We need to move them before starting the seeds, because otherwise my beautiful seeds will just be expensive chicken food! 

Hello to everyone online!  I've never blogged before, so please be gentle :)

Signs of spring are popping up everywhere on the farm these days.  This morning, we have a new litter of baby bunnies! A quick check of the nest box revealed 4 new ones, but there may be more hiding in the "hair coccoon"...I'll be checking better tonight to make sure everyone's ok, but I didn't want to upset momma too much this morning.  She's a first time mom and I always get nervous that they won't take good care of the babies.  We've had good luck with the rabbits so far though, this is the third litter this spring and all have been successful so far...

So far this year we've also had 5 Dorsett cross lambs born (3 black and 2 white!) and 3 Boer kids.  We have 1 goat and 1 lamb that ended up being bottle babies, but they seem to be growing just as well as the others.  More goats should be on the way soon, so I'll keep you posted as best as I can...

We are anxiously awating our seed orders to come in the mail.  Dan has been plowing a little and I can't wait to get started in the greenhouse!