Fall Harvest

Autumn is a beautiful time of year, but for us at Maggie's Farm, it can be a little sad. Autumn means the rattle of leaves and slick roads, snow grown thick over the pastures, the coop with a cold white hat of ice. It means water will freeze in the buckets and need to be kicked out and refilled eternally. Kids' mittens go missing (one from each pair) and the snow (avert your eyes if you are squeamish) encases layers of dog turd and toys.

Autumn is also the time of harvest.

We had a pretty good crop of pumpkins this year-- a first! And too many cucumbers (have to learn to pickle them one of these years) and many, many pig-planted tomatoes.

Our apples, unsprayed for two years now, are sorry looking things. But they do provide for a bounty of pies and crumbles.

We also have lamb, or ram anyway. A few weekends ago, we "harvested" Rahm, our Icelandic ram. Rahm was two years old, but with a strange ancientness in his bearing, his slow and careful gait, his propensity to plop himself down under the coop or against the barn and just sit all day like Ferdinand.

Rahm had scurs, the kind that curved straight back towards his skull and needed frequent trimming. Dan and I spent many a Saturday afternoon wrestling poor Rahm to a sitting position (Not easy as he was a complete chub) and going at those thick scurs with a branch trimmer or, when this failed, a hacksaw. Yes, there was blood, lots of it. Also Rahm's hooves grew freakishly fast, requiring even more ram wrangling. Every time we'd do the trimming thing, I'd say something like "Poor Rahm, I feel so bad for him.

We ought to just put him out of his misery and eat him." But, gutless farmers that we are, we left the big guy be.

This year, though, we'd sold all the lambs and most of the sheep, and our freezer was growing kind of light on lamb. We had one ram lamb, Ewok, a beautiful solid black with (so far.... knock on wood) no offending scurs.

We knew that with the turn of the seasons Rahm and Ewok would start up with the ramly-ram posturing and butting and that the three remaining ewes (Copper, Acorn and Penny) just needed one boy around.

We decided that we might as well eat the big, hard-to-care-for, scurs-growing-into-his-head one.

As you might recall, we've tried a few different slaughter methods. Our first ram, Gus, a nasty bugger, was slaughtered and butchered by our barber Dwayne (Yes, it IS that small a town). And the year after that I had a horrible experience with driving a vanful of sheep to a slaughterhouse. Last year, we had a mobile butcher come out to "do" our pigs and sheep more humanely. But the butcher wouldn't come out for one sheep, and Dwayne retired a few years back. What to do? Perhaps it was time to "man up" (Hate that expression) and do the thing ourselves.....

Um, no.

Lucky for us, we have some very kind friends (Thanks you guys!) who are also small farmers with more expertise in butchering and all the tools too. Dan and Adam went down to the barn with the rifle and meat saw and ropes and hooks and all sorts of terrible implements, while I hung out with the kids (Yes, this is pretty much my role when it comes to slaughter). A short while later, I ventured down to watch a bit. A short bit. As the caul fat was pulled from Rahm's gut cavity. (Never thought I'd be doing THAT back in my vegetarian days). Then Adam's wife, Emily, and I took the all kids (6 in all) to a local fundraising event for the high school athletic teams.

Later we had a barbecue (Not sheep,mind you. Definitely too soon for that.) It was, for me anyway, the easiest most pleasant slaughter day yet.

But still, the feel of fall-- endings and lapsings, chill winds and more to come-- lingers.

Magical Chicken

I've mentioned the fox that's been lunching on our chickens, yes?

Well, it's been pretty quiet lately, owing to our keeping all of the chickens cooped for a long stretch of the summer. All of the chickens, that is, except for this small white hen who we've named "The Magical Chicken". Here she is:

She doesn't like the coop.. or the barn. She disappears at night, re-appears walking the fence line like a sitting duck (bad poultry metaphor, I know). And-- here's the really remarkable thing-- she hasn't been eaten!

Where does she go? How does she avoid the jaws of our resident predator? I have no idea. Once, I found her high in the rafters on the outside of the barn, once in an open shed that had been home to our trio of pigs, "The Daves". She is a cagey little thing, zig-zagging across open spaces, never drifting to close to the woods.

Our older hens (These girls are six now!) are more sedate and trusting. I've seen them gather into a ruffled little knot and gawk as the fox mows one of their sisters down. Not so with "The Magical Chicken". Long before the fox shows, she is up and out of there!

Perhaps, we have some natural selection going on in the barnyard and before long we'll have a flock of super-smart fox-detecting rafters-roosting chickens.

Disrepair

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you've probably noticed that things have been a little.... scattered lately. The problem extends beyond blog inattention, I'm afraid. Fences need fixing, nest boxes lapse into poultry trainwrecks, broken eggs and displaced bedding, general ugliness. Sheep have taken to free-ranging

(Here's Rahm on the wrong side of the barn wall...)

And this very barn has been befouled by foul. Not pretty around here these days.

Why?

Well, one explanation is busyness. We are working (quite a lot) and have been away. There are, all of a sudden, three elementary school aged kids around the farm with their own social commitments, camps, activities, etc. When do we keep up with chores, exactly?

Another explanation is flagging interest. It's been about 5 years since we started farming and while we love the animals, the somewhat self-sufficiency, the lifestyle aspect, it's not the adventure it once was. The first or second or 15th time we had to trim Rahm's horns or treat a sick ewe or scrounge food for pigs, was exciting. But now we know what to expect.

It might be a sort of general failure. We have not figured out how to make the sheep affordable or how to provide more than our own meat and a few vegetables. (We regularly buy everything from cereal to snack bars to milk, ice cream and bread from the supermarket). The pigs were a success, but Dan (having been part of the slaughter process) is not ready to do another round, and they were a serious time suck. Ditto for the turkeys, minus some of the slaughter issues plus a whole lot more of a mess(!)

Lastly, there's the "itchy feet" factor. Every 5-7 years or so, I get a bad case of "let's pick up and try something totally different". Often, this "different" involves a shiny airstream trailer and a great swath of Wyoming badland, but it can take other forms as well-- 6 month canoe trips, desert islands, etc etc. To compound this state of "itchy-feetness", Dan's work is largely mobile these days... The dream seems within actual reach! (Of course the kids-- as they have often told me-- are TOTALLY NOT INTO this idea, and neither is my charmingly home-happy husband. But still.....

So here we are on Maggie's Farm, the rich summer of 2010 starting to slip from our grasp, the apples (and peaches!) ripening on the trees, our reduced flock happily free ranging, chickens glorying in their dust baths, white faced hornets building a fortress under the eaves, tent caterpillars amassing their downy nests in out front yard trees, the dirt road alternately a dusty mess and a swamp, mint grown out of control in the herb garden

...and a hundred unplanned tomatoes plants offering their hard green fruit in the former pig pasture.

Pumpkins have also sprouted in the fertile land of former pigs...

Everything more or less in a state of wild disrepair.

Not sure what'll be happening around here next, but I'll certainly let you know.

Been away...

I'm sorry I'v neglected this blog so badly the last little bit. We went on a three week long trip (!) to Newfoundland to celebrate my better half's half century birthday.

It was the longest we've been away, well, ever. But we have the most wonderful farm-sitters and so returned to the same number of chickens and sheep and dogs, all healthy and relatively happy. No news on the fox, maybe he also went on vacation!

Anyway, here's the trip-- from the perspective of my footwear:

Western Brook Pond

Sunset at River of Ponds

Rockhounding at Port au Port

Chillin' with the kids

Wading in Flowers Cove

Out of the Loop

That's me. I didn't realize that blogging custom requires me to post 7 (7?) things about myself that you might not know and also pass the award along to a few other bloggers.

I feel sort of silly, missing that info somewhere along the way.

Anyway, here goes...

7 Unexpected Things About Me:

1. I have another blog. Its a writing blog, totally unrelated to farming (www.lesserapricots.com)

2. I've written two as-yet-unpublished novels (also totally unrelated to farming)

3. I am one course short of a bachelor's degree in Anthropology

4. I spent one awesome summer as a volunteer Archaeologist in Northern Nevada

5. I have never been to Europe

6. I grew up in Florida

7. I once rode across the country on the back of a motorcycle.

Jeesh! That was sort of painful.

Now to the fun part:

I'm passing this award on some other farmy bloggers:

Lisa at Notes from Zone 4 (http://www.mackhillfarm.com/page/2/)

Carol at Red Dirt in my soul

http://blog.rimrockenglishshepherds.com/

Skepweaver from The Shambles at Highland Butte

http://skepweaver.wordpress.com/

Well's Tavern Farm

http://wellstavernfarm.wordpress.com/

Enjoy!

An Award! (and update)

Look here:

I got this cool award from my friend Ariel over at http://arielswan.blogspot.com/

Ariel is part of my writing life rather than my farming life, but she DOES have some terrific chickens (all with literary names, mind you) and her blog is terrific. You all should check it out!

Anyway, I feel sort of guilty about the award because I haven't had much to say lately....

So, I guess I should use this as an opportunity for an update:

We have moved ahead with our plans to "disperse the flock" sending off two rams (Dodge and Charlie to be herdsires) and four ewes (Leela, Daisy and their ewe lambs) Two more ewes (Elba-- Copper's ewe lamb-- and Diamond) are leaving this weekend.That should bring us down to three ewes, a ram, and a ram lamb.

...And that looks about right for us. For now, anyway.

We'd been planning on sending Acorn to a wonderful farm in central Mass but are having second thoughts. in fact, perhaps we've been a bit too hasty in the "let's get rid of everything!" thing.... In retrospect, the decision had a spring cleaning feel-- also there was the cost (less of an issue with 4 sheep) and the worry (also less of an issue with 4 sheep).

And then there is the Copper factor.

(Sorry about the repeat Pic)

I didn't realize quite how attached I was to our flock until I received an offer for Copper... well for for Copper's lambs with Copper along for the ride. The offer was from a good and forthright farming fried who was clear from the get-go that he was interested in the lambs, not the 9 year old ewe still nursing them. Though it was exactly what I'd wanted, I found I was hemming and hawing about this deal.

And that's when it hit me. Copper was our first ewe. She arrived when our farming dream was in its infancy, a four year old with a lamb at her side. She was the foundation, the sensible, matriarch, the "brains" of the flock as much as our dear lovable, accident prone Acorn was its "heart".

And although it's TOTALLY ridiculous to turn down an offer for her, I did.

And so Copper is staying, along with Penny and probably Acorn, and one ram-- either Rahm, who is so fat and mellow at this point he appears to be sleepwalking

or Ewok, Copper's beautiful black ram lamb, who's rise to herdsire will put the old dame into retirement.

The odd ram out will be ramchops. (Yes, I know it's weird to bemoan someone else eating our ewe and then turn around and casually drop the M-bomb (M as in "Meat") but then, this is one of the great farming ironies.

Not so fantastic

Yesterday, I awoke to the muddled screeching of chickens (If you've ever heard a panicked hen, you know exactly what I'm talking about) looked out my bedroom window to find a FOX-- long, lean, surprisingly tiny, angling after Dionysus, one of the non-cooped roosters. An inhuman warning issued from my throat, sort of a growl-bleat-scream, and the fox swiveled its beautiful head, fixed those yellow eyes on the house a moment, and melted into the tall weeds. Gone.

So now-- 30 some chickens later-- we know for sure. Our predator is a fox.

We've considered trapping it but have been told it's likely feeding pups and, being incurable softies, we can't quite fathom displacing a mama. (Yep, I know this says something unfortunate about our farmer-ness as does the fact that we can't slaughter or even sell off our old ewe, Copper, because we've had her so long.)

The other option is keeping the chickens cooped. We've done this for a few days-- the Maggie's Farm version of "Move along folks, nothing to see here." but felt so sorry for the free-ranging flock that we let them out again today.

And guess what? There she was, the not-so-fantastic Mrs. Fox, creeping along beside the back fence. The guinea fowl saw her first, started up a racket as only they can. (Up until now, we hated those %$$#$@ guinea hens, but they've been worth their weight in eggs now that there's something beyond crows and dogwalkers for them to screech about) Dan went to check on the situation and the fox melted away into the weeds again.

"I think," said our 8 year old, "Our chickens are going to go extinct."

Any suggestions?