They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
Earlier this year we put plant protectors around a bunch of our orchard shrubs and pasture trees. This was in order to facilitate letting the sheep and cows pulse through the orchard to mow the grass down for us, without letting them browse all the leaves off the figs, mulberries and currants (I'm looking at… Continue reading Protecting the Orchard Plants… more.
Monday was one of those days. We hustled hard first thing to get to the farm early, because it is Michaelmas and we wanted to get Iris back out on pasture. Why on Michaelmas? Because it's fun to say, and because it's memorable. It's a fixed feast at the end of September that I can… Continue reading Not much gets done some days.
Meet the newest addition to the farm! The last two weeks have been more than usually busy. Daddy was away for National Guard, Mommy was busy trying to hold down the work schedule, get school schedules planned (we start back up Mid August) as well as planning for tutoring at Classical Conversations, and prepping for… Continue reading Iris
Quick project just to make watering the sheep and cows easier. And by easier, I mean automatic, nine months out of the year.
The cows are her favorites. Just like her Mommy.
Early this year, in January, I think, we had two big willow trees on the farm cut down from some 30-40 feet tall to about 6 feet tall. There were several reasons for this. Both were in inconvenient locations. One was shading the garden and slowing the soil warming in the spring. The other was… Continue reading Tree Hay
Moving the steers and sheep to a new paddock at 5 AM. They rush deep into the new standing grass and immediately get to work. For the next 40 minutes, all you can hear is “Chomp, chomp, munch, munch.” And birds singing and chickens clucking, and roosters crowing…
For one, we actually managed to make plans and bring them to fruition to get Mommy the mother’s day present she really wanted this year. Although Winnie thinks the cows were a Winnie day present. When is Winnie Day, you ask? Every day is Winnie Day.
Saturday we spent most of the afternoon racing to get the rest of our orchard order into the ground. Bare-root trees have a limited time before their roots dry out and they die. We picked up the order on Thursday, and it was well packed in wet mulch and newspapers, but we didn't want to… Continue reading More Orchard Planting
The ultimate goal of having cows is for them to eat our grass and turn it into meat and milk. Accordingly, we want to get our bulls out on pasture as quickly as possible to take advantage of the Spring flush. (I say "bulls" and not "steers" because, despite the fact that they have been… Continue reading Bulls on Pasture
Little Farm in the Big City 