the seven farm essentials

Continuing on the "essentials" theme...

Aside from good infrastructure such as high tensile woven wire fencing, a reliable source of water, a decent pasture and a good hay farmer nearby, there are seven farm essentials I absolutely can not live without —

1. Muck boots. Worn every single day of the year. A good pair will last forever.


2. Hog panels. Just about the most useful dang thing on the planet.


I have used them for displays, keeping goats out of the new apple trees


a sheep fold, gates, pens, a five-bay composting bin and temporary fencing.

3. Pallets. If you don't store your hay off the ground, you'll be wasting a lot to mice and mold. Good for stacking firewood in the winter. Good for firewood when they start breaking up. I don't lust after $400 Italian shoes (actually, these are three times that much).


Well, okay, those are kinda cool.

I lust after 40 new solid-top hardwood pallets.



4. T-posts and a post pounder. It's pretty hard to get a 6 foot fence post through clay and shale unless you have one of these.

5. A rooster. Ornamental, protective and loyal to his girls.




"How about me? Am I essential to you, mom?"

Hmmm.

Moving along...

6. Muck buckets. The more the merrier.


7. A couple of goats. Anyone with even a quarter acre of yard could use a goat or two to trim weeds and poison ivy. The nicely distributed fertilizer is an added bonus.


8. How could I forget? the best thing to have on a farm is a couple of good friends to help out when you can't manage to do it all.

I got distracted today

I've been seeing this cat hanging around the last couple of days, been hearing mysterious little squeaks and mews...this is why, I guess. I gave mom a good meal to get her used to people (part of the evil plan to one day nab her and take her to the vet for the Big Op).


I found another one later, and they all have no tails, just like the mom. It's a Morgan County feral cat thing, just a huge genetic pool of tailless cats with this coloring.



I am NOT taking these cats in. No. No. and NO. We have six already. But my backyard is pretty idyllic for wild cats to live in, and there is plenty of shelter for the winter with the derelict animal houses, so as long as I can capture them at some point for neutering, it's all good. They'll be on their own mostly, with occasional meals from the Big House, and I'll put out water, but I'm really maxed out on being able to feed the existing crew right now — with lambs on the way in a couple of weeks!

country scene

Blackberry nibbles the grass while I learn to scythe it.

new haircuts

Shearing today! The fabulous Emily came and did all the girls (and the boy) in no time. I'm totally in awe of her ability. It was our first warm day, with a glorious deep blue sky — one of those days where you just get so much done because it feels so good to be alive.

Which is a good thing. It's been a seriously lousy week, with one of those cascading, crushing waves of overdraft charges that grows and builds and gathers more destruction, leaving in its wake devastation and ruin. Okay, well maybe not quite that bad (I do love a good exaggeration), but in the end, it pretty much wiped out my meager personal checking and two savings accounts.


It's going to be a great weekend though, I can just feel it (the power of positive thinking here...).

babysitting

We had a special guest this weekend...this lovely little week old bottle-baby from A Rare Breed farm. She's a Black Welsh Mountain ewe-ette. Andrea was out at a grazing conference, so I got to babysit! She hung out in the shop most of the day Saturday with me and the dog, and seemed quite interested in learning to spin, actually sleeping at my feet next to the wheel for a bit.

I didn't realize till I looked at the photo that she's sitting down next to yarn made from a mix of Black Welsh Mountain fleece and Romney.


I was so enamored by the experience, that I googled "sheep as housepets" and found this. Okay, maybe not such a good idea.

winter: outdoor activities

I love this crazy little sheep-trail, ending with Blackberry's rump. There's a quarter inch of ice on top of everything and nobody is venturing far from the shelter. They haven't gone 30 feet from it in almost a week, they know they'll be skating down the hill if they do. Which would be a sight to see, wouldn't it?

The longwools are busy growning this...


and growing, we hope, spring lambs.

the 2009 Winter Farm Olympics

Forget joining a gym—if you want some good weight-bearing and aerobic exercise, come over here for a day. Events include:

• the 56 Gallon Water Haul
• 2 Inch and 4 Inch Ice Chopping challenge
• the Load-the-Porch-With-Firewood-Before-it-Starts-Snowing challenge
• the Hop-the-Fence-to-Get-Hay-Before-the-Ram-Notices-You relay

Water hauling is one of those things that I just can't put a happy face on about. It's really a lot of work when the water troughs and buckets freeze up. It easily takes an hour a day to chip, chop, dump and replace. Happily, today it is above freezing!

Sterling

This is Sterling. He's here for a few weeks of sex camp with the foursome. So far, he's showing no interest, but they needed his presence to come into heat, and then get him going. If all goes well, we'll have an early June lambing, which would be about perfect.

happy hats

It just doesn't get any cuter.

Our fabulous model was over this afternoon for photos to promote my new Happy Hats kits. She's not much taller than the girls, and weighs considerably less, but they behaved like ladies and didn't knock her down for the treats.

USDA ramps up the NAIS threat

Listen. NAIS is a serious threat to small farmers in the US and will affect every person who uses animal products such as meat, wool, eggs, etc., at the very least by higher prices needed to support the vast government bureauracy needed to run and enforce itself.

NAIS was the brainchild of an intrusive, paranoid government agency, aided by agribusiness and technology interests.

It's aim is to digitally track every single farm animal in this country throughout its entire life-span. If you own one livestock animal — even as a pet, or even for your own consumption — you will be required to register your home, business and personal info, GPS coordinates, and have each animal tagged and microchipped. Every animal will receive its own 15 digit tracking number. You must then comply with absurdly burdensome reporting and recordkeeping each time an animal is moved, shown at a county fair, school or nursing home, taken to the vet, on a trail ride across property lines, dies naturally or is slaughtered.

It's really all about protecting industrial factory farms from the "threat" of small family farms, particularly those in the organic, pastured, naturally grown market. It's about selling billions of dollars worth of microchips, tagging equipment, tracking equipment — including satellites and software, and funding federal workers to maintain this potentially massive database. Agribusiness can easily afford this nonsense. Family farms can not. It's that simple.

A few downsides: Oh, those little things like personal privacy and religious freedom and the eradication of the family farm. Think I'm overstating it? Here's more info.

The reason this has come up again is that now the USDA has abandoned the supposedly "voluntary" nature of NAIS; veterinarians may soon be required to report and register any unregistered animals they treat, against the will of the animal owner.

Who does support this? Not surprisingly, Cargill, Tyson, and the tech companies who will reap billions from this. Who loses? The rest of us.

Halloween farmcat

This little one just magically showed up on the porch the other day. The kitten-fairy delivery, I suppose. Anyway, she's got a dislocated hip, broken leg and foot and nerve damage enough to require an amputation. She's a sweetie; it's being done tomorrow. Prayers to the God of Small Cats.

the new kid

Okay, not technically a kid, as he's a lamb. His name is Blackberry, and he's a Border Leicester, just a few months old. Here he is on Andrea's front porch, getting some tlc, as he just got "fixed" this morning. He'll be coming to live with the girls here in a couple of days.

County Fair

We shared a booth at the Morgan County Fair with Andrea, of A Rare Breed. At the left you can see the reenactors tent. Note to fair organizers everywhere — don't put these guys next to the livestock tent. Every couple of hours they would march around in formation and shoot their muskets off. It was a bit alarming to all of the animals (and some of the humans).


This is Madeline before she got totally freaked out by 4000 little kids touching her all over. Things were going okay, except for that... and except for the wild goat escape... She was sharing a pen with this handsome boy, Amos. We had them set up with a divider in between in case they didn't like each other, but she immediately hopped right over it to hang with him.


At one point, Andrea took Amos for a walk, and in seconds Madeline took a leap out of the pen, presumably to be with her new man. She dashed around in six directions simultaneously for a minute or so. I nearly had heart failure, but we did get ahold of her eventually.

Overall it was a fun experience and we met a lot of really nice people. I'll know better next time to take an animal who is more used to people, so I don't have to babysit her quite so much.

shearing

It's such a delight to watch someone do a difficult job well. Our new shearer, Emily, is 23 years old and has been shearing for about 8 years. She is extremely skilled, both in handling the recalcitrant sheep and in zipping along with no second cuts.



This is Coco, one of the mohair goats. Her fleece was totally felted. They need to be sheared twice a year, and we didn't get to it last autumn.



I'll hand trim their bangs some time this week. They are too cute to cut off completely.

family portrait

Here are the babies at 3 weeks. They are turning into teenagers and staying out at night after mom has gone to bed.

guardian of the flock

He's growning on me...dang it, though, talk about your high maintenance...I've never had a puppy before, I just had no idea.



I've been working on the website. Very labor intensive, since I have to take photos of all the yarns I've got, do color corrections, then do the pages. The yarn page is up finally, and I'm making 3rd level pages with all the new stuff. Between this and cleaning up after the puppy, knitting is back burnered for now.

chicks

Better pix of chix. They are very active, but spend a lot of time under mom's feathers.

new projects

Setting aside the needles for a bit, I've been working on a couple of crocheted lace shawls. Using beads with crochet is much easier than when knitting; you don't have to pre-string them on the yarn, just add them as you go. This is Brown Sheep sport weight, with #6 hex seed beads. The beads match the yarn a bit too perfectly, and they are too small, so they don't show up quite as much as I'd like, but overall I'm pleased. I'm doing another one with a laceweight mohair and slightly larger beads, which is coming out better.


I'll get better pictures tomorrow, but here are our brand-new baby chicks. I think they hatched last night. The hen, Gabrielle, is sitting on 15 eggs; three have hatched so far.


Other Pocket Meadow Farm news: we have another baby. He's a 9 week old Shetland Sheepdog. Does it get any cuter than this? His name is Macintosh, Mac for short.

Sheep Attack!

new baby

This is Madeline. She's 5 months old. I'm hoping she'll help with cleaning up the poison ivy back out by the hen houses, as well as providing us with her wonderful mohair fiber.