Woolly bear caterpillars

Fall seems to have arrived while I wasn't looking this week.  As I rushed out the door this morning, late for my off-farm job, I was taken aback by the feeling of the farm.  Piggles had not come out to greet me, teenage chickens were not eagerly chirping at the removal of their protective tarp, rabbits were huddled in cage corners and barely moved as I ushered them a hurried greeting and headed out the door, and the leaves on the big maple behind the piggle pen have gone a blush in just a few short days.  The air has been crisp this week, but not so much that I stopped to notice as I feed rabbits and open up chicken enclosures.

This morning, was different. 

I thought to myself as I threw my lunch cooler in the passenger seat, that the dew was really heavy.  I jammed the key into the ignition, tore on my seat belt, hit the defroster button, and turned on the windshield wipers.  As I pulled the gear shift down into drive, I heard the unmistakable crunch as the wipers pushed a layer of frost off the side of the SUV. 

My heart skipped a beat.

In my rush to accomplish end of summer harvests, beginning of fall preparations, worries about finances, and a smidgen of house cleaning, I had missed a frost warning.  Maybe the woolly bear caterpillars who I have seen in the last few weeks without a speck of black on them were right, winter will be here before we know it and it is going to be a doozy.

The geraniums that have been on this farm for generations were still in the flower beds.
Herbs that I want to overwinter were in their various summer homes.
Tomatoes and eggplant remain in the garden waiting to be harvested.

I backed out of my parking spot and headed up the hill, the piggles poked their heads from inside their house just enough to acknowledge my presence, but I was far from important enough to leave that warm spot.  My 30 minute ride to work allowed me time to reassure myself that all was not lost. 

Only half the flower bed has been weeded so the overgrown weeds have probably protected the geraniums from the worst of the frost damage.  The garden hasn't been weeded in weeks so the tomatoes and eggplant were certainly nestled in.  My herb garden has been much better tended so I might lose some of them, but herb seeds can be started indoors anytime. And on my way back into the house this evening, I was greeted by this little creature.  He shows a nice long fall and a bit of a winter, but far from all orange - I think he is my new best friend!

What should I work on next?

Daylight hours seem to be in incredibly short supply around here lately. As I look around at all that remains to be done when I return to the farm, I can wear myself out just thinking about it if I am not careful. It has been a busy summer with plans to begin part-time employment delayed well into the latter part of June and a brief interlude in August of full-time training for my new part-time job.
 

I continue to look ahead and do my best to keep the sense of
 

How the <insert expletive here> am I going to get in front of this?

 

from entering my mind every time I look away from whatever task is at hand.

 

I manage to get through it, but I have to remind myself to take it one project or job at a time and maintain a separate a running list of that which I hope to accomplish before the snow flies.  A guest in my head might hear a dialogue something like this -

If I am going to be able to park my car in the garage this winter, I need to get the rabbit shed finished - but the rabbits can be moved even when there is snow on the ground - mowing the Christmas trees has to be done before it snows.

Mowing the Christmas trees requires fuel for the lawn tractor and the big tractor but the big tractor has a broken hose which also requires cash. I have enough fuel for the big tractor if I can get the hose fixed, at least a quick pass with the brush hog before snow is better than nothing at all and we might be able to shear once we can find the trees - add that to the list for this week.

The darn chickens have pooped on the back porch again.

Produce that is slated for preservation sits on the table in our mudroom waiting for canning jars or freezer space, roosters that are almost four months old wait for time when little man is snoozing so that they can be butchered, two rabbits who are no longer producing need to be culled so that there is more cage space for growing litters.  All of these require me to defrost the freezer so that there is room to store some of this food for the winter - add that to the list for this week.

I should clean the litter box.

Because the plastic wasn’t installed properly on the greenhouse, repairs are required if I want to grow greens for the winter and hope to get a head start on spring plants- that needs a cash outlay for new plastic - that one will have to wait another week.

Another darned spider web, didn’t I just clean one out of here this morning?

I should get a load of laundry started, reminder to self to check to see if the well has refilled enough to switch from our back-up water supply.
 

It is no wonder I am exhausted!

 

As I sit in my rocking chair with little man at the end of the day, the dialogue calms to a dull roar and I reassure myself that everything will work out.  Little man smiles up at me with those big, blue, sleepy eyes and I know that my callused feet, aching back, extra yawns from lack of sleep, tripping over baby toys as I fly through the kitchen, extra flies, chicken poop on the porch, never ending to-do list, and even a dry well are all worth it.

 

Wandering Moose Farms Scorecard

Pigs – 2

Layers – 13

Pullets – 23

Roosters – 8

Rabbits – 72

Cats – 5

Dog – 1

Humans – 3

Living in fear of a kitchen appliance

"Hello, My name is Jennifer and I am afraid of my pressure canner."

I stand in front of you and admit my fear.  Now I need to face it head on and hope I don't blow up the house or send fragments of metal across my kitchen.  I actually have two, one that was my grandmother's for which I have purchased a new rubber seal and an instruction manual.  The other is tiny, meant for quick cooking single servings of meals and such.

We have been blessed with an abundance of green and wax beans this summer.  Later tonight or tomorrow we will be pulling all the plants and harvesting the beans.  DH has frozen several batches already and with designs to use what remains of my freezer space, I have to seek other options for items that cannot be canned using a water bath.  I made this mistake with carrots a few years back - DO NOT open a jar of carrots after four months that has been water bath canned. 

Yesterday I was talking with a colleague who uses her pressure canner all the time and she assures me that it is extremely easy to use.  They can green beans every year and she does it herself now when all canning used to be done in the company and under the tutelage of her mother.

Sometime between baking apple pies, berry pies, squash pies, whoopie pies, breads, and a couple more dessert items  for farmers market; I will be attempting to use my pressure canner for the first time.
Wish me luck!

"Honey, you had better come look at little pig..."

Particular concern was noted in the tone and manner in which those words were uttered by DH.  Followed quickly by, "She isn't looking very good."

Our pigs are not our pets.  We do talk to them, play with them, pat them behind the ears and scratch their backs; but the pork they yield is a staple in our diets throughout much of the year.  Losing one or both of them would be not only a huge waste of money, but of the loss of most of a season's growth.

Across the driveway and into the pasture I went, neither of the pigs were to be found.  Listening carefully I heard their muffled grunts and snorts from the high grass on the newly opened side of the pasture.  Big pig was standing over little pig, nudging her and trying to get her to play.  Little pig lay there, staring absently into nowhere and breathing heavily.  My mind began racing.

"I am not a vet!"

"What the heck?  You were fine this morning!"

"Why did you choose eight thirty at night to get sick when no one is still open?!?!"

"OK, I can handle this.  Signs, Symptoms, Pain, Eating, Onset, Provocation."

My step-daughter at my side, I began to evaluate little pig with the skills I had garnered as a first responder.  These skills apply specifically to humans, but I figured it couldn't hurt.  Hot to the touch - possible fever.  Runny nose - possible respiratory issue.  DH mentioned something about her limping - leg or hip injury.  Nothing in the ears or around...

"Jen, is she going to make it?"  The concern in my step-daughter's question was palpable.  I had absolutely no idea but sometimes kid gloves are necessary with a twelve year old girl who has only recently been integrated into the realities of farming. 

"I don't know, but I am going to do what I can and we will help her through this."  I sent her inside to get a blanket and a thermometer while I continued my cursory evaluation and thought to myself,

"Would you mind telling me what exactly

is wrong so I can fix you, PLEASE????"

Fever confirmed, I went inside with my findings and left my step-daughter consoling the pig under a blanket in the middle of the tall grass.  It would have been a great picture if I had been thinking like a mom and not like a fledgling farmer trying to save their livestock.  A phone call to a friend (who wasn't home), an internet search for pig illness and treatment, a furious search through the garage and the house for the antibiotics I knew I bought prophylactically in case of something like this, then back outside to the hollering of a twelve year old. 

Damn, I knew it - too late.

Mixing antibiotic as I ran across the yard; I managed to drop both the treats I had brought to entice the pig back into its house and the syringe (sans needle) to get the medicine into the pig.  Zapping myself on the fence as I entered, I made it back to my step-daughter assured that I was going to find a dead pig and bracing myself for what I was going to tell her about the cycle of life.

"We should bring her inside and I can sleep with her in the living room until she feels better."  Laughter is the best medicine and that was exactly what I needed at that moment in the falling darkness, at the bottom of the hill, in the tall grass, standing next to a sick pig, swaddled in a blanket.  I calmly told her that inside was no place for a pig, we would get her into their house with big pig and they would keep each other warm for the night and we would see how things were in the morning.  Disappointed, she made a half-hearted attempt to get little pig up and into her house.  We call her little pig because she is smaller than the other pig but she is in no way little weighing in over 100 lbs at only three months old.  DH came outside and applied a much firmer hand successfully getting her inside their house with big pig.  I did not ignore the advice of several of the websites which told me that they should be isolated from one another, lest the other pig get sick too.  I just don't have quarantine facilities big enough, or safe enough to house either pig.

Morning came to find big pig pushing at the door to the house and little pig lying listless in the corner, alive, but not looking good.  I fed her some treats and left DH with instructions to administer another dose of antibiotic during the day while I was working.  Two days later, she was up and around.  I started to get excited that we had stumbled our way through this emergency and come out on top - then big pig started limping.

While we are not certain as the exact cause of this mystery illness, we have isolated it to two possibilities - some older ricotta cheese which may have been past the ability of their digestive tracts to handle and a frog found half chewed in the area of their water bucket.  It took about two weeks for both pigs to be return to their normal activities.  We stopped the antibiotics as soon as both were up and walking around again with only a slight limp.  The fevers have not returned and both pigs have resumed greeting us each night at the pasture gate when we bring them their dinner.

Knowing that we made it through one realtively major emergency with only some lost sleep to show for it is very encouraging to me.  I am not sure what I was more worried about; how a twelve year old was going to handle the possible death of the pig or how I was going to financially manage having to add 300 lbs worth of protein back into my now meager grocery budget.

Take some time to relax

It doesn’t take too long to become overwhelmed when you are trying to take care of an infant, keep up family commitments, run a fledgling farm, working off the farm, volunteering for your local first responders, catch up on overdue required trainings for the first responder certification, become more involved in the farmers market, etc.  Such was the case for the past couple of weeks, hence the absence of blog posts.

While I share many of the trials and tribulations of the happenings on the farm, there is so much more that goes on in our lives that I don’t share.  All of us have family politics, money issues, relationship problems, and other general happenings of life which no one needs to know about.  Life managed to get the best of me over the past couple of weeks.  In between a family visit to CT and trying to keep up with all that goes on here, I landed myself in the hospital.  My body didn’t do so well carrying little man and I have yet to fully recover.  Pushing myself too hard for too long without sufficient sleep elicited a bout of stomach upset, chest pain, difficulty breathing and lightheadedness.  Thankfully it was just an exacerbation of my normal; there was nothing new wrong with me.

Barely recovered, I traveled the six hours back north with little man, appreciating every single degree drop in dew point and temperature, as the farm grew ever closer.  We took a week off from farmers market as DH and I discussed our abilities to continue developing the farm and my working only part time.  That was one of the smartest things we have done all summer.  The stresses of ensuring there was food on the table and diapers for the little man had taken its toll.  I was moving through the day in a robotic fashion completing the required tasks; I wasn’t living or experiencing all the beauty around me, relishing in the bounty of the garden or enjoying the lightning bugs anymore. 

Taking the week off from the market and spending a full, uninterrupted day at the farm was what the doctor ordered.  The three-hour nap on Saturday helped too.  Evening found us at the lake; DH, little man, my stepdaughter and I played together in the water then visited for a while with my aunt and uncle.  Sunday was spent at the local agricultural fair, which included my stepdaughter winning the pedal powered tractor pull in her age group.  Sick pigs, sick rabbits, household pets who have fleas, vehicle and equipment failures have all been weighing heavy on my mind.  What this weekend reminded me was that it will still be there when I get back – remember to take some time for you.

Update

Lest someone think that the absence of blog posts the past week means lack of work or progress, rest assured it hasn't been all swimming in the lake and reading the latest Nora Roberts novel.

The heat has taken its toll on our rabbit venture.  We lost nine in total from loose stools associated with the richness of their diet accompanied by the heat.  I have finally learned how to intervene and have managed to successfully save two pregnant does and one small rabbit who had started to get sick.  Quick intervention and one week later are still with us and back on solid food again.  Procurement and installation of an industrial strength farm fan has drastically improved air circulation; I am not looking forward to the electric bill.  Fly controls have been installed, although they are not nearly strong enough to control our rising fly population.  We remove all of the pine shavings and waste once a week with removal of piles of manure occurring each day - they remain a problem and research is being done on other control measures. 

Across the driveway the piggles are thriving in their 1/2 acre divided pasture.  Since arriving in May they have only worked on clearing/tilling only half of their pasture.  Before August 1st we will open the second side of their space and allow them to start on fresh grass and roots along with a notoriously wet section of ground.  If August proves to be as hot or hotter than July, they will be very happy improving the soggy section into a full fledged swail.  They continue to eat like queens with most of the scraps from farmers market production going their way.  This week that included the leftover filling from both strawberry and peanut butter whoopie pies, hulls from the strawberries, cannoli filling and a bunch of lettuce that we couldn't consume before it started to get soggy.  Commercial feed continues to be a staple in their diet since the summer has been so dry, the beets/mangles  and corn that we are growing for them are coming very slow.

Chickens have been a popular product here on the farm.  We sold most of the pullets that we incubated for our own production and had to order some pullets from a commercial hatchery.  They arrived around the first of July and will soon be ready to go out to the small chicken tractor while the roosters who remain in the large tractor finish off to roaster weight.  Our layers have decided, right in the middle of our highest egg demand, to slow down on their production.  Five or six eggs per day is sufficient for the baking I do for farmers market, but our garbage men are a little disappointed that we have not been able to consistently supply them with their regular demand.

The riding lawnmower has broken and the replacement part is outside of our budget at this time.  I am getting some great exercise push mowing the four acres of lawns here on the farm and have lost eight pounds since leaving full-time employment.  Perhaps before the snow flies we will have found the Christmas trees amongst the weeds which have taken over in all three of the fields.  The lilac bush which I have been hoping to prune for the past three years was finally pruned and while farmers market continues to occupy a lot of my time, it has proven a successful venture.  We are planning on our first trip to the processor in over six weeks and have three more does scheduled to kindle this week.  Now I just need to spend some more time in the garden.

Transitioning

It is taking a little getting used to, but the transition to full time farmer and part time employee is going fairly well.  Balancing the to-do list with the everyday chores, let alone blog posting will require commitment to a schedule which I have not yet been able to achieve.  It also happens to be summer vacation from school and my step-children are a welcome addition to the farm for a short while.  I figure that I will get the schedule completely figured out right about the time that my step-daughter returns to her mother's for the beginning of the school year.

DH and I are learning to communicate better and at night will discuss a task or two that we wish to get accomplished the following day.  I will plan on working on my task first thing in the morning and separately DH will do the same.  Little man wakes up, we take our turns getting up with him for his early morning bottle, and then when the other spouse wakes up, we each start out to work on our appointed task for the day.  Both of us are out the door when we look at each other, then back into the house and say something to the effect of, "I thought you were watching him while I did..."  Eventually we work it out and the day goes on.

As often happens here, one task turns into five.  Cleaning out the rabbits will inevitably include repairs to the waste deflectors, cleaning up the work bench with  left over tools from yesterday's project, cleaning up the chicken coop, moving the chicken tractor, weeding a flower bed, putting up screening to keep the chickens out of the garage while still allowing air flow for the rabbits, etc.  The original task of cleaning out the rabbits (a 45 minute task without interruption) has taken three hours and the second item from the to-do list was either not started or stopped mid-way through.  Kids at the farm requires happily scheduling time in our day to go down to the lake for swimming or fishing or perhaps a trip down to the library.  Scheduling sufficient family play time has fallen by the wayside; when we actually get to the lake, we are there for far longer then planned.  Dinner then comes late and by the time kids are showered and in bed, blog posts don't get written.  My household paperwork has fallen desperately behind and I think I have only made it down to the garden once in the past week.  Not great for someone who is planning on making part of her living from the yield of that 1/2 acre.

During times of quiet, like this fifteen minutes stolen while little man and DH sleep (we were up until 1:30 a.m. baking for farmers market and then back at it around 6:00 a.m. to get the cannoli shells made) and the bigger kids are drawing and making paper airplanes; I often wonder if I am going to be able to make this farm work.  Organization seems nearly impossible and focus on any project is difficult with little man going through a separation anxiety phase.  As the bank account dwindles from regular bills - electric, phone, fuel -animal feed and an expensive brake repair on the car, the tension mounts and I wonder if I made the right decision. 

While sitting on the front porch with my bottle of homebrew, after everyone has gone to bed at night, bellies full with meat and vegetable grown on this very farm; I worry, but I am filled with contentment knowing all that this ex-corporate ladder climbing girl has managed to accomplish in just five short years.  Bring on the next five!