farm stuff
sastyk | October 17, 2013In my last post, more than four months ago (oy, that's bad!), we had just acquired four new children, 11, 3, 3, and 16 months, and were settling in and getting adjusted. And then I didn't blog all summer. Or for most of the first month of autumn. A few people wondered whether I was eaten by a Yeti or had gone entirely feral. Neither is true (that I know of - I'd probably have noticed the Yeti thing.) It just turned out that going to nine kids, four of them 3 and under, several with major disabilities, pushed my limits a little. Or a lot. We pulled it off. We settled in, we did it, but…
sastyk | April 24, 2012
(Mina with Goneril and Cordelia - Regan is on the other side of her out of sight)
No-drama Obama has nothing on No-drama Mina, who calmly gave us triplet doelings last night with no muss or fuss. Yes, that's three little girls from her over-achieverness. And she politely waited until we were done with dinner, and by the time we realized she was in labor, she had delivered three goats and had them all up and nursing. All in all, an incredibly auspicious beginning to our kidding season and just one more reminder of Mina's basic awesomeness.
As you may remember, every season's kids get a…
sastyk | January 18, 2012No, not the kind used in track and field (although if you really want to jump over them I won't stop you), I mean the sort used to keep livestock in without breaking the budget on fencing. They look cool, and now is the perfect time of year to prune out branches and hurdle making materials. We use low ones to keep chickens out of spots we don't want, and have a few that we use for moving livestock to create chutes - but I'm working on more. As long as it is time to prune trees and cut wood anyway, you might as well make some fence as well!
Two tutorials, first a written one here from the…
sastyk | August 30, 2011Thought you might want to see what the storm looked like from here. Let me note that this is a pretty minor situation - the farms in the valley that we rely most heavily on lost *all* of their crops - the whole thing was swept away by the storm.
Still, I admit, I broke into the chocolate the first time I saw my garden under the water.
You can see my poor flattened corn up there and a few cheerful echinacea flowers that at least for now have survived the flood. The back beds are wetland native herbs and plants - they at least will probably make it.
You can see the raging torrent that…
sastyk | March 15, 2011Sundry stuff on a busy day - and a day when everyone is transfixed by world events.
First, my colleage at Dean's Corner has offered a good guide to high tech ways to donate money to Japan relief. There are 10,000 people in Japan who haven't eaten since Friday by the best estimation, and events are adding to the horror. If you want to help, these are some simple ways.
Second, the always thoughtful Kurt Cobb has a great essay everyone should read about the deflationary impact of high oil prices:
The logic is so simple it's hard to understand why smart people with advanced degrees can't see it…
sastyk | February 11, 2011"Did you look at the forecast?" "Is this it?" "Should we get them out?"
My children keep asking, and I keep telling them that I think so, but that no one can know for sure. We are talking of the change in the weather, slated to begin today, warming us up from the last wave of bitter cold with night temperatures last night around -12 (we hit -29 earlier this winter, so that's pretty balmy), to days in the 40s (gasp, and maybe even near 50) next week, while nights are just below freezing.
It is possible, of course, that the warm spell will turn and go south, although the predictions are…
sastyk | February 3, 2011These were taken before the 18 inches of snow that fell the other day, so you can actually see the ground, but the scene is still basically the same - white, with scattered critters. We're all definitely starting to dream of spring!
The creek in winter
Asher at the Creek
Isaiah, finding material to repair our (very primitive) footbridge
Hauling wood is a daily chore. When the snow is falling hard, my fuzzy, frosty spouse looks vaguely like a yeti after a few loads ;-).
With all this weather, it is good thing all the stuff in the root cellar is still holding up! At least we don't have…
sastyk | June 15, 2010The Sharks and the Jets are fighting over by the compost pile. Well, ok, maybe not quite, but it has that feel to it. You see, we have two street-gangs of ducks. The first ones, Pekins and one ratty looking Rouen who is shooting for the "oldest living duck record" have been around for a bit. The Rouen was the only duck on our farm for about two years, after his girlfriend succumbed to the siren song of the creek and got eaten by something. Then, this year on Christmas morning (which would make a great Christmas miracle story if a. I were a Christian and b. it weren't ducks ;-)), a group…
sastyk | May 5, 2010"It is funny, but not that funny."
Eric's comment does not stop my uncontrollable giggling. My step-mother comes over to see why I'm hysterical. She agrees with Eric - it is funny, but not funny enough to explain why tears of laughter are literally coming out of my eyes.
I'm reading a passage in Michael Perry's excellent book _Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting_. I gave the book to my step-mother for her birthday, and during a family visit (note blog silence) from which we returned last night, I finally read it.
Now I read a lot of the "How We Done Moved to a Farm and Made Fools…
sastyk | March 28, 2010Chores sounds like such a dreary word, and until I moved to a farm, I would never have believed that I'd have anything positive to say about it. As a kid, I did chores around the house, and while I may have groused less about the dishes and cleaning gutters as an adult, I certainly didn't (and don't) love the jobs.
But on a farm, chores are something else - they are bookends to each day, a formal structure like the forms of a sonnet or musical scales that shape the day. They can be speeded up, slowed down, slightly elided and occasionally contracted out, but for the most part, they are…
sastyk | March 12, 2010Note: It hasn't happened yet here, although we heard them down the hill in the valley yesterday. But we seem to be having an early spring, even though we've still got more than a foot of snow to melt off. I wrote this last year, and though the precise circumstances are different, the need for that sound is just the same. I know I owe y'all new content, but this one seemed appropo. Has spring sprung for you?
Spring doesn't come easily in upstate New York - she wrestles with Old Man Winter for a long, long time before he gives up. The first sign is the daffodils, up a small amount in…
sastyk | March 3, 2010
It has been an exciting morning - and it isn't even 10 o clock. Today was the day to pick up our new buck goat, Ring Bearer (again, not responsible for his name). For those of you who have never had the pleasure of having a buck goat, or do have buck goats, but own pickup trucks or other more sensible farm vehicles than our ancient Ford Taurus, you may not be famliar with the way a buck goat smells in close quarters.
This time of year, it isn't that bad, but there is a definite musk. This muskiness makes said goat sexually irresistable to all ladies of the goat persuasion, but let's…