Making Hay! and Honey! and a pig palace...

So, some farmers live in areas where their animals can graze outdoors all year long.  Must be nice!

The rest of us must feed our animals through the pasture-growing season and put up enough food for the winter.  Such a challenge!

There are two ways to put aside grasses.  There are ways to put aside grains and beets, but I'm not going to address this here.  Ruminants are meant to eat grasses, so we'll stick with this.

Hay-lage:  The cutting and storing of hay in a damp, fermenting state.  Stinky to us, but delicious to the cows.  The equipment is more expensive but it cuts and captures hay that is too wet to bale and stores it anaerobically.  Looks like this:

The side arm delivery rake

Dry hay:  The cutting and storage of grasses and legumes that involves the cutting, drying and gathering and baling.  Actually the baling is optional.  One can gather loose hay and pile it in the barn.  Baling or loose storage depends, I suppose, on how one delivers the hay to the animals.  If your animals eat in the barn in the winter, loose is a fine option because the hay isn't mangled in the baling process.  Our animals live and eat in different places around the farm, so we use the baling system.

Olivier showed us the machines that we have for the task.

Olivier discusses the baler

(I have some videos to post...)






Jen came to help us "install" our bee packages.  One can buy a package of bees with a queen to put into an empty hive.  We ordered 5 packages of bees--two of them arrived in good condition and other three arrived nearly dead.  Jen decided that the three packages in rough condition would be joined together.

Emily, Emma and Kiyoshi look at bee packages

Row for sweet potatoes

It was finally warm enough to plant the sweet potato slips in the homestead garden.  I had to weed a bit, add compost and create a nice ridge for the little plants that had come in the mail a couple of weeks ago.  I covered the row with black plastic and will update on they look soon.










We had a field walk with Stephen and Tyson up in North Orange.

Stephen admiring the kale

Tyson, cheering good root systems

Pig palace, half done

Making a roof

Several of us worked on making the "Pig Palace"  a shelter under which the pigs will eat this summer.







Other fun photos from the week:

Brian on the cubbie

Wavy board

Bittersweet woven through the orchard's deer fence

Emma clutching Clutch

Fungi flowering on the horse poop

Emma working hard to nourish the sick pig

Options time at Sentinel Elm

This afternoon, I had an enthusiastic bunch up in the orchard.  They worked hard to bring up a wheel-barrow full of compost for the youngest trees and also clipped back those multiflora rose that is pulling down the deer fence.  Thank you for your hard work, crew!

plant weaving through the deer fence

Orchard crew--May 24, 2011

Justin looked like he was enjoying his group down at the forge.

Forging ahead---May 24, 2011

This week: Henrietta's Table, First Root, Potatoes, Welding, Remay, lumber piles, fencing and turkey eggs

So I'm trying a new format--jamming it all in on one post for the week.  At the end are beautiful photographs that round out the work experience into this wonderful life experience!

Walkways at First Root

On Monday morning, we jumped into the van and headed for Boston.  We had a morning meeting with Chef Peter of Henrietta's Table in the Charles Hotel in Cambridge.  The focus of our chat was for us to hear how farmers connect with a chef.  His method is to meet with farmers in the winter to plan what he would like to buy.  This helps the farmer to plan his plantings.  

Washing tables at the perfect height!

In the afternoon, we visited First Root Farm in Concord MA.  This was an inspiring visit as the farmers, Ariel and Laura, are graduates of this very program!  They are in their second season of their CSA and it was exciting to hear their plantings, how they are creating and connecting with their community, how they are figuring out their business.  The land they are farming is part of the Battle Road Farms which is a collection of farms on the Minuteman National Historic Park.  Check out their beautiful blog:

firstrootfarm.com

On Tuesday, it was the first of our glorious potato planting day.

On Wednesday, we spent the morning learning about tillage and cultivation tools and techniques.

wheel cultivator

Attachments for the Cubbies

Patrick shows us the BCS

the site for my first official weld

On Wednesday afternoon, I had the opportunity (thanks team!) to work on welding all by myself. With Josh's supervision...  I practiced with a chunk of steel--getting the arc just right, moving slowly enough to melt the weld into the two pieces to be joined, and moving quickly enough not to leave huge blobs...  I practiced and practiced and didn't set myself on fire.  So I had the opportunity to weld a bit of Olivier's animal trailer.  I snapped a before shot but didn't get the "after" shot--hopefully I'll be able to get one.





Thursday was a remay-in-the-fields, clear-the-hedgerows and weed-the-pea-plants sort of day.  Highlights included Kiyoshi swinging from a vine a la Tarzan and the visit from Henry, the enthusiastic beagle during our weeding.

wild flower:  trillium

wild fungus:  blue green something

wild fun guy:  Kiyoshi on the vine

insects mating on pea plant

"Stitch in the ditch"

Fermenting nettle "tea" for foliar feeding

Friday:

Wood in new piles

 This morning our group sorted the lumber at the sawmill, moving it to a temporary location so we can erect our saw mill timber frame shed soon.  We sorted wood by thickness, "wain-i-ness", soft wood and hard wood.

Saw mill ready for timber frame

We then tidied up around the bread oven work site and learned how to get a truck out of a gravel pit.

Bread oven work site

In the afternoon, we worked with Olivier on fencing.  In particular, we learned how to run the string-trimmer or weed-whacker and then cleaned up fence areas and generally tended to the animal fencing situation.

Line trimming set up

Caitlin and Emma rewiring the Triangle Field fence

And there were some glorious creatures to see out in Waslaske Fields:

Site of a turkey nest

Wild turkey eggs

Small, speckled eggs

Tiny green bee

Grasshopper!

Other Fun Photos for the week:

Curious Chase Hill calves

Our piglets, tessellating

Free-range bicycles in their portable coop for the night

See!  Broccoli can be fun food! (snipped from my daughter's blog)

A great blog....

featuring my old friend Charlie!  See the May 5 post.


http://www.chewswise.com/

High-tensile Fencing, pig antibiotics and some good ol' planting!

Bradley describes the project

This morning, we joined Bradley and Ben in setting up the new pasture with high tensile permanent fencing.  We learned about the different hardward parts and how to choose a path.  We spent a good chunk of time setting up the gate posts and, while waiting our turn to dig holes, looking at the newly blossoming wild flowers.

Brian setting a staple on the brace

Kiyoshi and Emily rearranging the rock wall to fit our gate

Emily and Emma digging into the spring

Jack in the Pulpit

Beautiful white flower

Ben setting wire on the "jenny"

Yesterday, we found that one of our piglets had died.  Turns
out the breeder who sold us the pigs also had pneumonia in her herd.  Since pigs are susceptible to pneumonia and we heard some coughing pigs, we gave each a dose of antibiotics.  Here's a video clip of rounding them up:

This afternoon, many of us bravely went to the North Orange fields to face the clouds of biting black flies.  All for a good cause, you see.  It was time to plant the broccoli and the cabbage and the pain and suffering will be well worth it...

Kiyoshi marking the rows

broccoli planted and tucked in