Chicks and pickling

 Our layer chicks have been venturing out of their brooder coop.  We found several of them perching in a rhododendron nearby.

We went over to Maggie's home (Maggie of "Maggie's Farm") across the road to learn how to pickle.  She shared with us her recipe for bread and butter pickles and then her techniques for making them come out just right.  And they were delicious!





After the pickling was complete, we learned about Maggie's family here on the Ridge-top and she shared with us some photos, scrapbooks and stories of the people who have made this place their home.

Harvests continue!

Hardneck garlic

 Harvests continue in our fields and in our home garden

Rebekah with her radical hakuri turnips

Emily, laden with garlic

We brought in all our garlic and it is now hanging in the barn, curing.  The soft-neck (smaller) garlic came in last week and the hard-neck this week.  The curing gives the stalks a chance to dry off, thereby increasing the storage time of the garlic.




















In our home garden, many delicious things are ready to harvest.  Our community dinner this week featured corn, raised by Justin, potatoes and beans brought along by many, and a beautiful salad with nasturtium flowers.

Sophia, snacking on a flower

Carlen and Betsy pondering the artichokes

Justin and his fine, fine sweet corn

Salad, topped with nasturtiums!

Tiny frog in the home garden

Pearl-colored pest eggs on chard

Flower inspection, by Brian

Perennial flowers in the home garden

Plant pests

Two lacewings in their cocoons

Imported Cabbage worm

Dainty weed:   Galinsogz

ladybug larva, eating thrips

Ruth Hazard, teaching about the pests in our fields

Fluffy white caterpilar

Cabbage looper

Random fun things from this week.

Blueberry Bouquet

The blueberries are coming in strong down the road at Blue Ox Farm.  This is the place where we fertilized with steer manure and learned how to prune in  March.  I loved the colors of this cluster of berries at a variety of stages--I had already picked the ripe ones!

New Potatoes

 The new potatoes are ripening up.  Very delicious








The tomatoes needed our help so we set up trellises.  The end of the row has a "t-post" for strength.  There are wooden stakes every three plants.  Then we spider-web wove the twine between the  stakes.

Trellising on the hottest afternoon.

Tyson talks trellis.

Tiny green spider approves of the trellis

Olivier in bandana

 Olivier models the tie-dye bandana while reaching for a blueberry scone.

Sheep, enjoying the shade

My sheep shelter keeps getting knocked over .  We tried Sophia's plan and it stayed up.  The sheep, seeing us setting up the shelter, came over and skootched under the tarp, even before we had all four corners set up.

Sophia, setting up sheep shelter

Trip to the Market!

On Thursday, July 14, I had my turn to take our CSA boxes to the Athena Health drop-off and our beautiful vegetables to the Farmer's Market in Belmont, MA.

It was a beautiful day and our veggies (and raspberries!) sold well.

Me, hawking the kale.

Tyson, spritzing the chard.

Arched Sheep shelter

 Here is the sheep shelter I designed with happy sheep under it.  Unfortunately, they like to rub their itchy backs against the sides and it isn't standing up.

Mesclun

Mob grazing

Here I am emptying a mesh bag of salad mix (arugula, baby bok choy, mustard leaf and red russian kale, at least) into a bin.  These little leaves are hand-cut in the field, rushed back to our wash-up station in the lower barn, mixed and washed.  Then into the mesh bag for a spin in the washing machine.  We bag them up for our CSA members.  Very delicious greens!

When you give a set number of cows a small pasture, they have the tendency to mob-graze.  They line up and eat all the grass very efficiently.  If you give them a lot of pasture, they roam around, stomping down the less tasty stuff to find their favorites.  Managed grazing is an art worth mastering.  

Red Devon births

Going into this past weekend, two of our cows had "thrown" their calves.  On Saturday, Betsy and I were on chores and this is what we discovered!

We had the pleasure of checking the health of the calf and the momma cow, tagging the calf's ear and trimming its umbilical cord.

Me, Lee, with the Saturday calf.

And then on Sunday morning, we wake up to find that another cow is in labor.  It was a difficult labor

We could see the nose and front hooves.

Sunrise watch

Observing carefully

Warren showed up to help and then Olivier arrived.  Many people helped to construct a "jug" for the cow and her calf to encourage her to allow the baby to suckle.  We had to help yet the momma was patient.  

Olivier, Rebekah and Betsy help the calf

On Monday morning, Caitlin compared hair color tones with the baby.

And on Monday evening, we found that another cow had given birth.  

Wow, three births in three days!