Straight from the horse's mouth

It is called "floating" but the action doesn't resemble anything I would remotely call "floating."  Take a file the size of a deck of cards, put it on a 2.5 foot screwdriver handle and stick in it a horse's mouth...  File away.

Floating is needed when a horse's teeth don't grind down evenly.  Our dear Ruby needed a little work and she stood for it fairly patiently.

Here are some photos of the vet's visit:

Olivier listens to plan about Ruby

Visiting vet

Nate and his onion sweatshirt

Our afternoon session was a continuation of the crop planning series with Nate.  He's the new farmer at Northampton's Community farm space--Crimson & Clover is the name of the farm.  You might know them better by their tag-line:  Jen and Nate are Great!  Today we calculated how much seed  needed for each of the practice crops and the cost of that seed.

Here's an example laid out.  My apologies to the fans of okra.  We assumed that four 1/2 pound deliveries to the 150 member CSA would be made through the year.  In order to produce this much okra, but spread out through the season, we would need to make four plantings of approximately 200 plants each.  For this, we would need approximately 6 ounces of seed.  Great!  Only six ounces of seed is a reasonable investment.  Wait, how much do those seeds cost?  If I purchase non-organic seeds, the price is approximately $10 an ounce.  If I choose organic, the price is around $27 an ounce.  Our group chose to plan for 3 ounces non-organic and 3 ounces organic bring a seed-cost of around $110.  For Okra?  I'm sorry, I just don't appreciate this vegetable enough to spend three times as much for seed as our other crops. Further, New England isn't known for its okra growing climate, so it is a risky crop anyway.  I'm glad for the exercise, Nate, but we'll pass on the okra.