Blog
August 2020 - drought, water management and lamb thieves
August 29, 2020
August 29, 2020
I'm afraid the rain we are getting this morning is too little, too late to help with feeding our animals. The pastures have given up for the season, and I'm not sure if any rain we get from now on will convince them to grow any more. We have started feeding the sheep hay already, more than 2 months earlier than last year.
The local hay crop was severely affected by this summer's lack of rain, as well. Local hay farmers have cut and baled half to two thirds the amount they usual
July 2020 - cedar posts, Father Joe, and piglets
July 24, 2020
We welcomed 50 new "day old" chicks to our brooder this week. They won't start laying eggs in any quantity, until next spring, but once they do we will, hopefully, be able to keep up with our egg sales.
This heat is stressful for the pigs, so we created wallows (giant mud puddles) for them. It's the only way pigs have to cool off, so they spend a lot of the day submerging and then re emerging, covered from tail to snout with dripping mud. It looks very satisfying.
In our own effort to stay co
June 2020 - unhappy animals, silvopasture, and meat packing woes
June 26, 2020
June 26, 2020
This dry, hot weather has slowed down the pasture growth substantially. It's nice to not have to mow the front lawn, because the grass isn't growing, but it's another thing to hope your animals don't run out of food, because their pasture isn't growing. Very soon, we will start picking up the left over vegetables each day, from a couple of local farmstands. The vegetables, along with what they forage from their woodland pasture, will keep the pigs well fed all summer. The shee
May 2020 - Weaning the lambs, welcoming our Grandson, and building a walk in cooler
May 31, 2020
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All the lambs have finally been weaned. They aren't happy about it, but it's for their own good and crucial for the sake of my sanity. Now all of our sheep are on grass. No more hay until late fall. Yay!
The shiitakes are in full swing, no more of the prized "donkos", which are a product of cool nights and stressed out shiitakes. Every day we soak several logs and then set them out to "fruit" - It takes about a day of soaking and then a week of "pining" for them to finally produce the mushro
April 2020 - Lambing, Shearing and Shiitakes
April 24, 2020
April 2020
April 24, 2020
36 lambs and a record number that need extra help. We have 6 bottle fed lambs that we have to bottle feed every 4 hours. We had the vet out (for the first time in years) to see if he could figure out what was going on. We normally have an extremely healthy flock, but this spring seems to be a never ending rotation of unhappy ewes and unthrifty lambs. The sooner we can get them on fresh grass the better.
March 2020 - sugaring, lambs and a pandemic
March 27, 2020
March 27, 2020
Pandemic or not, the lambs are arriving and with them come stressful days, sleepless nights and equal parts joy and chaos. We wouldn't have it any other way- but it is tiring.....
March 20, 2020
For years I have been assuring Anne, "pretty soon, things will settle down, life will be calmer and we can have a cup of tea in the middle of the afternoon" - I had no idea it would take a pandemic for those words to come true, but there it is, tea in the middle of the day...
February 2020 - tapping trees, planting trees, mushroom logs and solar!
February 29, 2020
February 2020
Freezing night time temperatures and warm daytime temperatures signal the magic that is sugaring season. We tapped the sugar maples that surround our sugar house, and are busy collecting sap and boiling it down.
We set up a solar panel, battery bank and inverter for our electric fence at Hill-Stead. For the 15 years we have had sheep at Hill-Stead, we have had to swap out new batteries, daily, bringing the old batteries home to recharge. Not anymore!!! After a few minor tweaks, t
January 2020 - fencing, firewood and pig wrestling
January 31, 2020
Winter is perfect for fixing miles of fencing (on 3 different properties) - and for cutting, splitting and hauling, firewood!
We also splurged and bought a brand new livestock trailer. Over the years we have had 3 pigs escape from our old trailer. One was on our farm, which was annoying but basically inconsequential, and 2 escapes were at the abattoir, which -both times - was enough to make me want to get out of the pig business for ever.
I will never forget trying to retrieve a 600 pound pig
Our 2019 In A Glance
December 31, 2019
December 2019
We spent most of December fencing and preparing for various Holiday sales events.
The power company trimmed trees along the power lines this summer and we asked them to deliver all the 16 foot length logs to our property, so again this year we cut and split 10 cords of wood. We heat our house primarily with wood and so far this year, we have only used 4 gallons of oil!
November 2019 was spent, recovering from October, and collecting several tons of pumpkins from a couple local
