September 10, 2021
Four years ago, we planted 100 hazelnut trees and this week we found our very first nut. Oh, Happy Day! The shrublike trees make up the backbone of a hedge we’ve been cultivating along our property line. A densely packed row of conifers will provide us with a year-round visual barrier (and Christmas trees), alongside which we planted the two rows of hazelnuts interspersed with ground hugging comfrey and herbs for teas. “Deer be willing”, we will soon be able to harvest nuts for our own use, feed some to the pigs and share the rest with our wild uninvited friends.
Meanwhile, the days are getting noticeably shorter, so we activated the timer on the light in the chicken coop, in order to simulate the length of a summer’s day. Otherwise, the hen’s egg laying drops way off - to the point where, sometimes, I wish they would just hibernate and save us the cost of feed.
The sheep will soon respond to the shorter days, as well, and their breeding season will begin. Last week we spent a bit of time at Hill-Stead, deciding which ewes we want to breed this year, and taxiing the non-breeding ewes to Mountain Spring, and the non-breeding rams to Prattling Pond. The last time we kept them all on one property and relied solely on the electric fencing to separate the 3 groups was in the fall of 2011. That was the year of “The October Storm” when we lost power for 10 days. It took the rams just a matter of hours to discover the electricity was off, after which we referred to our farm as “The Clatter Ridge Brothel”. Three properties divided by a state highway seems about right, as I’m assuming someone will call us if they see the rams hitchhiking back to Hill-Stead.