Wow this is seriously overdue! I suppose that is how it goes in farming. We certainly have had some changes on the farm this year.
Our haying this summer was plentiful; we now have a barn full of hay and didn’t have to buy any. A Bridgewater field we now have access to allowed us to put up enough hay to get us through the long winter season, which is a good feeling.
Hibiscus calved during Family Camp and Henry was welcomed to the barn with about 100 people watching him.
We have had two litters of bunnies and they are just starting to hop about and annoy Persephone their very attentive and sweet mama.
Our chickens have started laying eggs and we are getting about 50 each day, which is amazing and nice after not having them for a couple of months.
Our fall CSA this fall went really well, despite the wet spring and some crops not doing well because of the moisture. We also experienced the squash vine bore which means that we didn’t get any winter squash (this was a bummer because it meant no Delicata squash — one of my favorites).
We had greens from the greenhouse up until about Thanksgiving and now everything is dormant – but we planted spinach in the hoop house so that it will sprout early in the season. The hoop house is getting a face lift thanks to the parts we’ve salvaged from the demolition of the Chicken Cathedral. We are using the Polycarbonate plastic panels from the Chicken Cathedral to replace the ones that were broken on the hoop house.
Back to other news- I decided to sell Strawberry to a great farm in Essex, VT. She is up north at the Family Cow Farmstand and seems to have settled in very nicely up there- they sell raw milk and needed a good cow to help them fill their winter milk orders. Strawberry fit the bill. They have eight cows and they milk in stations like we do, so it seemed like it would be an easy transition for her.
In the sad news department, we decided it was time to ship Halifax this year. Athena has taken her place in the pigpen and we recently got her boyfriend. Hopefully we’ll have our own spring piglets. I adored Hali, so Athena is going to have to win me over. We shall see how it all goes.
There is snow on the ground here now and it is starting to stick- the sugar lines have needed a bunch of repairs due to wind and moose issues, but we are getting there. Jay and the Resource Crew are doing final touches on our new sugarhouse in anticipation of a good sugaring season.
