Missing Willow Farm

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Hermione and Bellatrix (Bella) are milked twice a day and come running when they see us arrive at the pasture.  Mina will join the milking team this weekend when we drop her twins off at their new home.  They’re old enough to be weaned now so are ready to join Hermione and Bella’s kids at a friend’s place.  The mini herd of kids from our farm will all be together.  Bella usually beats Hermione to the gate and stands there bellowing for me to let her out so she can reach the milking stand across our driveway at the little barn.  If I dilly dally, like when taking a few photos, they engage in a little friendly head butting to determine who’s head honcho (hint… it’s Bella).  They get extra rations of grain and sweet alfalfa on the milking stand, so it’s a treat to be milked.

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Everyone likes to hang out at the Ritchie, our automatic stock waterer.   The little ones fight over who gets to stand up on top.  The moms discuss how loud the turkeys have gotten and gossip about the sheep.  They complain about the holes the guardian dogs have been digging in the barn.  N0 wait… that’s me.

Thinking about a way to sell our fleece to a non-spinner, I came up with pet beds.  Jenna has one in her kennel that I made for her.  She loves it because it’s comfy and smells faintly of her beloved sheep.  It’s got a raw fleece muslin pillow inside, with a washable removable cover.  Every dog that visits the farmer’s market comes over to check them out.  Our cat Bindi found this one heading to market and claimed it.  She does have her own cat bed, I made it for her the day she came home (but it doesn’t have fleece inside it).  I think she needs one of her own.

Our turkeys have taken up residence in one of our poultry tractors.  It gets moved every morning, exactly one tractor length away.  That gives the turkeys fresh grass and bugs to entertain themselves with for the day and leaves fertilizer for the pasture.  Milos waits for this exciting event every morning and plops himself down in the turkey poop at the first opportunity.  Why don’t dogs ever roll around in flowers?  FiFi watches him with amusement, there’s no way she will dirty her magnificent coat.

 

 

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Three days ago I was telling you how we miserably failed at growing grapes -‘ The grapevines are long gone, they were a sad experiment’.  My husband comes in yesterday from mowing and tells me we’ve a grapevine down by our front gate.  A big one.  How is it we’ve never noticed this before and how the heck did it get there?  How long has it been established to have gotten this big?  Are there any vineyardists (is that a word?) out there who can help me at least figure this out?  I expect it’s 25-30 feet long.  What kind of grapes are we growing and do I need to put paper bags over them to keep them from the deer?  I’m sure time will answer those questions for sure.  How exciting!

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Sheep are grazers and goats are browsers, which means goats nibble a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It’s probably why they have the reputation of eating tin cans. They don’t eat them but they’ll surely taste them! They love eating the leaves off of the few trees we’ve got in the pasture, the ones they can reach. When a wind storm blows a branch off of a tree, we toss it over the pasture fence and they strip it like piranhas in a B movie.

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Fruit trees were some of the first things we planted when we bought our place in 2005.  Fruit trees and some grape vines and an asparagus bed.  Things that take some time to establish.  The grapevines are long gone, they were a sad experiment.  We considered nut trees until we discovered they take like 20 years to fruit.  Heck, I’m retired and don’t want to wait that long.  Besides, the squirrels would probably steal them before we could get to them.  We planted apples, peaches, cherries, apricots and persimmons.  We got our first fruit last year, exactly two apples.  One fell off the tree and a deer got the other one.  I made a pomander out of the ground apple (waste not want not).  This year appears to be our year for fruit because it’s popping out everywhere.  It’s either that the trees are finally mature enough or perhaps that fertilizer I bought off of a commercial orchard last year is helping (imagine that!).  I figure I can’t help it if it falls on the ground again this year but I refuse to share with the local deer population.  We didn’t want to fence the orchard so I did some research.  Apparently, if you cover the fruit the deer can’t find it.  As long as the leaves have sunlight, it’s OK for the fruit to be shaded.  So… now we have paper bag trees.  It looks pretty funny and may not work but fingers crossed that it does.  I want fruit this year, dammit!  Luckily our newly purchased annex (the trailer next door) has giant apple, peach and plum trees and we have a ladder.

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Garden space is very precious for some folks, especially those who live in apartments.  When I post about our raised beds and greenhouse, lots of folks tell me they are hoping for to have space for a garden ‘someday’.  Actually, someday may be now if you’ve got space for containers.  We’ve got  19 plus acres and always do container gardening on our back deck.  It’s a pleasure to take a cup of coffee out in the morning while watering and checking on how things are coming along.  This morning, I found our first ripe yellow cherry tomatoes and some cucumbers that should be ready to pick in a day or two.  I apparently need to think about making my first batch of dill pickles, too.  We’ve also got zucchini and about ten different varieties of hot peppers.  I didn’t include photos of our blueberries, citrus, lemongrass, ginger and banana tree but they’re all out there in pots as well.  Yes, we have a refrigerator on our deck.  When we bought the property next door it came with a trailer and a brand new fridge.  It’s now our jacuzzi fridge, where we keep liquid refreshments and freeze protein that won’t fit into our other freezers.  Actually, we had a bad storm last weekend and the door to the freezer blew open overnight and our stew beef defrosted.  Gah!  I’m sick to death of beef stew!  Anyway, my husband raided my sewing kit and it’s now got a very secure velcro closure.  But I digress…. it’s early June and there are still vegetable plants in your local nurseries.  And pots.  And potting soil.  If you’re waiting for ‘someday’, consider running out this weekend to start your own garden adventure sooner than later.

Beautifully, I must say.  Here’s a snapshot from the end of May.  I planted pumpkins, melons and fancy winter squashes this morning.  I try growing pumpkins every year with no success.  Fingers crossed that this year will be different!   We’ve just started yesterday to harvest a few cherry tomatoes.  I’ll be the first to the farmer’s market with tomatoes again this year.   Our customers are very anxious for them.

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Spring is a very popular time for visitors to our farm.  Flowers and trees are in bloom, the weather is delightful and babies are everywhere!  We’ve been fortunate to have our daughters come, a few friends as well as both of my parents.  My Dad takes an annual spring motorcycle trip with buddies through the mountains and my Mom flies up to visit while he’s gone.  This trip, he actually stopped by while she was here.  We had a great visit and put them both to work!  My Mom helped me move peonies from our new annex property and weed and mulch our flower beds.   My Dad helped us with a new fencing project.  I planted peas twice this Spring and the deer ate every one of the plants.  Both times.  I knew we needed to do something to keep them out of our raised beds so I did a little bit of research and came across an invisible fishing line fence.  My Dad pounded T posts about every 10-15 feet around the garden then we strung fishing line in a criss cross pattern between them.  The ‘gateway’ is made of bird netting. The idea is that the deer can’t see the fishing line and walk right into it.  It freaks them out and they run away.  I must say so far so good!  It’s taken us a little bit of time to remember it’s there (duh.. invisible!) and we’ve had no problems with deer in the garden since it’s been up.   My husband pulled an old barbed wire fence off of the annex property so our T posts were free (but usually run just $6 or $7 each new) and the fishing line came from his tackle box.  Now if we can figure out how to keep them out of our orchard!