Missing Willow Farm

We got about two inches.  It started while I was at the Mistletoe Market vending soap, jewelry, assorted crafts and lamb.  I sold a bit of everything.  As soon as I got home from the market, we jumped into our jacuzzi to enjoy the falling snow.   It’s kind of a tradition.  The first snow gets enjoyed from the spa (with champagne).  Good thing it happened on a weekend this year!  The first two photos are from our front porch.  Don’t we have a view to die for?   When we bought the place, our insurance company asked how far away we are from a fire hydrant.  Uhh… 50 miles maybe?  But a tanker can draft from the pond in our front yard!

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Jenna lives to fetch our sheep.  We ask her to do it every day because it’s her job.  It doesn’t matter if we need them or not, we ask her to bring them.  It makes her happy. Our giant ram visitor evidently doesn’t enjoy this daily event because he knocked me down a few mornings ago after Jenna fetched them.  Got me right behind my knees when I wasn’t looking and sent me flying.  I’m sure he backed up to get a good start before he rammed me and it looked pretty comical but the livestock were the only ones who saw the show.  I only suffered a skinned knee and have not turned my back on him since.  I think it’s time he went back home, don’t you?

You don’t see this very often – a lone sheep.  They have a strong instinct to stay together in a group.  This is what protects them from predators who go after the outliers in a flock.   If we need to move one sheep into our little pasture for whatever reason (illness, separating the males from the females, etc), we always bring a buddy along so it doesn’t get agitated… and a guardian dog.   Everyone stays happy if they have a friend to hang out with.

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We picked out our Christmas tree this past weekend.  For those of you who don’t live where you can do this, which is pretty much anyone South of us, it’s an adventure.  I think we’re right on the edge of tree farm country.  We live about a mile from a Christmas tree farm that we tried two years ago.  Even though it was freshly cut the day after Thanksgiving, the needles fell like rain to the point it was basically a stick and a pile of needles and we had to take it down on December 23rd as it was a very sad fire danger.  Last year we cut down an evergreen that the prior homeowner planted too close to the house.   We just let it grow until it was tall enough to be our Christmas tree and last year was the year to bring it inside.  It had the sharpest needles of any tree I’ve ever seen and gave a puncture wound any time someone got near it.   We couldn’t wait to get that one down.  This year we went up the mountain to a spruce tree farm.  They are at a much higher elevation even though just 20 miles away and sell the real deal spruce.   Here’s hoping this one’s a winner!

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We stopped heating the greenhouse last night.  It’s been in the 20’s overnight and doesn’t pay to keep heating it for just a few things.  It has a propane heater and its own tank.  We picked the meyer lemons and brought the lemon tree inside to live with our other potted citrus for the winter.  We picked the hot peppers and have them air drying to end up in hot pepper flakes.  We brought the cucumber plant and the ghost pepper plant inside to see if we can continue to force them to yield.  We got a really late start on the ghost pepper when we received seeds in July so it’s just now flowering.  They are the world’s hottest pepper at a million scoville units.  A farmer has been selling them for $5 per pepper at a neighboring market.  I have one I am drying for pepper flakes and seeds and we’ve got the plant so there’s that.   It’s incredibly expensive to heat the greenhouse in the dead of winter.  It’s pretty huge, 16′ by 40′.  We tried the first year we had it and lost power around midnight that January in below zero degree weather.  By the time we woke up and realized we had no power therefore no heat, everything was frozen.  We lost all of our potted citrus, vegetables, hibiscus, herbs, saffron.  Since then we don’t even try.  The tropicals come inside and the cool season crops stay down there for an extended indoor season.  We also entertain in the greenhouse.  We’ve got our old dining room table set up there permanently.  We had guests over for dinner this weekend and had dessert in the greenhouse.  I call it destination dining on the farm.  With the heater going we had gingerbread, sour cherry pie and blackberry wine by candlelight with the moon glowing through the covering.  It’s hard to believe a commercial greenhouse setup can be magical, but it can.

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We’ve got our clay pots and tomato cages moved off of the back deck, although they haven’t been scrubbed clean yet… We’ve stockpiled some compost for next Spring and are getting ready to shut the greenhouse down for the winter.   The fleece by the door is actually what’s called skirting.  It’s the poopy part that gets removed after shearing because fiber artists don’t like to have to deal with it.  I collect it on shearing day and stockpile it for the garden.  I’ve used it as both mulch and to line the bottom of clay pots.  Think about it… it’s all natural and full of fertilizer and is compostable.  It makes our gardening containers lighter than if they are filled completely with soil and nurtures our plants at the same time.  I should bag and sell it at the farmers market!  Sheep Sheet.  Skirt Dirt.  Dung Fluff.   BM (Baa Manure)…  The possibilities are endless.

They’re ornamental Bradford Pears which means no fruit, but pretty Fall foliage.   They sit at the end of our 1/2 mile driveway which hopefully will be paved before we have any snow.  We’re on the list.  The last we heard was it’s supposed to be done by December 1st.  Or was that started by December 1st?  At any rate, December 1st is Wednesday so we’ll see.  Small town living can be a struggle some times to get work done.  Or to get someone to show up for an appointment.  Or to hope what work you do eventually get done is quality  Last year our driveway was so bad there were a few days we couldn’t get off the farm.  That’s why we traded our smaller pickup for a big 4WD one in January.  Here’s hoping for an easy winter!

It’s located in the greenhouse.  We decided to try some non-heated greenhouse gardening over the winter so my husband built a 3′ by 8′ by 1′  bed lined with weed barrier fabric and filled with topsoil and compost.  We relocated a few things from the garden, like beets that were being chewed on by bunnies and potato plants that came up after we plowed our potato bed under, then seeded the remaining space with cool season crops.  We’ve got spinach, broccoli raab, buttercrunch lettuce and carrots coming up.  We’ll see how this experiment turns out.   It hopefully will give us some fresh farm veggies in the dead of winter.   That’s the plan at least.  In the foreground are some resting mushroom logs and a potted horseradish plant.

She’s one of our oldest chickens.  We got her from the sherrif, who retired to raise poultry.  She’s a red sexlink.  Isn’t that a stupid name for a chicken breed?  Evidently it stands for awesome layer because she gives us a large brown egg every day of the year.  Our other chickens stopped laying about a month ago and will start back up late winter.  I talked to a few other farmers at the market last Friday who have layers (lots of them) and they have all taken a break.  Honey is very inquisitive and likes to eat treats from my hand.  She squats down for me to pet her when I go into the chicken yard.  She’s like a dog… who gives us omelets.

We raise two breeds of sheep; Kathadin and Texel.  That’s Kat Von Sheep on the left (we named her 2010 lamb Miss Kitty), she’s a Kathadin or hair sheep.  Beatrice, a Texel is on the right.  Both are meat breeds and we’re keeping these two as breeding stock.  Kat is getting a winter coat right now, she’ll shed it over the summer.  Kind of like a dog.  Lots of sheep farms like the Kathadins because you don’t have to worry about shearing in the Spring.   We take our Texels to a neighbor’s farm on shearing day.  Local fiber artists come to help out and we have lamb chili for lunch.  It’s a long, hard and fun day.