Haven’t been paying much attention to the goats lately, so I checked ’em out for a while this morning. They have absolutely no problem with the cold, eating hay and hanging out pretty much as usual. Of course, serving them is a lot more work when it’s freezing, lugging buckets of hot water from the main barn, since the pipe to the convenient goat barn tap is frozen. I did goat chores for a winter, but right now, it’s Bob’s thing. Oh, well. :) This gang of girls has had the same line-up for the last couple of years, and some I’ve known since birth… Familiar faces. A couple even have names…
Autumn
Snow load watch
Time once again to keep an eye on the snow build-up on the Milkhouse roof. From the last two year’s experience, this shouldn’t be a problem. Still, it bears watching, because of all the heavy ice formation lately, including the extra load that slides off the much steeper barn roof. There hasn’t been that much snow, and usually, between wind and the radiant warmth of sunny days, this roof has cleared. But the crazy amount of sub-freezing cold this year has left a thick, dense, icy, layered crust that’s a little more of a concern. Hope it doesn’t get to the point where I have to clear it! A day of warmth and rain is forecast for Monday. That ought to fix things for a while. Count on climate change! :)
Drive shed clean-up continues
You can see the back wall! The fairly massive, once-in-a-century farm clean-up continues, and the two-floor drive shed, home of a million parts and pieces of not-junk, is an action center. I can’t imagine how one could capture a real feel for all of the stuff that was in there, you had to poke around and experience it first-hand. It was literally packed to the rafters with EVERYTHING. There were all sorts of shelves, racks, parts drawers, crates, boxes, a couple of decommissioned fridges used as storage, stuff hanging off endless nails and hooks, and much of it in murky half-darkness. All of that is being slowly and carefully peeled away. The superficial mess of tiny farming gear from a couple of weeks back is long sorted out. And as cluttered as this one corner still looks, that’s nothing compared to what was there even a few days ago. What impresses me now is not seeing, but FEELING the amount of life and time it’s taken to accumulate all of this, through having built and fixed so many things, with unexpected parts and tools that’ve magically appeared out of there. This is the history of a generations-old family farm recorded in its spare parts, methodically being unravelled… The whole clean-up is fascinating and kinda awesome to observe, in a low-key, mildly melancholy, wheels-keep-turning way… Life on a farm!
Off-season visit
Lynn and her friend Ian dropped by for a visit today. Not quite the same as hanging out on a warm and sunny afternoon. But it was fun listening to Lynn happily chat about the growing season as we trudged around in calf-deep snow, visiting the half-buried greenhouse, checking on the chickens in the chilly chickenhouse, saying hi to Jack the Miniature Donkey in the cold barn. Memories of the summer’s farming settled over the whiteness everywhere. On this tiny farm, it’s definitely the off-season…
Road to the Chickenhouse
In bits and pieces, with no one storm to take the credit, the snow has been steadily building up. Regular barnyard clearing is fully underway, by blade-on-truck and then the big tractor, with snow banks appearing in all the usual places, like the ones that form the winter laneway leading to the Chickenhouse…
Chickens love eggs
Today, a bit of an egg disaster, around 20 eggs down, by far the biggest single egg loss in my brief egg-collecting career. The girls choose to do most of their laying in one nest box (there are six in a row), so there’re usually around a couple of dozen eggs in there, conveniently waiting for pick-up. This time, there were only 8 or 10, all slimy with egg white and coated with shavings and droppings, with tiny bits of eggshell thoroughly mixed into the rest of the litter. What I think happened was, one of the eggs somehow broke, the girls jammed into the egg-packed nest in a feeding frenzy, their jostling and mad pecking broke some more, increasing the frenzy and the breaking, and so forth. As I was cleaning up the rest, one egg slipped and cracked, and half a dozen chickens went crazy slurping it up. Man, do they love eating eggs… I tossed the rest into a bucket (whereI later took the pic)… I don’t expect this to be a new regular thing, as the girls don’t seem to be interested in actually trying to break eggs…though I’m sure they could learn.
Hitting the books
The first new seed catalog came in three weeks ago, but the first from the two seed companies I mostly use arrived on Friday. Today, I took a quick look, checking to see what’s new, but mainly making sure that reliable stand-bys are still around. Dusky eggplant, that manages to come through in the craziest conditions. Rich, earthy Bloomsdale spinach (open pollinated!). Earlivee sweet corn for its speed and it’s more-corn-less-sugar, not-overly-sweet taste (it’s…gone!). Early Dividend broccoli and First Crop beets, planted in spring for their reliably extreme earliness. The shortlist goes on. Most of ’em are still there! The ones that fall off tend to be open-pollinated varieties, as they make way for “better” hybrids… These catalogs are convenient, but I wonder when I’ll get around to seed-saving for real. Progress!