Animals & rainbows

This week i was on animal chores, which I love. Nothing like the thrill of getting to poke around the nest box looking for the first egg of the season (haven't found one yet), the challenge of getting in and out of the pig pen without getting manure, pig food, compost or water all over, or (my favorite), watching Chloe Pavlovianly (?) lick her lips as soon as she sees you coming with her morning or evening bucket of grain. Since we moved Chloe up close to the barn so we can let her in, she waits patiently at the gate until you bring her the grain. She also likes to rub the top of her head on my back when i'm trying to shut the gate. The pigs and the chickens both like to nibble and peck and my pants and shoes while I'm in with them.















I'm writing this fr0m the rec room, right above the pigs. I can hear them snoring. Don and Bridget got the Planet Earth DVD from the library last week, so we spent a couple evenings in here watching it, which has been amazing to see baobab trees and lemurs and dolphins and this tyiny pygmy seashorses.

This week we also saw this BEAUTIFUL double rainbow - you could see it from end to end and one of the ends was right next to our cabin. I'm hoping to enter some of these pictures into the Massachusetts Agricultural calendar - wish me luck! Piece of evidence #452 that I work on the most beautiful farm in Massachusetts...







This was also the last week we use the pit greenhouse. We planted all the tomatoes from it out in the fields this week. This means using....the post hole digger. That's one heck of an upper body workout. Luckily, Don led a fabulous group of Williams students in digging 10 rows of the holes.

Shoveling, Swarming and Sampling

Last week was Melissa's birthday. to celebrate, Gabriela and Bridget made a birthday chai when we came in for break, we had lots of ice cream, and I made a zucchini fudge cake. and we also got to shovel manure all morning. although this doesn't sound like the most glamourous job, it was pretty fun to sing along to the radio to everything from the beatles to green day as we worked. We got the pen ready for Chloe, our milk cow who will come in soon to calve.




On Saturday, Katie and I drove down to Hilltop Orchards and Furnace Brook Winery for an open house. They grow apples, pears and plums and make Johnny Mash Hard Cider. We had some of the that and sampled their Chardonnay, Riesling, Pinot Noir and Shiraz (they buy the grapes in from Long Island). Here's we're checking out their trees.


Our beekeeper Jeff came to check the hives on Sunday found a bunch of the bees swarming, which they do when they're looking for a new hive. So we all came out to watch as he brought out a new hive. He brushed the bees off the apple branch onto the frames. Once he had about 90% of the bees on the different frames, Katie held the branch over the hive as he hit the branch, knocking the remaining bees down.

Long hoe vs short hoe and other theories

Working in the fields gives you lots of time to think up and try out theories. Today, we were laying black plastic (a great job for 4 people, one of my favorites). In trying to establish what was making some hoeing better than others, we tested a theory of whether the person using the longer hoe hoed better (apparently not). Other theories we're working on is Geoff's proposal: when you feel like you need to sneeze but it doesn't come, think about elephants. then you don't have to sneeze anymore. I tried this today, and it worked. Melissa's counterargument is that if you think about Abraham Lincoln, you also won't have to sneeze. This counter theory will be tested next...

I've been on greenhouse duty all week. This week, we moved a bunch of our tomatoes out to the pit greenhouse, the first greenhouse that Caretaker had. It's dug into the ground, and the north wall is all stones, and the south facing part is all glass panes. the sun comes in and heats it during the day and also heats up the stones so they act as a heat sink and keep it warmer at night. We'll see how warm it keeps them - it's going down into the 40's tonight, so we also rigged up some row cover to try to keep the tomatoes warm enough. The heated greenhouse is jam packed with tomatillos, peppers, lettuce and radicchio.

We have been spending a good bit of the rainy days working in the greenhouse seeding and potting on, which is one of my favorite farm jobs. we mix our own potting soil for what we pot on. Here's the recipe:
1 cup greensand
1 cup bloodmeal
1/2 cup bone meal
1/2 cup lime
1 1/4 bucket peat moss
1 bucket perlite
4 buckets compost
Mix well, add enough water so when you squeeze the mix you can hear the water but it doesn't drip out of your hand, put on some Madonna or Creedence and you're good to go!

Moving, moving, moving...

This week we moved...all the animals. First, we moved all the chickens out in their chicken tractors into the north field, in one of the areas that was in winter rye cover crop and that the cows went through last week. Meanwhile, we moved the cows across the creek. They’ll make their way through the river field and then up to the hill pasture. We’ve been moving them every 2-3 days when they’ve eaten down the area enough, so I’m learning lots about the portable electric fence, Don bet the over-under on number of times each apprentice would shock themselves on the electric fence at 7, but I think I got 4 in one morning when I put up a fence by myself when it was raining and it took me that many tries just to hook up the alligator clips. Next, we moved the pigs into a bigger pen in the bar. This is them in the old pen, which is where the cows stayed all winter. Since we'll be bringing Chloe, the jersey, in when she calves & when we start milking her, we moved the pigs into a new area (right under the rec room, you can hear them snoring at night).

So a part of the apprentice experience is what I like to call “farm iron chef”. Each apprentice has one day a week when you make lunch and dinner. I cook on Fridays. For each meal, you have 1 hour to make it, and you try to use leftovers and any available veggies. We order grains and staples from the co-op or the bakery supply store. As we go along, Bridget will give us new challenges for each week. So far, we’ve also gotten to try using some wild foods. Last week I substituted ramps in for onions. Ramps are a wild leek that grows in the woods around here. Katie made an amazing salad with dandelion greens (extra tasty since we’ve been craving fresh vegetables). And it goes well with the song “Greens” by Daisy May, from the Michigan State Apprenticeship CD. Last week on our CRAFT visit, we went to Hawthorne Valley, a big dairy & vegetable farm that makes yogurt (you can find it at Harvest), and we got to talk to their cheesemaker. This is where they store the cheese. We make our own yogurt and buttermilk here (OK, so far Bridget makes it, but i'm excited to learn).
As for the farmer tan, I’m working on a watch tan, a nice stripe on my lower back from bending over and a lovely wrist brace tan on my right hand, since I’ve gotten carpal tunnel in it. My poor right hand, I’m supposed to keep the swelling down and so far I’ve gotten the back of it sunburned, figured out i was allergic to the SPF 85 sunscreen I put on it next, and then this week I got stung by a yellow jacket right between my 3rd and 4th finger! Grrr.

Last week we planted strawberries with a tried and true method: paint sticks. You go through the bed with a harvest knife and cuts slits for each plant in the black plastic, and then you walk down the row with a bucket of transplants sitting in a water & agar gel solution to keep the roots wet. At each hole, you put the end of the long roots over the slit, put the end of your paint stick on top of them, and push straight down, which pulls the roots down so they’re not bunched up. Then you firm up the soil around the top and keep going. Pretty nifty.








Next entry: all about greenhouses!

Rain, chickens and songs

This week, it rained. Quite a bit. All of Monday and Tuesday we spent seeding and potting on (moving seedlings into bigger pots) in the greenhouse. This is awesome because sometimes we listen to CD's, and when we forget to bring the CD player, we figure out what songs everyone knows. and then we argue about the lyrics. One of the main discussions this week was on the lyrics to the song "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something. The correct lyrics in question are below:
"And I said "what about breakfast at tiffany's?" she said "I think I remember the film. And, as I recall, I think, we both kinda liked it." and I said "well, that's the one thing we've got".

below are the renditions of some of the crew:
Me "...Oh I recall, my place, we both kinda liked it" (although, this whole discussion started when I admitted that years ago i used to hear it as "Oh, I recall, my place, we both sat on high chairs"

Don "Oh I recall, I think, we both kinda hated it."

There's lots of time where we're far from computers, which makes for good "wonderings". Wednesday was really strange weather, where it wasn't that cold but it was snowing off and on all day! This brought on the discussion of whether you could get a rainbow when it snows and is sunny at the same time. I'm not sure it exists, but if so, I think it's a "snowbow".

I got to move the oldest 4 chickens back and forth
between their two chicken tractors, because it was super cold (got down to 25 on wednesday night - Don won that bet). You can see the chicken tractors below. soon, we'll put the 96 younger chickens in them too and start to move them around the pasture. It gives them a spot to lay their eggs so we can find the eggs easily, and then by moving them around, we fertilize the soil.