For the last three years, I’ve been participating in a group on Flickr called “DILO” or “A day in the life“. Four times a year, at the change of the seasons, participants document their day. Today was my 12th time participating — 4 times for the last 3 years.

I sort of love the look of the collection.

Today was a pretty normal winter day. We feed everyone and pass out water. We fix fences. We pet pups. We stoke wood stoves. We brought home two truck loads of found and foraged food. (One of the colleges in town closed down their walk in refrigerators as the students have left for the holiday.)

Here’s the slideshow.

I had ambitions of editing the videos into a collage of the day, but it’s after 7 and I can’t keep my eyes open!

Maybe if I write them down I will stop obsessing about them!

Finish running the wire on the new paddock for the horses and cows.

Partition a section out of that for the pigs and move them.

Build a chicken coop for the Chanteclers. Or assemble the metal storage thing I picked up off of Freecycle and turn that into a coop somehow.

Figure out where we are going to winter the sheep.

Firewood. (Oy. We are so behind on firewood.)

Catch and deliver 8 piglets to trade for Zippy. Bring Zippy home.

Pick up new gilts from Vermont.

(Figure out how we will integrate new very young pigs into the herd. Where to put them? Maybe pull Minnie out to keep them company … somewhere.)

Catch the rest of the Icelandic cockerels who are roosting in the trees and get them out of here.

It’s a spectacularly beautiful day today and very pleasant after yesterday’s fall preview.

I got into the beehives, today, as usual weeks after I hoped to. The July split was doing exactly what I feared they were, putting honey and brood into their honey super while ignoring the black plastic frames in the hive body. I’d given them the super, with honey in it, so they would have something to eat when starting out. I knew they wouldn’t like the black plastic, but I needed another hive on ten minutes notice. Anyway, I put our one remaining bee excluder under the super, so now they have to deal with the plastic. There’s 10 or 15 pounds of honey in the super. I’ll put a feeder on as soon as I pull the super to make sure they can get ready for winter. It’s our most active looking hive, so I have high hopes they’ll make it.

The original hive is finally starting to lay down honey, in both the super (also put on for feeding) and the hive body. I’ve pretty well decided that it’s not worth buying another bee excluder at Agway (price=ouch), I’ll just move the one we have in a few days. These guys are fully drawn and (finally) have plenty of bees, so a few days won’t matter. I’m tempted to let them go hoping for capped honey and then try to feed them up in October.

Finally, the May split continues to do everything right. The broodnest is shrinking and they’re filling in around it with honey and pollen. Their super has six capped frames, so I gave them another super. We’re smack in the middle of the Japanese knotweed flow, and the summer flowers are hanging in. These girls can go until we get a killing frost.

I’m also happy to report that, unlike the late lamented ‘superhive’, no one was actually trying to kill me today, even with all the honey about.

At long last we’re getting tomatoes. Lisa made salsa today, using chilies from the kitchen. We have gallons of tomatillos in the freezer waiting for the Hatch chilies that may never come. Lisa made a mistake on the shipping, but they seem incapable of correcting it after two weeks.

I set up lights in the chicken coop today, so they have no excuse not to lay. Other, that is, than a desire to be stew.

We’ve been housing Buffy and Faith right next to where the sheep are, trying to get them comfortable around each other, being very caution since the disaster with Buddy. Yesterday, we let them out with some of the bolder sheep, and it went well. The puppies had some desire to play with the sheep, but took no for an answer, and have really settled down well. We will probably let them out into the larger area with all the sheep, as well as the horses and the cow, to see how they do there.

Onward with the fall chores.

We’re on the homestretch in the garden now, so it’s time to start making notes for next year.

First, double the size, again. There’s still a little bit of room in the old garden, but not much. Fortunately, about half of this year’s potato patch can be planted to other crops without raised beds. That won’t quite double it, but close enough. No raised beds is important because we’ve used up all our backlog of compost.: We don’t have 20 cubic yards of good soil to fill that many beds. We can break new ground for potatoes. I’m not sure what to do with the boulder-strewn half of the potato patch.

Next, double the onions, quadruple or more the garlic. Last fall we planted three bulbs worth of hard-neck garlic, purchased down in Gilsum. It thrived, it’s wonderful, I saved 12 bulbs to plant and we’ll be out of the rest by Labor Day. (Pickles use garlic.) We’d buy more, but the place in Gilsum hasn’t opened this year, leaving me fearing that it won’t. I think I’ll order some from Jung’s as well. A good keeping soft-neck for sure, maybe a hard-neck as well. Even if it won’t keep past Christmas, now is when we need it for pickling and canning. Garlic goes in the deep bed we made for the sweet potatoes, and we’ll fill the rest of it with carrots and parsnips.

Onions we simply don’t have enough of. Lisa doesn’t like planting them (too tedious), but I’m here now too, and I don’t mind. There will be no chickens (or horses, cows or sheep) in the garden next year, so they’ll only have to be planted once. I chose the copra variety two years ago because it’s supposed to be a good keeper. We wouldn’t know. I’m torn about trying other varieties. Like garlic, we go through a lot of onions during canning season, so not all the crop needs to keep well. However, I really like the taste of the Copras. I’m definitely sticking with buying plants. They just work, and we’re doing way too many new things all the time.

The heirloom broccoli rocks. We tried to save seed, but we’re having trouble capturing it. The little pods fall off so fast that I’m not actually sure they’re fertile. I guess we’ll be paying through the nose an Amazon again next year.

The two big lessons (so far) for next year are: 1. Draw a garden plan, including succession plantings, so we can buy all the seed we need in January. 2. Keep all the seed safe and in one place so we can still find it in August.

I spent a lot of time this week getting a house and paddock ready for our two new Great Pyr puppies, Buffy and Faith, who arrived today. They have their own shed, and a decent sized paddock surrounded by cattle panels, right near the house. As a bonus, it keeps Bjarki in. The plan is that by the time they can jump the fence, they’ll know where home is, and be big enough to take care of themselves. We think they’re older than the advertised four months, old enough that Maggie didn’t go all “aunty” the way she did with Disa’s pups. They are clearly puppies though and we’re sure she’ll come around.

We hatched 23 Icelandic chicks a couple of weeks ago, and the woman we hatched them for only took 8. The other 15 are out next to the Chanteclers preparing more garden for us. The book says that at this age they should be kept at 80F. We kept them above freezing and they’re doing fine. There’s another batch in the incubator, bound for Oklahoma. Meanwhile, since we’re not currently selling eggs at bridge (The weather has been way too nice to give up beautiful afternoons.) we have four dozen eggs a week that need a destination.

Spring continues way early. We’re three weeks ahead of normal. So far, all of the cool weather crops are really thriving in the veg garden. The first Centauria bloomed last week, and we’re on track to have iris before Memorial Day. Unfortunately that means the lily beetles got here early too. I found the first of the season yesterday. It’s time to have a talk with the chickens. There are several volunteer trees under the flowering crab next to the gazebo. One of them is almost certainly a hawthorn hybrid. It has a few thorns ad some of the leaves are like hawthorn leaves while others are like apples. I didn’t know this could happen, and I’m wondering if maybe we let the rootstock fruit at some point.

I finally got the jammed bale spear off the tractor bucket. I’d bought an SAE grade 8 bolt to attach it with, largely because that was all Tractor Supply had in the correct size (3/4×2.5). I recall thinking that it was a stressful enough use that the extra money probably wasn’t wasted.

However the nut froze on after a year or so, and I had to cut it off. A normal cobalt sawzall blade wore itself smooth in about 3/16 of an inch. A diamond blade, costing twice what the bolt did, made the next 3/8 inch before smelling like it was going into thermal runaway. From there I was able to break the bolt off with a sledge hammer. I’m not sure if the blade is worth keeping. The worn part is noticeably smooth to the touch, but there is clearly still diamond grit there.

On Saturday, I looked into the hives again. Arguably I should have waited two more weeks, but I wanted to know what’s going on. As I guessed, the queen stayed with the bottom hive body, and that hive is flourishing. They have new brood and have already covered three frames in the top hive body and are putting honey into it. The queenless crew is not doing as well, but I think they’ll make it. They are just starting to explore their new hive body, but they are storing honey into the bottom (old top) which had none capped two weeks ago. There is still some capped brood from the old queen (they had most of it to start, but fewer actual workers), and I saw a queen cell and drones. So as long as a bird doesn’t bag her on her mating flight, all should be well.

I’m planning to go in again in two weeks, hoping to find brood from the new queen and put a super on the stronger hive.

Also on Saturday, I picked up some Williamette hop rhizomes from Tim Roettiger. They were already sprouting, so I have high hopes that this time all will be well. The really good news is that I found what looks like the Nugget vine from last year just coming up. The three biggest shoots are now trained onto strings to climb the pergola.

Lisa’s seed starting operation in the basement is going great guns. There are hundreds of plants down there that will soon need new homes. We must make time to actually garden again. All of the beds that we had last year are already filled with cool weather crops, so to have places for all of the new transplants in the basement, we’ll need to build more raised beds. As soon as we can get a door on the entrance to the hoop house that will keep birds out, we can stage them out there for a while.

Lisa and I are caught in the middle of a fight between two groups we really don’t like.

Fifteen years ago, we sold a conservation easement on the vast majority of our land to HSUS. It is now officially the Frank and Lisa Richards Wildlife Sanctuary. Even though we’re now trying to farm, there’s only relatively little I’d like to pull out. The rest of our land is too wet or too steep even for pasture. Also, all of the HSUS people I’ve actually dealt with have been honest, reasonable and well meaning. We do have quite a few acres of very nice red oak which I’m hoping will be a big part of my retirement fund. And Valerie’s. And her children’s. So far, everyone I’ve dealt with at HSUS has left me confident that as long as we log with that perspective, which will always leave plenty of acorns for the wild turkeys, there won’t be any issues.

However, since we sold the easement, we’ve received their journal, All Animals. Over the years, nothing in it has led me to believe that HSUS is wavering in its’ original mission of promoting animal welfare. No one can argue with rescuing pets after Katrina or donating dog houses on Indian Reservations. They have never approved of sport hunting, and I cannot find it in my heart to defend the trophy hunting industry. People of good will differ on what constitutes hunting for needed food.

However, there is another crew out there, epitomized by PETA, whose goal is to convert all of us to vegans. They are of course fine with wild animals in preserved wilderness, but I’m honestly not sure where domestic animals fit in their vision. They clearly don’t approve of food animals. I agree with their stand against wild caught tropical birds and fish. The capture is usually inhumane and many species are threatened in the wild, although hunting is usually well behind habitat destruction as a reason. I don’t understand the crusade against parrot breeders, and I’m suspicious of PETA’s eventual goals for dogs and cats.

Other tenets of this pravda are that all animal agriculture is feedlots, and caged hens, that the animals must be fed human edible grain and that in the unlikely event that some farmer does raise animals on pasture, that pasture could have raised grain for the starving Africans instead. Modulo the starving Africans this is the Tyson, Cargill, Monsanto line. It smells to high heaven that PETA parrots it, given that they normally would not believe the time of day if a Monsanto rep told it to them.

It is also a pack of lies. Our animals do not live that way. Lisa puts a dozen pictures a week on Flickr that prove it. We will be gardening both of our acres that are flat enough and dry enough to raise crops. We could squeeze in an orchard to feed ourselves, but after that the starving Africans get lamb, or they keep starving.

Over the last fivish years, I’ve watched this pravda sneak into All Animals, and it bothers me. I am not willing to give even the appearance of support to people that deny the existence of Albus Dumbleboar and Minx ‘Dogfood’ Kaytladottir or pretend that you can grow grain in the Rocky Mountains.

OTOH, I’m not fond of the crew mounting the counterattack. Feedlots are cruelty to animals and should be prosecuted as such. On routine antibiotic feeding, I can believe the CDC and the AMA, or I can believe the Farm Bureau and Big Pharma. I don’t find the choice hard. The USDA still claims that a carrot is a carrot, a hamburger a hamburger, no matter how it’s raised. Even if I had the bazillion bucks, the tests don’t really exist to determine if my food is more healthy than Monsanto’ best. But I eat every day. There is nothing at the supermarket to compare with my pork, my turkey, my eggs and for that matter my carrots, onions and beans. The farm bill is the US taxpayer giving big ag money to produce crap food in a environmentally destructive way, which can then be sold to feedlot operators around the world. Yup, your tax dollars are sending corn to Chinese pig farmers for less than the corn cost to grow. And don’t forget to ask the Farm Bureau and the USDA about the dead spot in the Gulf of Mexico.

PETA is quick to tell you how much water it takes to raise a pound of feedlot beef. They’re not so quick with the number for a pound of Imperial Valley carrots. You’ll die of old age before the Farm Bureau mentions the (falling) level of the Ogallalla aquifer. My plants and animals use water that falls from the sky. If they don’t transpire it back to the sky, it is filtered through the soil on its way to the river.

So here I am. I sell pork, turkey, lamb, eggs and milk. They will all cost you twice what the supermarket cheapo stuff does. So far, our problem is raising not selling. They all taste far better. All come from animals that have names not lot numbers.

Those two groups hate each other. And both would really like to see me out of business because my existence contradicts their party line. Aargh!

The garden is still producing, but we can clearly see the end. We had a freeze a week ago that hit the pigs’ garden harder than the official one. I brought in a basket of squash, gourds and pumpkins from there. We got one pumpkin out of the corn patch. We may get some volunteer squash from the potato patch still, but I’m not counting on it.

The tomatillo vines near the house are still fine, but the pigs’ ones are clearly in trouble, which seems to be (finally!) convincing them to ripen. Lisa has made two batches of salsa verde, and I dried a quart for use in Lisa’s mind-boggling chili. We could use another batch of enchilada sauce, but there are no more chilies.There are still many tomatillos out there. We’ve a friend in Boston who wants some, and I expect at least another quart of dried ones. As with dried tomatoes, they’re very hygroscopic, and we’re keeping them in the freezer.

The parsnips will be harvested in the spring. There’s a nice carrot patch that we can bring in any day. We never found time to thin it, which means many of the carrots are small. I suspect we have the same total poundage of carrots as if we’d thinned. Still, next year I’d like to thin.

The celery failed to do as well as last year: decent leaves, but little stalk. Gardener Google says the raised bed was too well drained. That is mind-bending this year, but I pulled one today and there was indeed dry soil on the roots. I know just where to put them next year.

I left the unripe corn after last week’s frost, because the stalks seemed to still be alive. I just brought in another basket, and if the frost holds off we’ll get two more weeks Lisa’s thinking creamed corn from this week’s crop.

We only got a couple of cantaloupe, and they were tasteless. That’s what we hear from others as well. Too much water, too little sun.

The leeks and onions did well. Our seedlings bulbed up immediately under the 24 hour lights. Duh. I ordered Copra plants from Millers and they did great. Many of them are still growing: I’m picking them as the tops die. They’re quite good, much better than the generic yellow ones from the store. I bought Copra because it’s a long day long keeper. I don’t think keeping past Christmas will be an issue. I’ll double the order next year, despite Lisa’s groans at planting and weeding. Plants are far less expensive than sets, and far less trouble than seeds. I think we’ll stick with them for awhile. Onions are not actually inexpensive, and these rock. The leeks thrived. They’re smaller than the ones at the store, but so uniform that I believe that this is the normal size for this variety. Once again, much more flavorful than the store variety, they’ve a really interesting tang that really enhanced the salsa verde. We don’t have a root cellar for them, but supposedly they freeze well. We got the 200 plant minimum order, and that seems to be plenty. We’re going to be challenged to eat four leeks per week 50 weeks a year. I suspect a lot of stock this year will be made with leeks as well as onions.

The frost got the sweet potato vines. I _must_ get out and dig them while I can still find them. Lisa bought horseradish and rhubarb after I said it was impossible. In both cases two out of 6 plants lived. We’ll have to move the rhubarb because the horseradish is eating it. The ‘super-male’ asparagus largely delivered. I think we have two female plants to twenty odd male ones. OTOH, the purple asparagus seems to be one with the snows of yesteryear. We’re hoping for at least a small harvest next year.

The nightshades however were a disaster. Late blight got the tomatoes and potatoes. We planted 90 lbs of potatoes and harvested 50. The tomato plants didn’t grow because it was cold and wet, and blight got what fruit they set. Fortunately Lisa canned two years worth of tomatoes last year. We’ve decided that’s a good procedure. Try to put away two years worth of any crop, in case we don’t get any next year. She also did two years worth of rocking salsa. Put it in pint jars next time. We were feeding six then, it’s two now.

The peppers did not get blight, but did get sheeped, and got no sun. I’ve been watching bell peppers grow a quarter inch a week for a month now. Some of the Hatch chilies came through, and they rock. I had to buy 8000 seeds. Next year we’ll plant a thousand in case the germination is poor.

We got our first cabbage ever, after the sheep got them three times. There’s four gallons becoming sauerkraut, and several small heads still out there for us to eat.

The beans that survived the sheep did well as always. We discovered last year that we really don’t like canned beans that much. They keep going into soup. This year’s we ate fresh and canned as Dilly Beans which I’ve never had but Lisa promises will rock, and again, have some left from last year. Unlike the tomatoes it’s probably not a full second year’s worth, but they’ll enhance soups as long as they last.

Astute readers will notice the repeated word ‘sheeped’. Kaytla and Minx this year decided that they simply would not stay behind a fence if they could get out, no matter how yummy the grass and cushy the sheds. Kaytla, rest her black soul, busted her way back to the wormiest pasture one time too many. Minx is going to freezer camp. Gracie, our other leader ewe, dropped dead of something that doesn’t seem to be parasites. And our fences keep getting better.

Like a duck to water. Our little freaky water fowl are giddy today. There is water! Coming from the sky! Someone truly loves them. They are happy happy happy. They get in the pond and have water below and above? Oh. my. God. !!!!!

Silly goose. They are little goofy silly beasts, the lot of them. They flap their little wings and run away from almost anything new. Eeek! Scary! Whenever they hear my voice, they come running to me so quickly, and they sound like excited little children. I’m only starting to hear the first honks these days. It sounds so silly.

Like grass through a goose. Yep, still green when it comes out. And boy do they eat a lot of it.

Eat like a horse or Hungry as a horse. Oh yeah. They eat non-stop. all the live long day. We have three Percheron horses. What were we thinking? A bale of hay per day, each. Hay is in such short supply, and it is SO expensive these days.

Busy as a bee. When you are in the flight path of the hives, duck and run, man. Get the heck out of dodge, asap.

Silence of the lambs. No, not the movie. But lambs NEVER shut up. We call it the Coyote Cry, announcing that supper is on.

Piggy back. Just a picture. Need I say more? I have about 20 shots like this. He never ever quits.

Long haul. Hauling crap is hard damn work. We haul a lot of crap. Literally and figuratively.

Stuck in the mud. Why oh why can’t we learn and quit doing it every single year?

Get in the groove. Another mud season story, best described by Walter.

Nest egg. We really know what that means. We take eggs from our chickens every day, but we leave a little golf ball in the nest as a nest eggs, so they don’t fret. It works.

Pig pen. “Oh I’ve heard pigs are clean if you’ll let them be.” Oh really? Let me introduce you to my pigs. They prefer it muddy and mucky, thanks very much. Wallows rock! They dump their food and water bins, preferring to eat it off of the ground. Mmm. Tofu dipped in horse manure and mud. Yum!

One we don’t get. Counting sheep jumping a fence is NOT relaxing.

One we don’t want to learn. Wild goose chase. No thanks. I’ll take it on your word!

All the clichés about sheep seem to apply to other people’s sheep, not ours. Our sheep think they are goats.