Ardwyn Farm News

A year? Really?

2011-07-20T09:15:00.002-05:00

But what a year it has been!

It is almost impossible to believe that when I wrote that post on July 11th, 2010 about BLTs, I had no idea that 20 days later I would have a brand-new baby boy in my life.

For those that don't know, my wife and I were attempting to adopt for almost two years, when suddenly last July we were contacted by our agency about a potential opportunity. We met the birth mom a couple of times and fell in love with her and learned that she was due in August! Panic ensued as we tried to prep our house for a new arrival and our son upped the stakes by being born on the last day of July.

I'm sure that you can understand now why updates have been so long in coming.

This year we are not raising any pigs, feed prices have exploded due to a number of factors, the most annoying one being ethanol mandates, but let's not get into that. We kept our 4 chickens over another winter, and two of them have been stubbornly trying to hatch eggs since the middle of May. Everything I've read says that they should have given up by now, but they are sticking to it. I may need to break down and put some fertilized eggs underneath them, but of course that is when they will probably quit.

The garden is also reduced in scale this year, I only have 6 of the 10 beds planted. Babies keep you busy! As the weather cools I will try to plant some more cool season crops, but I'm making no promises.

We are heading to an Amish produce auction this weekend and I'm hoping to make up for my lack of work by purchasing the fruits of others' labor. Maybe we'll be able to make some pickles and can some tomatoes this year after all.

Today is BLT DAY!

2010-07-11T10:16:00.002-05:00

The day has arrived. Christmas, my birthday, Arbor Day, these are but pale phantoms against the most important day of the year, BLT Day.

Like Easter, you're never really sure when it is going to arrive. Not because the observance relies on some arcane medieval formula involving the full moon and goat entrails, but because it all depends on that first ripe tomato.

Tomatoes. Some of you get it, and some don't. Some things are just that way, but for those of you that do get it, keep reading. Today is July 11th, and I haven't had a tomato since October. I gave up on supermarket tomatoes 6 or 7 years ago, they fooled me back then with those "vine-ripened" one that still had a piece of the vine attached. They smell like tomatoes but, brother, those ain't tomatoes. Soggy cardboard mush with a vine attached is still soggy cardboard mush.

But back to the topic, today I will walk up to the garden and collect that scarlet orb that I have been monitoring for the past few days. I will cleave it into fat, luscious slices and place them gently atop lightly toasted 7-grain bread, liberally anointed with mayo. Then, 3 or 4 slices of pasture-raised bacon from last year's pig. A pig I knew by name and whose life I oversaw from the time she was a 30lb shoat until she arrived back at the farm in double-smoked glory. A few leaves of Buttercrunch lettuce to satisfy the requirements, another slice of toast, and the sandwich will be complete.

Then, my friends, it is time to eat. The BLT is a celebration of texture. The light initial resistance of the toasted bread giving way to the hearty crunch of the lettuce, the bacon offering its toothsome dual-densities of fat and flesh, the lush juicy tomato, all these underscored with unctuous mayonnaise. This is a sandwich like no other. A tall, cold glass of milk is the only accompaniment needed.

BLT Day. It's finally here. What are you having for lunch?

Ouch!

2010-04-21T10:58:00.002-05:00

Yet another setback in spring plans. In my very first outing with the Sheboygan Sharks rugby team, I broke my right leg in three places, effectively putting me out of commission for the next six weeks or so.

There is so much work to be done, the only way we can catch up is to try and schedule a "farm blitz", where family and friends show up and work for a day in exchange for lunch. I just read about them in the paper a few weeks ago and think it might be what we need. If you are interested in helping out, please contact us!

Chickens are still sitting on their eggs, I hope they hatch soon, I can't wait to see what we get.

New chicks on the way?

2010-04-11T11:07:00.003-05:00

Two of our hens have "gone broody", meaning they are sitting on their eggs and trying to hatch them. I finally figured out today that our rooster is a Gold-laced Wyandotte, a breed that got started in Wisconsin and was originally called Winnebago. Could make for some interesting looking chicks, assuming they hatch.

My friend Mike and I took down a giant maple tree yesterday, and then split and stacked the wood into the woodshed, ended up with just about a face cord. Was feeling pretty beat after that, but am less sore than I thought I'd be today. All of that exercise and conditioning this winter must have been worth it after all.

Still too wet to till the garden. These warm days have me itching to get into the dirt and start planting.

Looks like we'll be picking up this year's pigs sometime in mid-May. Same source as last year, so they'll be Hereford mixes. They worked out great last year, so we saw no reason to change things up.

Setbacks

2010-03-27T09:45:00.001-05:00

Already overcoming obstacles this spring.

Second set of tomato plants are doing well after the first round died off.

All of our little ducklings have fallen victim to the local wildlife, mostly owls I think.

We will persevere. As the Japanese proverb says: "Fall seven times, stand up eight"

New arrivals

2010-03-20T11:51:00.002-05:00

Mama hen had 4 ducklings hatch on Wednesday, and unfortunately something got one of them the very next day, but here's a picture of the family in the yard on Thursday.

As I posted the other day, these are the first animals actually born here on the farm, so we're very happy to see them.

It dropped into the twenties last night and we had snow, so I had to kidnap the ducklings and put them in the stable under a heat lamp, I lured the mama in as well, so she could help keep them warm. They are all looking alive and well this morning, so I hope they'll make it the rest of the way.

Tomatoes have re-sprouted after losing 99% of them to damping off. Should probably plant peppers this weekend. Not much else on the horizon, it's depressing to see snow again, but it shouldn't last.

Sprouts!

2010-03-10T13:07:00.002-06:00

That didn't take long. The first tomato seeds sprouted after only three days, and by now almost everything has broken the surface.

We've already had numerous requests for Ardwyn Farm pork this fall, it's nice to see so much interest, we must be doing something right. I wish we could satisfy the demand, but there is no way I am going to try to raise more than four pigs. I need to come up with a "waiting list" or a sign-up sheet or something for the people that are interested in buying pork this fall. I don't feel comfortable with accepting deposits or promising anything before August because you just never know what could happen. I'd hate to lose a pig and have people with unmet expectations.

Starting to see more and more birds around and other signs of an early spring. I know I'm ready. Last year the spring and summer weather was mostly rotten, probably why I didn't post much on the blog last year. This year has got to be better.

Well now...

2010-03-07T14:06:00.003-06:00

Rumors of this blog's death have been greatly exaggerated.

We are "summertime farmers" no more. We have somehow brought 5 chickens, a rooster, and four ducks through a Wisconsin winter. The one hen duck is currently sitting on an unknown number of eggs in an old dog house that she has appropriated. If she is successful, they will be the first animals actually born on the farm, so I'm hoping she pulls it off.

I started tomato and leek seeds yesterday. Joked with Nikki that I would try to have fewer than a dozen varieties this year (I thought we'd maybe have five or six), but when I was all done I had eleven! I don't know why tomatoes make me lose all sense of proportion like that. I started somewhere around 50 plants. Again, I am insane.

Changes for this year will include my planting the garden beds in stages rather than trying to fill the entire thing the first week of June. I'll also be installing a gravity-fed drip watering system for the beds, time to make this hill we live on do some of the work! I can't believe I'm typing this but we'll probably have 4 pigs again this year. The 25lb boxes of Pasture-raised Pork were a big hit with our customers and I can definitely see doing that again this year. I already have people trying to reserve pork for this fall, but I can't plan that far ahead.

Went through my box o' seeds last week and I really won't have to buy too many this year, so I wish they would stop sending me seed catalogs! Man, we must have received 30 or more this winter with all those tempting new varieties. It takes a lot of strength to resist against the pictures of 35 pound watermelons and plump ears of sweet corn.

More to come!

Back at it

2009-06-02T11:13:00.002-05:00

Hello again!

We are back at it this year, and things are going well so far. Here's the basics for this year:
2 Geese
3 pigs
4 turkeys
7 ducks
22 chickens and
1000 sq. ft. of garden.

We'll soon be selling the majority of the chickens, I only want to keep 6 or so. Also at least 4 of the ducklings.

The pigs this year came from our neighbor, Royal, and it was an interesting afternoon when I went to pick them up. We had my three in a crate and were just shooting the breeze when he asked me if I'd be willing to help him castrate all the little boars! Ended up being about two dozen of them. It was a lot of running around trying to catch the little boogers, but the most exciting moment was when the door to the shed we were in came bursting open and a 600lb mama sow came roaring in to see why here piglets were squealing so much! Royal yelled "Get out! NOW!" , but I was already halfway over the fence.

Garden is very full this year, looks like my first successful year at growing all of my tomatoes indoors from seed. Got some interesting heirloom melons from my friend Pat, one of them can grow as large as 22lbs, so that should be interesting.

Much more to come, just wanted to do a quick updte to let everyone know we are back "on the air"

Cheers,
Doug

Ordered up some birds

2009-02-27T12:20:00.003-06:00

Looks like I wasn't a moment too soon. I placed our poultry order for 2009 and it sounds like they are doing a booming business. Theya re sold out of many breeds through the end of April, lucky for me I don't want our birds until the middle of May.

I also found they are not being as flexible about your order as they used to be. In years past you could usually add just a few birds of your choice to one of their standard assortments, now they are enforcing their minimum order numbers strictly. The result of that is that I am going to have about 10-12 more critters than I wanted.

If anyone out there is interested in a few chicks or ducklings in late May, let me know, we are going to have 8-10 chicks, 3-4 ducklings and maybe even 1-2 turkey poults too many.

What we ordered:
1 Barnyard assortment - 2 goslings, 7 ducks, and 7 turkeys. Hatchery picks the breeds, so it will be a surprise.
Buff Orpingtons - Brown egg laying hens - very pretty golden color
Barred Plymouth Rocks - Boys and girls, but I am only keeping one rooster - another very pretty bird.
Cornish Roasters - A fast-growing "meat" bird, all white feathers.

Wintertime blahs

2009-02-20T10:14:00.003-06:00

Late February. You've been drooling over the pictures in the seed catalogs for a month now, all memories of weeding and watering and cursing the squash bugs are forgotten, you need to GARDEN! But it's still to early to start any seeds indoors, no really, it really is, stop thinking about it. Well, maybe just some marigolds?

So what is the cure for this affliction? I wish I knew. Move to Zone 6 or 7? Probably not going to happen. You can only read so many books on gardening before they start contradicting each other and turning your mind to mush.

I guess I have a couple ideas for those of you that, like me , are frustrated Northern gardeners.

-Did you know that you can take those fresh herbs at the grocery store and stick them in a bit of rooting gel? And they'll grow! Ta-da, you have a kitchen garden without waiting weeks to grow from seed.

- Ok I lied, that's the only idea I have. But maybe you have something to tide us over until spring? Please share!

Cheers,

Doug

Planning the garden for 2009

2009-01-10T14:19:00.002-06:00

The beginning of the year always brings with it a flurry of seed catalogs. I think I have received 8 already and expecting a few more!

I started planning this summers garden since there isn't much else to do this time of year. Thanks to the generosity of friends, my seed buying will be reduced this year. I have an amazing variety of heirloom tomatoes and beans, as well as some popcorn seeds, arriving in the mail soon, all from fellow gardeners looking to share and exchange seeds.

Some of the more interesting plants for 2009 include:
Grosse Cotelee tomato
Hog Heart tomato
Chocolate Stripes tomato
Purple Queen beans (can't wait to try these, purple beans will be so much easier to see when picking, and then they turn green when you cook them!)
Tiger Eye beans
Turkey Craw beans (supposedly the original bean was found in a turkey's craw by a hunter and planted, back in the 1800s)

Been looking at the the hatchery catalogs as well, trying to pick which kinds of birds we'll have this year. I really want Buff Orpington chickens, and maybe some Plymouth Rocks, but we will see what happens. Here's what a Buff Orpington looks like, they are supposed to be good layers:

Not much else happening on the farm, bitter cold temperatures are expected for next week, a HIGH of 6 below on Thursday, makes me wish I could just hibernate.

Stories from a FedEx Driver

2008-11-29T08:21:00.002-06:00

Somewhere in the area a FedEx driver is telling about the crazy farm he visited on Tuesday. I was in the barn cutting up the two deer I shot on opening weekend when I heard someone pull in the driveway and honk. I was in the middle of cutting off a front quarter, so I had a huge knife in my hand as I walked out of the barn, dressed in my blood-smeared jeans. The driver looked a little shocked, but the capper was when Cash the Dog then came running around the corner of the woodshed with an entire foreleg in his mouth. He must have stolen it when I wasn't paying attention and I had to fight the urge to laugh out loud.

I'm getting better at butchering, or at least faster. I got both deer finished in about 4 hours, including cutting some meat into cubes for chili and slices for stir-fry. I discovered that you can fold the foodsaver bags in half and put them in the sealer to make handy tubes that are the perfect size for a big slab of tenderloin.

Starting our planning for the farm next year, I'm looking into different assortments of birds. We want to downsize the flock from the last go-round, so I'm looking for 4-5 ducks, 4-5 turkeys, and a handful of egg chickens. Maybe I'll finally order from Tom at the feed mill, except we'd be stuck with plain old dumb white turkeys, we'll see.

Winter is coming

2008-11-08T12:28:00.003-06:00

Hardly a leaf to be found on the trees now, must mean winter is close.

Put the plow on the farm truck last weekend when it was in the high 70s, it was a little shocking when I started the truck because one of the exhaust pipes broke since the last time I fired her up, so it was a bit loud!

Did some canning last weekend to help deal with the mega-pile of ground beef we got from our steer. We don't eat that much ground beef so it's hard to come up with uses for it other than your standard taco or spaghetti sauce. I made 8 quarts of a vegetable beef soup that my grandma used to make and I found out later it's actually her mom's recipe, so it's got some family history! We had a couple of the T-Bones and they were HUGE. Talked to Royal on Tuesday and found out that our beef came from his daughters prize steer from 4H, so it's good to know our dinner led a good life.

Today is cold and rainy, so I am avoiding going out and putting the finishing touches on the deer stand I'm building up in our woods, maybe I'll get at it tomorrow if it's nicer.

Okay, an update!

2008-10-18T14:32:00.002-05:00

Sorry that it's been so long.

We still haven't bought any pork, just haven't got around to it, but I did pick up 1/4 of a steer yesterday from our neighbor. I can't believe the size of the ribeyes, we might have to buy bigger plates! All told it's just a bit over 200lbs of beef.

The garden is , for the most part, finished. Still have to harvest the last of the carrots and the parsnips, then hopefully I will have time to till everything under before the ground freezes.

Been doing a bit of duck hunting with below average success. It is finally getting chilly enough that I might climb a tree with my bow one of these evenings.

There is a "chili cook-off" later this month at work to raise money fro the United Way, I'm looking forward to winning it!

Not much else new, I'm a year older and somewhat less than a year wiser, enjoying the autumn and dreading the winter.

Cheers!

Digging potatoes

2008-09-19T12:19:00.003-05:00

This weekend it wil be time to dig up all of the potatoes and onions. If you recall, we planted red, white, and blue potatoes this year, as is our patriotic duty.

The blue potatoes are visually striking, but somewhat starchy in the flavor department. I will experiment and discover their best use. I have a suspicion that mashed blue potatoes will be delicious, but look very odd. The white fingerling potatoes are already out of the ground and I really need to roast a few of them in a bit of duck fat one of these days.

Also this weekend, I am planning on brewing up my annual batch of Pumpkinhead Ale. This is one of my beers that has a devoted following, so you pumpkin beer fans will be happy to hear that it is on the way.

Lots and lots of rain last weekend has split most of my tomatoes, so into cans they will go. I am still binging on BLTs whenever possible and even found a local stand that still has fresh sweet corn. I am determined to enjoy the fruits of summer as long as they hold out.

Stopped by the local "coffee club" at the Boltonville gas station this morning and Tom from the feed mill had a line on a butcher hog for us. He didn't have the number so I have to stop by there tomorrow for the contact information. It will be good to have a freezer full of pork again, even if it isn't from our farm.

Buy local!
Doug

Canning season has begun

2008-09-10T09:00:00.004-05:00

We started preserving some of the harvest last weekend. I am trying something different with the tomatoes this year, I basically made a gigantic pot of chili without the meat and canned it up in quart jars. My idea was that since chili always tastes better the next day, this is like getting a big head start. I should be able to simply brown up some stew meat and pour my premade chili mix over it and be ready to chow down in less than an hour. We'll see how it works.

We also made a big batch of raisins in the dehydrator. They are really good, but it takes a long time, almost 36 hours. Next up is making homemade grape juice and canning it with Grandma Jones' recipe.

Signs of autumn are beginning to appear, a few leaves turning and cool evenings. I'm looking forward to deer hunting in November already, looks like I will get to hunt opening weekend for a change, thanks to not having to butcher turkeys. I'm also planning on bowhunting for deer at our place since it appears we now have enough of a local population to support it. (And because they ate my pea vines!)

Tomatoes!

2008-08-26T14:36:00.002-05:00

Tomatoes have been ripening for about a week now, so I have been stuffing myself silly with them.

That is all I can report at this time.

Nothing but trouble

2008-08-11T09:15:00.002-05:00

This just hasn't been a good year for the garden.

First we had a non-existent spring, now we are having a cold summer. Rabbits and deer attacked the peas and coles early, now something is killing my squash plants. The one bed I used an organic "weed preventer" in, instantly turned into the most weed-infested bed of plants I have ever seen.

The weather the past few days has just been beautiful, but definitely not normal. Early August should be unbearably hot, with humidity so thick that laundry hung out to dry just gets wetter. I woke up this morning and it was 53°! No wonder my tomatoes are taking so long to ripen.

Even with all the problems, we haven't suffered any significant lack of fresh produce yet, things just might be a bit leaner later in the summer. There's still time to plant many things, I just have to remember to do it!

Gone for a bit...

2008-08-01T11:16:00.002-05:00

Sorry about the lack of recent postings, but in my defense I was gone for about a week on a backpacking trip in northern Minnesota on the Superior Hiking Trail.

By request, I will post a few pictures of the trip and a condensed version of my journal.

Day 1: Dropped off by the Superior Shuttle at 9:45am at Caribou River wayside. Stopped at Caribou River to fill my water bottle and my Camelbak. I was oh-so-very-impressed with my new technique of filling the bladder while it was still in the pack, what a timesaver! Put my pack on and instantly felt dampness, the bladder had a crack in the hard plastic by the fill spout and leaked all over the inside of my pack! Luckily I noticed it right away and got everything out of the pack and dried off before things got too wet. Took the spur trail to the bottom of the falls, very impressive! Quite rugged hiking today, a hard introduction to the trail. The trail leading into Crosby-Manitou park is not well blazed, but is still easy to follow. Camped at Aspen Knob campsite, best water on the trail, in my opinion. Rained all night but thoughtfully cleared up before hitting the trail.

Day 2: Left camp about 8am, microfiber towel did a great job of drying off the rainfly. Much easier trail today, but boggier and buggier. And of course I forgot my bugspray back at the campsite! Hit Sonju Lake and walked down the boardwalk to the little island. Absolutely beautiful, and there were a couple of guys leaving the area who offered me bananas, and BUGSPRAY! Awesome timing. Highly recommend camping at Sonju Lake. I pushed on to South Egge Lake, also very cool and scenic. A pair of playful beavers were fun to watch, then it started raining out of a clear blue sky. Ate an early dinner and hid in the tent as the rain turned into dramatic storms. The beavers would slap their tails against the water anytime that the thunder was particularly close, not sure if they were imitating it or trying to scare it away. Woke up to amazing loon calls, walked to the lake and there were seven loons swimming together. I decided to call it an "asylum" of loons.

Day 3: Decided to hike into the town of Finland today to call and reassure my wife that I am alive. Grabbed a bit of food from the grocery store there, and they will let you use the phone in the back for free, just have to use a calling card or call collect. Walked back to the trail, saw two black bears run cross the road about a half-mile up, then put on some serious miles through some of the toughest terrain I've seen, mostly the last 4-5 miles. Being in town softened me so I skipped stopping at the Kennedy Creek campsites and pushed into Tettagouche State Park, where there are showers. Fell asleep to the sounds of couples arguing ("Dammit Cheryl!") and people running generators. Still, it had a shower!

Day 4: One of the most beautiful sections of trail I've seen, especially in the Bear and Bean Lake areas, where you are standing on the edge of 500 foot cliffs on one side of the trail and gazing at Lake Superior to the other. Mt. Trudee is another that is just awe-inspiring. Planned on staying at Penn Creek, but it was still early so I decided to press on another 5.8 miles to the Beaver River campsites. Lots of up and down ridges to get there, and all of it was on ROCK! The feet were getting a bit sore from walking on rock all day, but it was still gorgeous. Beaver River campsites were both full of rotten kids and counselors from some wilderness therapy group, but I was too tired to go any farther, so I camped on the outskirts of N. Beaver River site. Trains and stupid foghorn every 10 minutes helped keep me awake most of the night. Lots of raspberries along train tracks, though. Big day today, a little over 15 miles.

Day 5 : Got up and hiked into Beaver Bay, great little town only about 1.5 miles from Beaver River campsite. Did laundry at laundromat behind Holiday gas station and stocked up on some food. Ate a giant double blue cheese burger at the diner, delicious! Walked back to the trail, hiking to Chapins Ridge campsite. Found a few handfuls of blueberries on Fault Line Ridge. Got to Chapins Ridge and the water there was murky, brown, fetid, and even had a scary oily sheen on top. Decided to walk on to the Split Rock area. Ended up camping at site on north side of the Split Rock canyon, very cool campsite. I was looking forward to the giant heavy can of beef stew that I carreid all day, only to discover my spoon had broken! So I carved a handle for it out of a birch twig. Another 15+ mile day today.

Day 6: Realized that if I do another 15 miles or so,(ended up being 18 miles) I will finish today. Given the scary weather outlook for the next day, I decide to make that my goal. Lots of "green tunnel' hiking early in the day. Trails inside Gooseberry Falls State park are wide and well marked. Amazing views along river and cool falls. Once you leave the park, all bets are off. The trail is slightly better than a game trail, only 4-5 inches wide and mostly following the river. Waist-high weeds and vegetation hide the trail effectively and it was washed out in several areas near the riverbanks. This continued until the Nestor Grade, where conditions improved. It started raining not far past Nestor. At this point I was in a hurry to finish and escape the weather, but Mike's Rock and Wolf Rock were challenging and I'm sure quite beautiful when the weather cooperates. Got back to my car about 6 pm and just sat there for awhile and dried off the best I could.

Time for fencing

2008-06-23T09:42:00.002-05:00

It took three years, but it finally happened. The deer and rabbits have found my garden.

I went up to do some weeding on Friday afternoon and found every single one of my pea vines had been neatly chewed off about 6-7" above the ground. The height makes me suspect deer are the culprits. I also had some chewed up leaves on my broccoli and cauliflower plants that appeared to be the work of rabbits. I bought fencing earlier this spring, but never put it up because I haven't needed it in previous years. Guess what I'll be doing this week?

The weather this past week was great for the garden, lots of sun with just enough scattered rain to keep me from having to water. We are pretty much dried out from the deluge earlier this month.

Other than the pea vines, the garden looks pretty good. I am trying to keep my tomato plants under control this year through intensive pruning and training. They look pretty good so far, I'll have too get some pictures posted soon.

Too much rain!

2008-06-12T14:13:00.003-05:00

If I had to choose one word to describe the past 7 days it would be "soggy."

The danged driveway washed out again on me (twice) again last weekend, but I guess that's better than having your whole house wash away, as happened over by the Dells.

The garden looks to have survived, the only problem is that it has really beat down the soil. Part of the reason to have raised beds is that you never walk among the plants and the soil stays light and fluffy. Well, throw that idea out the window because the soggy ground has compressed itself down pretty well. I'm thinking it's going to be a challenge to pull carrots and parsnips out of this dirt later in the year.

This afternoon calls for another 2-3 inches of rain that we don't need, I hope it doesn't do too much more damage to the driveway.

I have to admit that it's really weird not having any critters on the farm this year. I find myself checking craigslist to see if anyone is giving away chickens, and then wonder why I do it because I know I won't call or go get them. I've got the disease so badly I have even thought about getting ducks!

The Volunteer Army

2008-06-02T11:15:00.006-05:00

I spent a long morning weeding the garden on Saturday and could not believe the number of "volunteers" we had popping up. I told Nikki that in a few years we may not have to plant any seeds in the garden, that it will just self-populate with the remnants of gardens past.

Volunteers, for those unfamiliar, are plants that just appear in the garden because of earlier vegetables that went to seed or that were forgotten underground in previous seasons.Varieties that have shown themselves so far include onions, tomatoes, squash, radishes, beets, and potatoes. For the most part I have just let them grow, the only exception being the tomato seedlings as there were dozens of them.

It's starting to look like we might actally get a couple pints of strawberries this year, after many failed attempts. The plants are vigorous and spreading and have a lot of still-green berries on them. I put up some short wire fencing to try and keep the rabbits out, but the birds still have free access. Someone will get strawberries, anyway, I'm hoping it's me.

I managed to build a field stone border around Nikki's "Cottage Garden" yesterday without destroying my back, so that was good news. It looks nice with the flowers and rocks, much better than the weed patch it was a couple of weeks ago

Not much else going on, we are definitely managing to stay busy even without any farm animals. Nikki got started yesterday on getting the pool ready for summer, maybe we'll be able to use it by July if it ever gets warm around here. Cheers!

Looking good...

2008-05-30T13:17:00.003-05:00

The garden is looking good. Almost all of the potatoes are up, everything else is pretty well established.

Here's the 2008 Garden List: (I'm going from memory so I may have to update later)

Radishes
Carrots (3 types)
Mixed salad greens
Head lettuce
Swiss Chard
Red Pontiac potatoes
German Fingerling potatoes
Blue potatoes
Yukon Gold potatoes
Red onion
Yellow onion
Snap peas
Sugar peas
Golden beets
Parsnips
Canteloupe
Winter squash ( 3 types)
Zucchini
Pumpkin
Summer squash (2 types)
"Luigi" tomatoes
Brandywine tomatoes
Roma tomatoes
Green Zebra tomatoes
Celebrity tomatoes
Yellow pear tomatoes
Orange bell peppers
Hungarian hot yellow peppers
Red cabbage
Kohlrabi
Cauliflower
Broccoli

...and I think that's it!

Finally, the garden is started

2008-05-12T13:45:00.002-05:00

I worked my tail off on Saturday, since the weather gave me a one day window to get some veggies in the ground.

I planted 25 sq. ft. each of Swiss Chard, head lettuce, mesclun greens, and mixed radishes and carrots. I also put in 225 onion plants and around 120 hills of potatoes. My gardening muscles were definitely out of shape, I was so sore yesterday that I could hardly move.

This weekend also saw the extermination of a family of squirrels that had decided to occupy the attic above our front porch. My rusty, trusty, Daisy BB gun made quick work of them, with the help of a couple of glue traps.

If the weather cooperates I should get more seeds in the ground this week so that I don't fall too far behind last year's pace.

Hope all you moms out there had a great Mother's Day!

The Not-so-grand Canyons

2008-04-29T10:31:00.003-05:00

Last Friday, Mother Nature sent us some rain. Okay, a LOT of rain! Maybe the hardest rain I've ever seen. It was a real gully-washing, frog-strangling kind of rain. We didn't float away, but it did manage to carve some really interesting and complex canyons into our gravel driveway, some of them more than a foot deep.

The force of the water was so great that it washed the gravel all the way to the bottom of our hill, about 50 yards or so. I wanted to fill enough of the gouges so that we at least had a car's width to drive on, so I had to bring the gravel up from the bottom of the hill. To my great amusement, the ground was too wet for me to get any traction with my garden tractor and dump cart, so I got out the wheelbarrow. I don't know if I'd describe the repair work as fun, but it certainly did help me to pass the time, and bashing my shin into the undercarriage of the wheelbarrow, when it's forward progress was suddenly halted by an unseen rock, allowed me to expand my vocabulary of synonyms for those of illegitimate birth. We have an excavation contractor coming in later this week to refill the rest of the driveway and grade it smooth.

I still have nothing in the garden, it's been too wet and too cold, but I did get some tomato seeds from my friend Mark in Pittsburgh. They are from a pair of varieties grown by members of his family for decades, you have to love a tomato named 'Luigi'! I hope they grow well here, I started the seeds indoors as soon as they arrived. Just give me a few days of warm, dry weather and I am ready to spring onto action!

Falling behind the pace...

2008-04-23T14:27:00.003-05:00

I am well behind last year's schedule for planting, but there has not been much to do about it. I have not been able to get in and attack the garden too much because it has been too wet, and I made the mistake last year of rototilling wet clay soil. I have managed to get all the debris and detritus of last year's garden cleared away, and I just may be able to do some tilling this afternoon, we will see how wet the dirt is.

Jung Seeds has already mailed me my potatoes and onions for the year, I think they sent them too early. They are currently taking up valuable space in the bottom of our refrigerator, waiting for me to get the dirt ready. Every morning I say to them "Soon! Soon you will be secure in the earth!" Hopefully they don't get too depressed.

Nikki and I are observing "Turn Off Your TV Week" this week, so please do not tell us what happens on LOST, we'll have to wait for a rerun, I guess. I am staying busy by taking down 3 or 4 trees that are either dead or annoying, and I have 3 yards of "traffic bond" in a pile at the end of the driveway for repairing all of the scrapes, gouges, and potholes I plowed into the driveway over the winter. Not to mention that I still have school 3 nights/week. Only 4 weeks left to go, though.

Thanks for staying tuned in to the blog, now go turn off your TV!

2008-04-04T09:34:00.002-05:00

Everything is muddy and wet, so it must be spring.

Last weekend I ordered the seeds I need for this year, my potatoes, and my onion plants. I did remember to look at my advice to myself from last year and ordered more potatoes.

I decided not to grow white onions this year because they just don't keep, so it will be yellow and red onions only. I don't think there is all that much difference in flavor between yellow and white onions anyway. I just pulled the last red onion from last year's garden out of the cellar last week, so I need to grow just a few more this year.

I have a little more than half of the garden beds planned out for this season, I'll probably finish doing that on Sunday. I'm not trying to jam plants into every square inch like I did last year, just trying to keep things close enough that weeding is reduced. 2007 was a very instructional year, though, because it showed me just how much food you can produce out of 1000 square feet. I'm sure that with practice you could even do a lot more.

Not much else is going on, things are very busy with work and school, but staying busy is good for me.

The 22lb Ham

2008-03-25T09:33:00.003-05:00

Once again the farm was the scene of an Easter ham-apaloozza. We had our processor smoke an entire ham from Pepper the 280lb pig last fall, and we pulled it from the freezer last week. We beat last year's 19lb ham by a fair margin, this one was 22lbs. It took 7 hours in the oven, but it was worth the wait. We got lots of compliments on the ham, and we had a great variety of delicious side dishes brought by our guests. It was a fun afternoon.

Getting ready to start putting some seeds into the mini greenhouse this week, and I'll be making my spring seed order soon as well. I have a few new weird vegetables I want to try this year, I'll post a description of them soon.

Winter is still throwing it's last gasps at us, it's been a crazy one. The nearest city to us, West Bend, has now certified this winter as having the most snowfall since they began keeping weather records. I'm glad we spent the money for a new transmission for the plow truck last summer.

Keep checking back,I promise I'll be posting more often again now. Think Spring!

It's March already?

2008-03-12T10:52:00.002-05:00

I guess we are starting to see some signs of spring. We've had two days in a row now of temperatures above freezing, so that is a start. We have received over 8 feet of snow on the farm this winter, so spring is being eagerly anticipated.

Pretty soon it will be time to start some seeds inside, I wil have to look back in the archives and check out my garden planner to see exactly when I have started in the past.

Here's to an early spring!

Winter update

2008-01-30T10:51:00.001-06:00

Just to add a bit of information to the previous post, we just had one of the more dramatic weather swings that I can remember. We had a nice little break from the weather and it warmed up into the 40s on Monday, continuing into yesterday. Yesterday evening that all changed...

It was 46° at 3pm yesterday, this morning at 7am it was -12°, and the windchill was between -30° and -35°.

The wind was blowing so hard last night that it was just a constant roaring hummm. Luckily for us, the pioneers that built our house put it in a good spot, sheltered from the prevailing winter winds by the hill. Somewhere along the way another owner planted a small windbreak of pine trees, which also helps a lot. I think I'd like to extend that windbreak a bit this summer by planting some more pines. I may not be around to enjoy the benefits of it, but someday a future owner might thank me.

A REAL winter

2008-01-25T13:08:00.000-06:00

We are having a real Wisconsin-style winter this year, just like the ones I used to know ( to coin a phrase). The temperature has been pretty consistently below zero every day this week, and on Monday we received a little over 14" of snow in about 10 hours. Other than an early January thaw, we have had cold and snow since right around Thanksgiving.

I think we are going to get out and enjoy some of this snow tomorrow and go skiing at Sunburst, which is a ski hill right down the road from us. It's isn't exactly Summit County Colorado, but it's close and it's better than nothing.

Absolutely nothing is happenning in farm news, other than I might try to get some cleaning and organizing done out in the barn this weekend. My tools seem to be spreading themselves out and I spend more time looking for tools and hardware than I do actually fixing anything. If I get that done, I'll try to get out on Lake Twelve for some "hard-water" fishing on Sunday.

Happy New Year

2008-01-21T10:18:00.000-06:00

I realize I have all but abandoned the blog since the last frost, sorry about that!

We are now in the planning stages for next year and there are going to be some dramatic changes in our approach.

Perhaps the most noticeable change will be the lack of livestock. We won't be raising any animals in 2008. As much as we enjoy our farm-raised meat and eggs, we need to take a summer off and take care of some much needed maintenance. It will also be nice to be able to leave the farm for a weekend if we desire and not have to worry about the critters! I wil definitely miss our pasture-raised pork, hopefully we can find a local farmer to buy some from. Grocery store pork just doesn't taste right anymore.

There will also probably be some big changes in the garden. Right now I am thinking about dedicating 6 of the 10 garden beds for Nikki and I, and then growing just 3 varieties of vegetable in the remaining 4. As much as we enjoyed doing the GardenShare program this year, it was occasionally nerve-wracking. I would like to concentrate on just a few vegetables grown for sale to local restaurants and co-ops, much like we did with our grapes back in '05.

Other plans for 2008 include having a couple big parties out at the farm. We hope to have at least 2 shindigs this summer, or perhaps even a hootenanny! We'll keep you informed, so make sure your tent is ready to go!

First frost

2007-10-29T14:14:00.000-05:00

We had the first substantial frost of the fall on Saturday. I rescued a peck of tomatoes and enough other veggies to fill a beer case, so that will be the end of the season.

I think I will not bother with sweet potatoes next year, they just aren't meant to be grown this far north. Out of 25 plants set out, I ended up with one decent sized sweet potato that wasn't munched on by moles or mice or whatever it was that ate the ends off of them. Even counting the munched-on ones I ended up with less than a handful. I have learned how to grow your own sweet potato sprouts, so if I do grow them again I will do it that way.

I think all of the turkeys are sold for Thanksgiving, I haven't done a very good job of keeping my paperwork on them in order this year. I will have to sit and chart out all those who ordered them. if you ordered a turkey , email me and tell me so, just in case.

Not much else going on. I have been interviewing for different jobs, since I have serious doubts about the future of the little Milwaukee brewery in the face of the Miller/ Coors merger. There are some great companies out there and I am hoping for an exciting new career.

Cheers!

He's still missing...

2007-10-17T11:17:00.000-05:00

No, I have not gone officially missing , and I have not spent the last month looking for the missing duck. But there has been no sign of him, he must have flown south on us.

We got the pigs back from Kewaskum Foods on September 19th and quickly got them distributed to our customers. We have received rave reviews from all parties, I believe they are even tastier than last year's. I have had many home-grown BLTs already.

Speaking of BLTs , the garden is still going strong and we have lots of late-season produce that I need to do a better job of harvesting and taking care of.

It has been a lot of fun this summer as we have more and more meals that consist mostly of food that we have grown ourselves. Our grocery shopping now usually just means picking up some milk and fruit, with a few staples every now and then.

Not much else new, I'll try to do a better job of updating this month.

The Case of the Missing Duck

2007-09-17T05:51:00.000-05:00

Last week Thursday I got home from work and decided to feed and water the birds, when I noted something amiss...

One of our ducks was missing! It was the drake Blue Swedish, the two hens were still sitting in their normal spot next to the stable. I started walking around the farm looking for the duck or for a bunch of feathers indicating that something had snatched it up for lunch.

I combed the place and couldn't find anything, no duck, no feathers, no nothing. Nikki had seen a yellow lab in our yard the week before, so my working hypothesis was that someone's dog had nabbed it. Nikki and I went up to Chippewa Falls this weekend, so before we left I set up my motion-activated deer scouting camera on the fence near the duck's wading pool hoping to get some photographic evidence.

My sister-in-law Jackie took care of the farm in our absence and had some further information on our return. On Saturday afternoon she saw 4 large dogs down by our woodshed, which is where I killed the chickens the weekend before. My guess is that it was these dogs that grabbed one of my ducks. The scouting camera was full of pictures, so I am going to get those developed tomorrow. It will probably just show our dog, Cash, running around, but maybe I'll get lucky.

Hearing that we have 4 dogs running around together in the neighborhood is a little worrying, I don't know if they are from an area farm or if they are wild dogs in a small pack. I hope to see them myself soon so that I can see if they have collars or if they are obviously feral.

Wow, it's been a while

2007-09-10T11:44:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't updated the weblog in so long. Let's see, what is there to report?

The Garden Share program was nearly a complete success, the last week got cut off due to severe punishment from Ma Nature. We had a month of heat and drought, followed by 2 weeks of non-stop rain. Between the weeds and the slugs the garden took a beating and we just didn't have enough stuff to put together a box on the last week. I probably could have assembled enough produce to make it, but it would have been pretty sorry looking. We are nearly recovered now, the late cauliflower and broccoli are getting ready to harvest and there a few other late season veggies around. I've got 13 qts of tomatoes and 7 of salsa in the root cellar already, and hope to get 5-10 quarts of tomato sauce put up before too long.

The chickens, ducks and turkeys are doing well. I sent 4 chickens to freezer camp on Saturday, was hoping to get 8 done, but the hornets found me and so I quit after 4. Some of them were still a a little small anyway. Really big drumsticks on them, though.

The big news is that we took the pigs to the butcher this morning. It was a lot of work getting them into the truck, I ended up taking them in two trips. Pepper, which is the pig Nikki and I are keeping for ourselves was by far the biggest, weighing in at a whopping 280 pounds! She gave me a hell of whallop when I was loading them up, I was closing the tailgate of the pickup when she gave it a mighty shove that sent me flying about 4 feet backwards onto the ground, then she had the nerve to stomp on me as she jumped off the truck. I also had to basically pick up Apple and throw her into the truck because she would not climb the ramp for a bribe of any type. Moving 236 lbs of wriggling pig is a bit of a chore. So I am little bruised and battered, but the job is done.

I will be picking up boxes and boxes and boxes of pork on Wednesday September 19th for all of you that ordered a pastured pork half. I will be emailing all of you that information as well as what it's gonna cost you to get some meat.

Cheers!

Garden lessons for '08

2007-08-18T22:53:00.000-05:00

Here are the things I have learned so far from this years' garden that should be applied to next year.

- You CAN plant sweet corn too close together
- Grow more potatoes
- One zucchini plant is enough. Really. Even when you are selling produce. I mean it!
- Mr. Stripey tomatoes are fairly tasteless and they crack.
- Grow more Brandywine tomatoes
- Did I mention that you should grow more potatoes?
- Stagger plantings of cauliflower, no one knows what to do with 15 heads of cauliflower
- German Yellow tomatoes are very susceptible to Blossom End Rot
- Don't plant your pumpkins in May unless you want pumpkin soup in August
- You go through more carrots than you'd think
- 18 square feet of chard is enough chard to supply yourself and the 3 neighboring counties all summer
- Same thing with salad greens
- Those fingerling potatoes are really quite amazing

Lost post!

2007-08-15T13:53:00.001-05:00

I thought I had added this post a month ago, but I guess I didn't. I wrote this after having my first "all-farm BLT":

Wednesday was the day. The day I had been building up to the ;last 2 years, all of the preparations were in place, all of the hard work complete, my patience at last rewarded, it was time to enjoy the fruits of my labors.

As you remember, we raised a couple of pigs on pasture behind the barn last summer. I saved one package of bacon in the freezer from last year's pig for just this moment.

I calibrated the toaster with a few 'test slices" so that the toast would be the perfect tawny amber, a hearty crunch, but with a little 'give' to the center of the bread.

I walked up to the garden and selected a beautifully ripe Brandywine tomato, an heirloom variety with deep burgundy flesh, and nearly large enough for a single slice to cover the sandwich. It seemed heavy for it's size, an indication that it was at the peak of it's flavor. A small head of Buttercrunch lettuce, bright green against the faded gold of the straw mulch, joined the tomato on our trip back to the kitchen.

The bacon was laid into a cold cast iron skillet, and carefully monitored while cooking to perfection. It's double-smoked aroma filled the kitchen.

It was time. I assembled the ingredients, gave the sandwich a quick slice on the diagonal and dove in.Utter bliss permeated every cell of my body as I savored this sandwich, the most incredible combination of flavors known to man, and knew that each of it's principal ingredients came from within 300 yards of where I sat.

A funny fishing trip...

2007-08-06T09:38:00.000-05:00

This doesn't have much to do with the farm, but it was so funny that I have to share my fishing experience from yesterday.

I grabbed a 6 pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and the dog and loaded up my jon boat into the back of the farm truck and went down to this little lake near us that they just opened a public access for, just to see what it was like.

As I was putting the boat in the water , I noticed this ENORMOUS inflated thing on the beach on the south side of the lake. It was hugely huge, had to be at least 40 yards long and 15 feet high. This will come into the story later.

I fished along a weed line for about 30 minutes and had nothing so I rowed (no motorized boats allowed on the lake) over near a bunch of cattails. I caught a nice walleye and a couple of good sized bluegills over the course of about 40 minutes. Not too intense, it was turning into a nice relaxing afternoon, which is exactly what I was after.

All of a sudden about 50 kids come shouting and hollering down on that beach, they push this huge inflated thing out into the water underneath a tall diving board. Then they line up on the dock and start jumping on to this thing and bouncing off of it. They are making the most godawful racket and a lifeguard is constantly shouting at them through a bullhorn. My serenity wass destroyed, but I was still catching the occasional fish so I decided to tough it out for another half hour or so.

About the time I decided this, I reel in one of my two lines to cast it back nearer the cattails. I notice half the nightcrawler got nabbed, so I reel in the other line to cast it near the cattails and then I will change the crawler on line #1. As I am doing that, I hear a rattling in the front of the boat, I look over just in time to see fishing pole number one thrashing around and go over the side of the boat! That half a crawler was dangling in the water and a big old walleye nailed it and stole my fishing pole!

By this time I am just laughing like crazy, what else could go possibly wrong!? I decide to call it a day. I had some water in the boat that I wanted to bail out before I started rowing to shore, so I dump the fish from my bucket onto the floor of the boat so I can use the bucket to bail water. I'm bailing the water, watching the fish flop around in the boat, when the one really nice walleye that I caught, about 18", gives a tremendous heave and jumps back into the lake! I was laughing so hard I was crying.

To top it all off, as I was rowing back to the dock, Cash the dog decided he wanted to go for a swim so he jumped out of the boat and swam to shore. That gave me the opportunity to spend time with a soaking wet dog in the cab of the truck, and of course he wanted to lay his head on my leg while I was driving home!

Pork order forms are out!

2007-07-27T10:19:00.000-05:00

I emailed pork order forms to our customers today. If you ordered half a hog from us and didn't get a form, let me know!

Finally got some rain yesterday, we were getting awfully dry around here.Not much else has been going on. I had a rebuilt transmission put into Black Betty, the farm truck last week, so she's in fine shape to take the hogs to market. I found a GIANT squash in the garden of a variety that I don't even remember planting, it must have been one of the plants I picked up at the garden center when they were closing everything out. It's about as big as a basketball and growing.

Please get those forms back to us by the first week of September, we need to know how you want those pigs!

Canning season has begun!

2007-07-24T12:34:00.001-05:00

I started canning things that were otherwise going to go to waste this weekend. I did 4 pints of pickled beets, which were slightly disappointing. I used the Chioggia beets, which have great alternating bands of red and white, like a bulls eye, unfortunately 30 minutes in the canner cooked pretty much all of the color out of them. I also canned 6 quarts of spiced red cabbage relish. It smelled great when I was cooking the pickling liquid, lots of different spices in there including mustard seed, mace, coriander, allspice, and cloves.

I also started an experiment in homemade sauerkraut, about 12 pounds of cabbage went into it and it is trying to ferment down in the root cellar. This week I am also going to start a crock of pickles, there are starting to be enough of them to pick some every day. This year I will actually follow the recipe I have for pickles, since trying to "wing it" last year left us with jars full of tasteless flabby trash. I found a recipe for bread and butter zucchini pickles that I am considering trying, we have an awful lot of zucchini still!

The tomatoes are really starting to come in now, so far the Black Krims are my favorite. I still haven't made an "all-farm" BLT with the last of last year's bacon, but that might just change tonight. And no, I am not baking the bread myself, but I might make homemade mayonnaise.

What is a Garden Share?

2007-07-17T15:38:00.001-05:00

This is!

That's representative of the box our customers receive every Friday. The idea is that they pay a set amount in the spring for 10 weeks of boxes of produce from the garden, basically buying a "share" of the garden. This box is from 2 weeks ago. It included heirloom beets, cauliflower, banana peppers, broccoli, radishes, multi-colored carrots, zucchini, white onions, leeks, snap peas, a big box of salad greens, and baby red potatoes

In other news, Pepper the Pig decided to fall sick again on Sunday. She was stumbling around like she was drunk, and generally being uncoordinated. I figured out yesterday that she probably had an inner ear infection, so I used an old-time remedy and poured a capful of rubbing alcohol into each of her ears. I figured I would have to do that every day for 3 or 4 days but, incredibly, she was acting completely normal within 3 hours! A modern operation would have had that pig on a full course of penicillin for 2 weeks, or just culled her to save cost! I am a little tired of the drama from Pepper though, she had better be one delicious pig to make up for the hassle she has given me. Speaking of that, the appointment has been made and the pigs are going to the butcher September 10th.

An interesting morning

2007-07-09T11:50:00.000-05:00

The saga of Pepper the Pig continues...

Friday morning, I was enjoying a cup of coffee when I glanced out the window. "Hmmm", I thought, "That is a really big dog in our yard!"

It took about 3 seconds for the truth to fight through to my still caffeine-deprived brain "That's no dog, that's a PIG!" I shouted something incomprensible to Nikki, along the lines of "puh-PIG! Yard Help Loose!" Luckily it was enough to make her realize that something was wrong and she followed me out the door.

My first action was to run down to the pasture to see how many pigs had escaped. Luckily, the other three were contentedly grazing or lying in the mud. I closed the gate and began the pursuit of our escapee. It took a few tries and about 10 minutes, but eventually we got her back where she belonged. I can only imagine how tough it would have been to wrangle 4 of them, so we got very lucky there. Our friends Mark and Amy, who were visiting this weekend, found the whole scene very comical.

Not much new..

2007-07-03T12:08:00.000-05:00

Looks like I will not have any ripe tomatoes by the Fourth, dangit. They are not far off though.

The rest of the garden continues it's spectacular run, we've got too many snap peas to deal with right now. Soon we'll have bell peppers and some of the hot peppers are ready to pick now. Black raspberries are ripening and boy, are they sweet this year, best tasting crop we've had. I'd like to dig up a hill of red potatoes and see if there are any baby new potatoes yet, but I'm trying to be patient. Let's see how long that lasts! (Patience has not really ever been one of my strong suits, ask anyone that knows me.)

Those of you that ordered a 1/2 pig from us will be getting an order form in the mail, or by email, sometime this month. It is pretty self explanatory, but please contact us with any questions you have. That is why we are sending it out early, we want to make sure you get exactly what you want. If you do not receive it by the end of the month, let us know!

What else? I've got a full 5 gallon bucket of mulberries for my homemade wine, about 30lbs worth. That should be enough, along with 70lbs of grapes or so, to make a fair amount of wine. I have to look up some recipes.

Time for fencing

2007-06-27T09:36:00.000-05:00

I have been living on the edge so far this year, I keep putting off getting the garden fenced in. I need to get on that, because every time I go to the garden now it seems I am scaring out a rabbit. I will not let the rabbits get a tomato before I do! Last time I was at the garden center they were out of the fencing I wanted, I may have to order it or make do with something else.

I forgot to relate a small success from this weekend, I was helping Nikki in her herb and flower garden area when I noticed some feathery greens, I asked "Is this dill?" and she said "No, that's where you transplanted the asparagus". Apparently, it worked! That is good news, I had no confidence that it would grow at all. Now I think I will transplant some more.

Pepper the pig is better every day, you can't even tell she had a limp unless you look really closely.

As I said in the last post, we are overwhelmed with mulberries this year. Come out to the farm and pick a bucketful! This may be the year that I finally make some mulberry wine. I am thinking of mixing them with some of our blush grapes, using a Bordeaux yeast and aging it on French Oak staves. It could turn out pretty nice! At Ardwyn Farm we will serve no wine before it's time. Or until we are really thirsty, whichever comes first.

Pepper's "roller coaster" weekend

2007-06-25T08:27:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday I was on a big upswing after seeing Pepper recover from her illness and get her appetite back. Then Friday came. Everything was fine Friday morning, all the pigs were healthy and in fine fettle When I checked on them Friday afternoon, Pepper had developed a definite limp in her left rear leg. I was (probably overly) concerned and was sure she had any of 4 or 5 rare pig diseases or a broken leg. The limp was a little worse on Saturday, and on Sunday she wouldn't put any weight on it at all and pretty much laid in the barn all day. I was convinced it was a broken leg and resigned myself to making an appointment for her at the butcher shop this morning.

Well, I went out to feed the hogs this morning and there was Pepper, running around the pasture like there had never been anything wrong! She has the slightest hitch in her gait, but it looks like she might make a full recovery. What a relief, it really put me in good mood on a Monday morning.

I modified the pig's trough this weekend, and am much more pleased with version 2.0. It eliminates fighting and prevents them from actually climbing into the trough. I am going to draw up some plans and put them on a pig-raising website that I occasionally use, because there is always demand for an inexpensive feeder for the person that's only raising a few hogs.

Last Friday we had our first distribution of Garden Shares and they were very well received. Customers received the following in their 'baskets':
Broccoli
Kohlrabi
Heirloom Baby Beets
Swiss Chard
Romaine Lettuce
Sugar Snap Peas
Radishes
Mesclun Salad Greens
Thyme
Sage
Chives

I was hoping to include some mulberries, but there just weren't enough ripe ones to bother with. They will definitely be in this week's baskets. We have so many mulberries this year it is amazing.

Wow..

2007-06-21T12:50:00.000-05:00

I am amazed at how early and how quickly so many things are ripening and fruiting in the garden. I had to tie up heads of cauliflower yesterday, the first planting of kohlrabi is gone, there are 4-5" zucchinis already and even some acorn squash starting! There are at least 75 days untl the average first frost, so there is plenty of time to keep planting things, I just wish I had more seedlings to fill spaces with. I might have to hit the garden centers and buy their closeouts!

Pepper the Pig has been acting a bit lethargic and isn't eating well, I think she got a bad sunburn the other day and I hope that's what's bothering her. I'm keeping a close eye on her and will try taking her temperature this afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed that she pulls through!

Garden Shares start this week

2007-06-18T11:55:00.000-05:00

This week Friday will be the first weekly pick-up/delivery to our CSA subscribers. Payment for the full 10 weeks is due at that time.

It looks like it will be a fairly good selection, I was just reading a column in the local paper by a guy that got his first box last week. It sounded like it was pretty heavy on herbs on not much on fruits and vegetables, so I think we are on track to provide a good value to our customers.

The Great 4th of July Tomato Project experiment is in a questionable stage, there are plenty of tomatoes started, but it is unknown if any will be fully ripened by July 4. Nearly all of my tomato plants have started fruiting, much earlier than last year, so in any case it will be a longer BLT season.

I put in the last major planting of the year on Saturday, from this point on the only seed planting will be very short-season fill-in crops. I even planted a row of sweet corn, it probably won't mature in time, but I had the space and the seeds so I took a chance.

Before and after

2007-06-14T09:59:00.001-05:00

I can't remember the date this spring that the picture on the left was taken, but the one on the right was taken yesterday. You can see the 4-5' tall tomato plnts, carrots in the lower right, and giant onions on the upper right and lower left. More pictures are at the "Farm Pictures" link as promised.

Home again, home again

2007-06-13T10:38:00.000-05:00

Wow, you leave for 4 days and you can hardly recognize the place when you get home! The birds all doubled in size and suddenly I had beets and brocolli to harvest!

My trip to Colorado was one of the most physically demanding and mentally relaxing 4 days of my life. We hiked a total of nearly 13 miles at elevations betweeen 9000 and 11000 feet. The first mile of the hike into the wilderness area included an 1100 foot gain in elevation. I was ready to quit after the first 200 yards! But we pushed on, over the rocks and through the snowfields, and made it to the plateau. The weather was beautiful, a little frosty at night, but not intolerable. The fishing was excellent, we had an amazing trout dinner on Sunday evening.

I'll take some pictures of the birds and garden tonight and get them on the photobucket site tomorrow, I have been pretty lax about updating the pictures this year. Sorry!

Garden monsters

2007-06-06T09:55:00.000-05:00

To be perfectly honest, the garden is starting to frighten me. Everything is growing so well, I am certain that doom is right around the corner. Last night I had a dream that the neighbor's beef cattle got loose and ate everything in the garden.

We have sweet corn over a foot tall, tomato plants growing out of the tops of their cages,snap peas weighing down their supports, and cauliflower plants so big they are visible from space. Nikki and I have to eat a salad every night at dinner just to keep the various lettuces and greens in check. The only failure so far is the yukon gold potatoes. No sign of growth from them at all.

The pigs are getting really big and really annoying. I am going to start locking them in the barn while I prepare their feed and fill their water, otherwise they crowd around and squeal at you so much that you can't get anything done! The birds are all healthy, most of them are just getting their feathers, and the ducks seem to double in size every day.

Nikki is having a group of her girlfriends from college out to the farm this weekend, so I am getting kicked out of the house. I can't complain though, I am attending a Chili Cookoff/ Microbrew Festival/ Bluegrass fest in Snowmass, Colorado on Friday. Three of my greatest loves in one big festival! Then two friends and I are heading out to the Flat Tops Wilderness Area for 3 days of backpacking and trout fishing at 10,000 feet, in some of the most beautiful scenery in the U.S. I'll get kicked out anytime for a vacation like that!

They're here!

2007-05-25T08:37:00.001-05:00

We got our turkeys yesterday, and our chickens and ducks this morning. Over there on the left is one of the turkey poults, sorry it's a little blurry.

When they ship the chicks there have to be a certain number of birds in each box to provide warmth. If there aren't enough, the hatchery will add random chicks (usually roosters) to the box to make up the minimum number. Some poultry raisers call these free additional birds "packing peanuts". Ideal Hatchery is apparently very generous with their "packing peanuts", because they included TEN mystery chicks in with our order of turkeys! They are all identical yellow fuzz-bodies except for one that has a slightly narrower head. It will be interesting to see what breed they end up being.

space

The problem is that we were not expecting to nearly double our chicken order, so if anyone out there wants a couple of mystery chicks, they are for sale, cheep! (sorry)

space

All of the birds look healthy so far and they are very active and never stop eating, so I have high hopes that they will all survive. If you want to come visit and see some very cute baby birds, come on out to the farm!

Oops, wrong day!

2007-05-23T12:36:00.000-05:00

Nikki and I were pretty certain today was the day we were going to get our birds, so we got everything organized last night and I set the alarm so I would be up and dressed when the post office called.

Turns out we were wrong. Today was the shipping date, so we should get them tomorrow. Oops!

In other news, I am beginning to wonder if weathermen are intentionally messing with me. I think they must be, otherwise why was I standing in the garden this morning watering in the middle of a rain shower?

First salad of 2007

2007-05-21T17:21:00.000-05:00

Tonight we're having the first salad from the garden this year. I picked a double handful of various lettuces, chard, radishes, and a couple of green onions. I can't wait. We'll also have a side dish of asparagus from the yard. I'll have to look back at the archives and see what the date was for last year's first salad.

I breathed a sigh of relief yesterday when I finally spotted some potato vines beginning to appear. I was starting to think they were all duds. So far only the red potatoes are up, I hope the others follow soon.
I got the second plantings of carrots, sweet corn, radishes, beets, chard, salad greens, and peas in yesterday. I also planted cucumbers and green beans.

Saturday we spent with family at my niece's first birthday party. It was nice to see a lot of family we hadn't seen in a while, we had a great time and my niece is, of course, the cutest one year old on earth.

Dodged a bullet!

2007-05-18T09:57:00.001-05:00

Looks like we dodged a bullet last night. The weathermen on TV were doom-and-glooming about a frost advisory for the entire state, I wasn't too concerned as it was 60°F at 6pm, but I covered everything delicate before going to bed, just to be safe. Turns out it wasn't needed, I don't think it dropped below 40°. That ought to be the last time I have to worry about it at all, I hope!

The garden looks great, I can't believe how far I am ahead of last year. I already have the first planting of corn sprouting and have squash plants at 5-6". Sunday I'll be planting cukes, beans, and new blocks of radishes, beets, carrots, and chard. I tried transplanting some of our wild asparagus to a spot where maybe it will grow a little bit better than it does by the pine trees. All we get there is stalks thinner than a pencil.

The birds arrive next week, have to remember to call the post office on Monday and warn them that they'll be getting a noisy package for us,

A new trough

2007-05-13T13:54:00.000-05:00

The big rubber bowl we were using to feed the pigs just wasn't cutting it. They were getting too big and were fighting with each other too much. I decided a new trough was in order, where they could eat peacefully. Here it is on it's trial run. They are still a little too short to just stand next to it, so I may remove the top board on the near side. That way they won't have to climb in to eat from it. Anyway, it seems to work, and I built it with scrap lumber I had around, so it didn't cost me anything.

The garden is still doing well, my luck seems to be holding with the weather. Still no frosts in the forecast, but it may dip into the upper 30's on Thursday night. I think I'm safe.

Happy Mothers' Day to all you moms out there, have a great day!

Garden List 2007

2007-05-09T09:16:00.000-05:00

I think I have everything that's in the garden on the list , but I'm not 100% sure. If I missed anything I'll add it in later.

Acorn squash
Banana pepper
Beets
Black Krim tomatoes
Bloody Butcher tomatoes
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Butter & Cream Sweet Corn
Buttercup squash
Butternut squash
Cabbage
Cantaloupe
Carrots
Cauliflower
Cayenne pepper
Celebrity tomatoes
Checkered Sweet Corn
Cherry tomatoes
Chioggia beets
Cucumbers
Fingerling potatoes
Green beans
Green Bell pepper
Habanero pepper
Holy Mole' pepper
Iceberg lettuce
Jubilee tomatoes
Kohlrabi
Leaf lettuce
Leeks
Mesclun salad greens
Mr. Stripey tomatoes
Old German Orange tomatoes
Peas
Pumpkin
Purple Bell pepper
Radicchio
Radishes
Red Bell Pepper
Red cabbage
Red onion
Red potatoes
Rhubarb
Roma tomato
Russet potatoes
Snap peas
Summer squash
Sweet Potatoes
Swiss Chard
White onion
Wisconsin 55 tomatoes
Yellow beets
Yellow Bell pepper
Yellow Onion
Yellow Pear tomatoes
Yukon gold potatoes
Zucchini

Taking a chance

2007-05-08T09:28:00.000-05:00

April 30th is our traditional date of last frost for our area, but last year we had a heavy frost on May 12th.

I've looked at the extended forecast and it doesn't look like we have any future danger of frost, so yesterday I took a chance. I put nearly all of the tomato and pepper transplants in the ground, and planted pumpkins, squash, zucchini, and 2 rows of sweet corn. Now I have to keep my fingers crossed until about Memorial Day.

Not much else is new, the pigs are getting bigger, they are getting used to us now and will walk right up to us at feeding time. Soon they will start getting demanding. The ducklings, chicks, and poults will be arriving May 23rd.

Planting by the signs

2007-05-02T09:15:00.000-05:00

I finally got my order of potatoes and onions yesterday.

I had decided that I would follow folk wisdom and plant my belowground crops in the dark of the moon, and sure enough I get my potatoes the day before a full moon. So the potatoes went onto trays and into the fridge out in the barn, awaiting more propitious circumstances. The onions we planted after supper, they were looking a little wilted and I didn't want to risk damaging or losing them.

Those of you that know me, know that I consider the scientific method the greatest achievement of man. And that I consider astrology to be beneath contempt. So why am I following dated, semi-astrological beliefs about planting belowground crops in the dark of the moon? I guess it's because I am not so foolish as to believe that there there may not be a reason that we just have not discovered yet. It seems to me that people that depended on the vegetables they planted for survival were probably more in touch with the ground that they worked and the plants they tended than we are today. If planting by the signs was good enough for them, I am not going to immediately discount it.

Since I do trust the scientific method, I am going to plant just a few of the seed potatoes today, on the day of a full moon. It may turn out to be an interesting experiment. Stay tuned!

More planting...

2007-04-30T08:48:00.000-05:00

We had another beautiful weekend, weather wise and I took advantage of it by putting all of the cole plants into the garden yesterday. I put in cabbage, red cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and leeks.

I tilled up an area adjacent to the garden, about 16' x 20' for Nikki yesterday and she is planning a big flower garden, she got some of it planted yesterday, other seeds need to wait until there is no danger of frost.

The Great Tomato Experiment is a 50% success. The two plants in the garden are thriving inside their Wall O' Waters and have turned from sickly yellow to the deep dark green that a tomato plant should be. They are 12-15" tall and once they grow just a little bit more I am going to let them blossom, with the goal of eating a ripe garden tomato in June. The cuttings haven't shown much vigor, but I haven't completely given up on them.

The pigs are growing by leaps, and they are always hungry. I am going to have to build a new trough for them because the giant rubber bowl I've been using is getting to be too small for all four to eat at once without fighting.

Still havent gotten seed my potatoes and I am starting to get anxious. I wanted potatoes in the ground 2 weeks ago. I will have to start being a squeaky wheel, I guess.

Optimism

2007-04-22T16:00:00.000-05:00

Someone once said that a gardener is an eternal optimist, and I think that's true. I stopped at Home Depot the other day to buy a garden hose and saw that they had 12" tall potted tomato plants for sale already. Now THAT is optimism!

But since they were cheap, and I found a pot that had two plants in it which made it even cheaper, I decided to take a chance. I bought Mr. Stripey tomato plants, an heirloom variety that is very popular in New England.
On Friday I set up a couple of Wall o' Waters in one of the beds to get the soil warmed up. Saturday I cut off all of the branches on the first 3/4 of the plants and planted them in starting medium, trying to get even more plants out of my purchase. Today I planted the original plants inside the Wall O' Waters, with most of the stem underground to develop into roots.

I have no idea if any of the cuttings or the mother plants will survive, but if they do I should have tomatoes at least 2 weeks earlier than I had anticipated. I am optimistic!

4 rods of strawberries

2007-04-20T09:51:00.000-05:00

Because I am a dork, I get a kick out of using archaic language. I recently learned that a 'rod' is 16 1/2 feet, which is pretty close to the length of my garden beds (additionally they are a fathom wide, although that term is usually reserved for water depth). So Nikki and I planted 4 rods of strawberries yesterday, about 70 plants.

We planted a mix of Junebearing and everbearing strawberries, I'm not sure if we will see any berries from the Junebearing plants this year, but I hope there are some from the everbearers.

I am really hoping I get my potatoes and onions soon, it's time to get them in the ground. The seed company is supposed to send them at the proper time for planting, I might give them a call and see when they are planning on getting them to me.

More critters on the way!

2007-04-17T16:29:00.000-05:00

We have completed our order for birds this year. It turns out McMurray Hatchery wasn't going to be able to help us out this year because our order was too small for their minimums.

Luckily the folks at Ideal Hatchery were able to work with us and we got exactly what we wanted. Our chicks should arrive sometime around May 21st.

Last year we raised a mixed flock of heritage-breed turkeys, this year we are raising all one breed. They are called Narragansett turkeys and are an official heritage breed. Here's the official description :

"The Narragansett turkey is named for Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, where the variety was developed. It descends from a cross between native Eastern Wild turkeys and the domestic turkeys (probably Norfolk Blacks) brought to America by English and European colonists beginning in the 1600’s. he Narragansett variety is similar in color to the Bronze breed, though it is lighter in color and in build. Narragansett turkeys are gray or dull black with a white bar on the wing feathers. The beak is horn colored, and the head is red to bluish white. "

We are also raising "meat" chickens, as opposed to "egg" chickens. Nikki chose to raise Black Broilers because they grow fast, but not as fast as some of the meat birds that grow so fast that they can't walk.

And finally, which will be a huge surprise to you faithful readers who remember my experience last year, we ordered ducks. However, we only ordered four of them. I was able to deal with having three ducks for a few months last year, so I think I can handle four. It was just that when we had nine of them it was too much. We ordered Blue Swedish Ducks, which look very pretty in the pictures, and they should look nice wandering the yard.

Now I am off to get planting in the garden. Cheers!

New Arrivals

2007-04-16T21:49:00.000-05:00

Saturday brought two deliveries to the farm.

The first was our four new pigs from Jack and Lori Krell, owners of Organic Jack's in Hartford. The pigs are posing in the picture above.

The pigs look great and they were definitely ready to be put on pasture. They have done nothing but root in the dirt and sleep since they got here. They even (mostly) ignore the trough of feed left out for them, preferring to dig in the dirt.

The second delivery was 9 cubic yards of composted manure.

I finished digging out the walkways between the garden beds on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, then moved the compost up the hill to the garden using a dump cart and my John Deere. I could be very happy if I don't see a shovel anytime in the next 2 months or so. All of that work was worth it, though. The soil in the beds looks and smells great. Rich, black and stinky, I hope our plants will thrive in it.

I was worried about being behind last year's garden pace, but there was nothing I could do about the weather. Saturday and Sunday were both beautiful sunny days with temperatures in the 50s, good shoveling weather! With a few days of hard work I am nearly caught up. I got all the compost rototilled and mixed with the dirt today when I got home from work and I should be ready to plant seeds tomorrow, only 2 days behind last year's planting date!

What the heck?

2007-04-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

I guess I won't be getting the garden in on Sunday after all, since we got about 7" of fresh snow yesterday! The snow should be gone by then, but I think it will still be way too wet to do anything.

Yesterday was no fun. The roads were terrible and I had to lay in the snow and put the plow back on the farm truck. My break-away mailbox design worked really well when (as usual) the snow plow hit it, but I was hoping to not have to replace the shearpin until next year. Oh well, I guess that is spring in Wisconsin.

Last Saturday was a great time, we had a a bunch of family and friends over for an early Easter feast. We cooked the whole ham we had prepared from our big pig last year, it weighed nineteen pounds and took five and a half hours to cook! I checked the cooking chart in one of my cookbooks and it only had hams up to fourteen pounds, so ours was literally "off the charts".

And now, drum roll please, the results of the voting for the pigs' names for 2007. The winner is..... Jackie, with the names Hickory, Maple, Apple, and Smoke. Second place went to Eenie, Meanie, Miney, Moe. For all of you complainers, Nikki did NOT win, she merely posted her sister's entry. A big "thank you" to all that participated!

We'll get the pigs on Saturday, we should have pictures up by Sunday. Cheers!

New logo

2007-04-04T12:50:00.000-05:00

You can see we've got a new logo over there to the right. Ardwyn Farm is officially Certified Naturally Grown now, so we can use the symbol here on the blog.

There is not much new to report, the weather has turned cold again briefly, but it can't last forever. All of the coops, pens, enclosures, etc., have been cleaned , repaired, and prepared for their new tenants. Not long now before the pigs arrive and we'll get the turkeys a little earlier this year in order to give them some more time to grow.

Depending on weather and if the ground ever gets a chance to dry out, I'm hoping to put a lot of seeds in the garden on April 15th. That's the same day I started most things last year and it worked out just fine.

Getting things together

2007-03-26T09:13:00.000-05:00

I got all of the garden bed boxes finished on Saturday, and got started on shovelling the topsoil from the walkways into the beds. I couldn't believe the number of nightcrawlers and earthworms in that soil, every spadeful had about 10-20 worms in it. That's a good sign, I think. I'll take some pictures of the setup this week and get them posted here.

We went to the Krell farm yesterday to pick out our pigs for this year. We found four gilts with black-spotted rumps that look pretty good. Jack will be delivering them on April 14th, so we'll have a bit of a headstart on last year. I think we should have a contest to name them this year, the winner gets 2 pounds of bacon in October. All ideas are welcome.

All of the seedlings indoors are in good shape, the peppers are just now sprouting. My tomatoes are about 90% sprouted, as is the cabbage.

Starting the garden 2007

2007-03-16T17:21:00.000-05:00

In the past week I've got my mini-greenhouses started. We now have seeds from 7 varieties of tomato and 5 of hot peppers started, as well as cabbage and broccoli. I might be starting a little bit early, but I think I'll be okay.

I don't think I need to start anything else inside, most of the other seeds will be sown in the garden just about a month from now. I hope to have all of the raised beds finished this weekend and then I'll start working in the compost.

Not much else happening. We have decided to have four pigs this year after all. I need to get to the feed mill and see when the owner is going to start ordering birds, I'd like to get the turkeys about 2 weeks sooner than we did last year. I also need to ask how much more feed prices are looking to be this year, corn prices are sky high with so much of it being used to make ethanol.

The latest..

2007-03-08T12:49:00.000-06:00

It looks like we'll be getting some above-freezing temperatures soon. That will be a welcome change, I'm getting a bit tired of winter.

I have been reviewing my gardening calendar and prepering to start some seeds indoors. I have a little better plan this year, I think, and should see an increase in the viability of my seedlings. Speaking of the garden, it looks like we have probably sold all of our CSA shares, now I just need to make sure we have plenty of veggies for our customers! I am not too concerned though, as I feel I was very conservative in estimating the number of customers we could support.

The number of pigs we will be purchasing seems to be up in the air again, as Nikki and I were comparing notes the other day and it looks like we already have 3.5 pigs spoken for in the fall! So we will have to sit down and talk about exactly what we want to do. We raised 2 hogs pretty easily, but unless my math is off, 4 pigs would be twice the work.

I had a phone conversation with a representative of Naturally Grown, and after a short interview, they agreed to proceed with our certification. We'll have an inspection sometime and then things should be complete. I'll add a link to them soon.

2007 seed orders are in!

2007-02-28T15:31:00.000-06:00

I placed our order with Jung Seeds on Monday. Looks like we will have plenty of potatoes and onions this year, we'll be getting 225 onion sets and 4 different kinds of potatoes. I also ordered buttercup squash, 2 kinds of sweet potatoes, snap peas, swiss chard, and a mix of lettuces. All of the other seeds will come from leftovers from last year's order and saved seeds. I can't wait to get back out there in the dirt, it will be a while though.

More bad weather on the way, we got about 20" of snow last weekend and they are forecasting 2-4" of slush for tonight, which sounds dreadful. 4" of slush? Yuck!

Not much else happening. Have to start making calls about getting some feeder pigs and getting some horse manure and topsoil delivered for the garden beds soon.

Shoulda checked the forecast..

2007-02-24T15:58:00.000-06:00

I guess I shouldn't have said anything about the weather, because we are currently under a blizzard warning. Nikki is up north for the weekend, involved in a program called Becoming an Outdoorswoman. They are going to teach her how to tie flies, ice fish, shoot a bow and other outdoorsy stuff, I hope the weather isn't too terrible up there and that she can make it home safely. I have already plowed the driveway twice, just trying to keep up with the drifting, and we are supposed to get another 12-20 inches of snow tonight and into tomorrow.

In other news, I have completed the application for our farm to become Certified Naturally Grown. It's along the same lines as being Certified Organic, with the same requirements for decent treatment of animals and no use of drugs or hormones, it just has somewhat less stringent rules on feed. It will be nice to get the certification, I don't know exactly what use it will be other than to reassure our customers.

Some editing of the previous post, we are now thinking of maybe only raising 3 hogs this year and seeing how much more work it is than 2 were. Also, I forgot to mention that I think we are going to raise a few pheasants this year as well.

Hope everyone is keeping safe and warm, Cheers!

Winter survival

2007-02-22T10:33:00.000-06:00

Well it looks like we have made it through (hopefully) the worst of the winter. We had about 25 days in a row of sub-freezing and sub-zero temperatures, but things have warmed nicely the last week or so. The warmer weather, along with a second surge of gardening catalogs, have me thinking spring but that is still a good stretch away.

We are starting to put together our garden and livestock plans for 2007. Right now the plan is to get 4 pigs, 10-12 turkeys, and half a dozen or so meat chickens. If the chickens are worth it we may raise them all summer, we shall see.

The garden will, in theory, provide at least twice as much produce as last year and we'll be experimenting with some new varieties and some different companion plantings. Some of the new vegetables this year will be red potatoes, sweet potatoes, swiss chard, a strange Peruvian hot pepper, and some new herbs. We will most likely not plant soybeans again this year,except as a cover crop.

Now that spring is approaching, you can look for more timely updates to the blog. Thanks to all of our faithful readers!

Hello again!

2007-01-05T10:05:00.000-06:00

It has been a VERY long time since I updatedthe blog, but things are pretty slow in the winter. Here's the skinny:

1) No more critters. All of the livestock is now gone from the farm and is in the freezer.

2) Unseasonable warmth! The weather is unbelievable, it has been in the low 50s this week and I can't remember the last time it was below freezing in the daytime.

3) New garden. I have been taking advantage of the warm weather to get a head start on next year's garden. I have begun building garden beds out of pressure-treated 2x8s. The beds are 16'x 6' and we will have 10 of them, with 3' pathways between. Hopefully this will cut down on the weeding and increase the productivity of the garden.

4)Vacation! Nikki and I had a wonderful 4-day vacation over New Year's in Door County, WI. We stayed at a nice B&B, ate great meals every day, and we both jumped in Lake Michigan on New Year's Day with the Jacksonport Polar Bear Club. The lake temperature was 38°, it was bracing!

That's about all I can think of, hope everyone had a great holiday season.

Cold..

2006-11-30T13:10:00.000-06:00

The cold weather moved in today, ending what was a pretty nice November. I got to go deer hunting last weekend at my great-uncle Don's and shot a fair-sized doe on saturday morning, I got it all butchered on Sunday night as soon as I got home and spent Monday evening grinding hamburger. We ended up with just about 10 lbs worth. I'll be taking another 10-12 lbs of trimmings in to Saukvile to get some hot sticks made. The rest is steaks and roasts.

We have gotten some more good feedback on the turkeys from some of our customers, which we were glad to hear.

I forgot to mention a few weeks back that one of the ducks did finally lay some eggs, I got a grand total of three eggs. That was fine because I really just wanted to see how they tasted. I thought they were good, just a bit richer than a chicken egg. The first egg had 2 yolks, so that was a nice surprise.

A success!

2006-11-24T11:59:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note to say that our turkey turned out great and I hope everyone else's did too. I ended up cooking him on the grill as he was just too big for the oven. I took about 4 hours for our turkey and I threw some fresh cut applewood on the grill to give it a little bit of smoke flavor

We got lots of compliments on the bird, so I am happy. Tasting was the last component of the decision whether or not to raise them again next year, so it looks like turkeys will be back.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-22T16:41:00.000-06:00

Well, Sunday was doomsday for 5 of the turkeys, 4 of them have been delivered to their purchasers and we are going to eat the 5th tomorrow. I sure hope they taste good, everyone is very excited about having a farm-raised turkey for Thanksgiving. I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't be good, but I'm nervous just the same, I want our customers to be happy.

It was pretty rough killing the turkeys. I had definitely grown to like them over the past 5-6 months, but it had to be done, and unfortunately I was the one that had to do it. The remaining turkeys didn't make it any easier on me, they spent the whole day calling for their missing buddies, it was depressing.

I got a call today from Outpost Natural Foods, an organic supermarket chain in the area, asking if we would be able to supply them with any ducks for the Christmas season, I have no idea if they would be interested in the 3 that we have left, but I'll give them a call back on Friday and find out. Our LocalHarvet listing has gotten us more attention than I anticipated. It's a great resource for a small-scale operation like ours.

Hope everyone has a great Turkey Day and I sure hope our customers are pleased with their birds!

Testing, testing, is this thing on?

2006-11-13T19:16:00.000-06:00

Hello faithful readers, sorry it has been so long since I wrote anything but the truth is there hasn't been much to tell.

We have received excellent feedback from all of our customers about our pork, and we agree. I think we have had every cut at least once already and we couldn't be happier with how the meat turned out. Kewaskum did a great job in processing and packaging everything, too. Next year we will probably not be offering 1/4 pig packages, unfortunately, because it became difficult to get everything cut to the cutomer's specifications. Next year it will most likely be 1/2 pigs only.

This weekend I'll be processing all of our turkeys, except for two that are getting a reprieve and will probably be heading to a petting zoo in northern Illinois of all things! I think it's nice that they'll have a chance at a long life, even if they will probably have kids yelling at them most of the time.

Weather-wise we had about 3 inches of snow and sleet fall on Friday afternoon, so I got my first chance to use my plow truck. It worked great, took me about 20 minutes to get the whole drive cleared off.

I'll most likely miss the opening of deer season this weekend, because I'll be at home butchering turkeys, but going second weekend is looking pretty promising. I'll be happy just to get a nice doe like last year.

The pigs have returned

2006-10-19T07:23:00.000-05:00

I went and picked up our pork yesterday from Kewaskum Frozen Foods, you can see the spread here. The picture doesn't include the bacon or hams that were in boxes on the floor, that's quite a bit of meat! Kewaskum did a great job, everything looks really good. The only mistake they made was they gave me all of my cased sausage as brats instead of half brats, half smoked sausage. Not that big of a deal really.

Thanks again to everyone that ordered from us, I think you will be pleased with your purchase, I know I am!

Anyone that didn't have the freezer space to order 1/4 or 1/2 of a pig, you still have a chance at some pastured pork. We have a very small amount of bacon, pork chops, pork steaks, and roasts available. Check out our Local Harvest page for more info if you are interested.

Not much else is going on at the farm. Turkey orders are still coming in, we're getting close to having them all sold. The weather is rotten again this week, cold and rainy and useless. I have training this weekend for the Washington County CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) and on Sunday we're heading up to Oshkosh to celebrate all of our October birthdays. I'm hoping to get some duck and pheasant hunting in at some point this fall, cross your fingers for me.

SNOW!

2006-10-13T09:53:00.000-05:00

I think I mentioned a month ago or so that it seemed like the doves and starlings were flocking up earlier than usual, and wondered if that meant we were going to have an early winter. It looks like that is indeed what has come to pass. We had a hard freeze on Wednesday night and woke up to a dusting of snow on Thursday morning. I don't think we got much over 35° yesterday and it's only supposed to be mid-40s today. I sure wasn't planing on running the furnace this early in the year, I hope we can get a company to come and replace the chimney pipe for our woodstove soon, none of them seem to be in too big a hurry to get back to us, though.

I harvested every tomato out of the garden Wed. afternoon, we'll see how many of them we can get to ripen indoors, also brought in all of the peppers and anything else that was still out there, just a few small zucchinis and a butternut squash. I left the carrots and parsnips in the ground and just covered them with some straw, apparently they will store in the ground just fine and we can just dig them up as we need them. I have no idea if it will actually work, but we'll see.

I had a fun 30 minutes or so on Wednesday evening. I went to go throw some more straw in the turkey pen and must not have latched the door behind me. When I started spreading straw the turkeys freaked out, as usual, and a few of them must have pushed the door open. So I suddenly had 6 turkeys walking all over the yard. With Nikki's help I got them all rounded up and back inside, but it took some effort!.

This little piggy went to market

2006-10-09T09:40:00.000-05:00

Nikki and I pulled, pushed, shoved, wrestled and otherwise over-exerted ourselves, but we managed to get both hogs in the back of the truck this morning and I got them to Kewaskum Frozen Foods without incident.

We did really well with these piggies. My target was to get them to 220-240lbs in 6 months and we succeeded. Breakfast weighed in at 253 lbs and Lunch was 218 lbs when they were weighed this morning. They didn't seem to mind taking a ride in the back of a pickup, they were calm the whole way.

We'll be picking up the pork on October 18th, so we'll try to get everyone's orders to them on the 19th and 20th. Thanks to everyone that ordered pasture-raised pork from us, we really appreciate your business. Those that didn't get a chance to order this year, we'll probably have 3 pigs next year, so please keep us in mind.

Playing catch-up

2006-10-04T13:49:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't written in a while, but life has been pretty routine on the farm lately.

Nikki and I got away last weekend to attend a friends' wedding in Chicago, we think it was the first weekend away from the farm we had together all summer, so that was nice. We stayed at a great hotel in Oak Park and had a wonderful dinner Friday night.

Pigs go to the slaughterhouse on Monday, so we're giving them lots of treats of apples and pears and just trying to keep them fat and happy. They are certainly big animals now. We may have 1/4 pig left to sell, if anyone is interested let us know!

I bought a pickup for the farm last week, so we have something to haul the pigs in. It also has a snowplow, so I'll be able to keep the driveway clear this winter. it's a 1985 Chevy K10 4x4 with a 6.2L diesel, so it should have plenty of power for plowing. That's a picture of it up above. It's in good shape for being 20 years old.
In the garden all that is left are a few peppers, a few tomatoes, and a few squash. I wish the last dozen tomatoes would ripen, it's been over a week since I've had a fresh tomato.

The weather has been miserable for the last few days, so we haven't been able to get out and do much, hopefully things will get brighter the next few days so that we can enjoy the fall colors before they are all blown away.

New pictures

2006-09-22T09:11:00.000-05:00

We hadn't taken any pictures of the critters in a while, so last night we snapped a few to show how big they are getting. Above is a picture of 2 big turkeys. There are more in the albums at the Farm Pictures link.

The ducks still haven't laid any eggs, I guess they were just messing with my head. The other disturbing thing about the ducks is that they have started flying around, something they haven't done before. I hope they aren't planning on flying south for the winter!

We had some patchy frost the other night, I had to cover the tomatoes and peppers, and it looks like everything made it through safely.

Turkeys

2006-09-19T08:20:00.000-05:00

Today we'll be talking turkey.

Business first. Anyone that has already ordered a Thanksgiving turkey from us, or anyone that would like to, please send an email to ardwyn_farm@earthlink.net including the following information:

1) Your name
2) What day you would like to pick up your turkey (Nov. 19 - 22)

If you have a preference in breed, feel free to include that and we will do our best to accomodate your request. New orders will be reserved on a first-come, first-served basis.

The way these turkeys are growing, the flat price of $75/ bird is looking like more and more of a bargain. If we were selling them at the national standard of $4/lb I think they might go for more.

Okay, now that we have that out of the way.
I had the opportunity this weekend to talk with an employee of one of the larger organic distributors in the country. During the course of the conversation somehow the fact that we raise a few turkeys came up and he was interested. He asked how many turkeys we raised and if we considered them to be a big hassle. The nub of the conversation was that the company is looking for someone to raise turkeys for them, but someone raising a dozen apparently wasn't worth dealing with.

I will admit that my first reaction was to think about converting the stock room and pasture area for turkeys and raising 120 turkeys next year. After considering it for a while, though, I actualy became a little upset. The concept of organic farming is supposed to be a farm full of biodiversity, with each animal and crop depending on others in a mutually beneficial way. But it seems that the tide is turning and now raising "organic" livestock is just a matter of reading the rules and not doing anything against them. A giant feedlot of steers eating organically-raised corn trucked in from 3 states away is hardly an improvement over the current system. So feeling pressured to ditch all of the other animals on the farm in favor of raising a single variety of animal makes me more wary of the growing corporate organic suppliers. It seems to me the better solution is to eat locally, see the places your meals come from, and judge for yourself if you're comfortable with the treatment the animals receive and the way the crops are grown.

No eggs yet..

2006-09-13T09:17:00.000-05:00

..but the mallard hen has definitely built a nest next to the house. She has hollowed out a little bowl shaped area in the woodchips and has begun to line it with feathers, so it's only a matter of time, I hope.

It has been rainy, gray, and chilly all week so I haven't had the chance to do much outside other than the usual daily chores of feeding and watering everyone. It is less than a month now before the pigs go to the slaughterhouse. I'm still trying to work out how I'll get them there, hopefully I'll have bought an old farm truck by then.

Since Labor Day weekend has passed , and it is pretty much the end of summer here in WI, it makes me look back over our first full summer here on the farm. I think we did very well and I am proud.

The garden was big, but not unmanageably so, we never felt like we grew way too much of anything. the sweet corn was the only big failure and we realize now that was probably because that half of the garden has poor soil. We have cans of salsa and spaghetti sauce and soup in the pantry to last us into the winter, and memories of that first big salad from the garden as well.

We successfully raised 7 ducks to maturity, and it looks like all of the turkeys will make it, too. Turkeys are notoriously delicate in their first few weeks, and only losing one, to an unknown illness on it's first day, makes us feel confident. We have raised two little piglets into big old hogs, and have done it the way we intended, with no medicated feed, no added hormones, and giving them the best and happiest pig lives that we could.

Other benefits that the farm has given us are; knowing that we can work full-time but that there is still plenty of time for more work and play outside of our jobs, lots of exercise, less TV watching, healthier eating habits, more time spent together as a couple, a new appreciation for where our meals come from, the enormous amount of new things we have learned, giving our family and friends the chance to share in what we are doing and the products of it, and making new friends with people that are interested in the goings-on out at the farm.

Thanks to all of our faithful readers, please keep coming back and sharing your comments.

Watch those ducks!

2006-09-08T09:57:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty sure I caught the mallard hen starting to make herself a nest next to the house in a big tangle of flower vines, which may mean she is getting ready to start laying eggs. I thought it would be about mid-September that we would see eggs from the ducks so I am happy that my prediction was probably pretty close. Although I shouldn't count my eggs before they are even laid! I bought some crushed oyster shell and started mixing it with their feed to help them get calcium for shell production. So we need to start keeping an eye on them for weird behavior and looking for eggs.

The turkeys are growing SO fast, it's really unbelievable. I am going away for the weekend and fully expect to be shocked at how big they are when I get home.

The pigs are really enjoying the fact that our pear tree was overloaded this year. They are going through a 5 gallon bucket full of pears about every 2 days. They love those pears. I also chucked a few butternuts into the pasture while they were standing at the fence and watching me hull. They have very powerful jaws, they crunched right through the shells and, judging by their spinning tails, they like butternuts too. I have also heard that pigs like acorns, so I'll try to rake some up from the big oak in the front yard.

I'm thinking about expanding next year's garden plot by tilling up some of the grass patch between the two garden areas. I've been watching the way the sun travels over that part of the lawn all summer and it looks like it would be plenty of sun for more veggies.

A bushel of butternuts

2006-09-03T19:35:00.000-05:00

Our butternut tree produced it's first crop this year. here is the first bushel. I harvested them this morning and only got conked on the head once when shaking the limbs.

Butternuts are very similar to walnuts, but the hulls have a sticky, sort of resinous, feel to them. I am not sure what the evolutionary advantage of this is, I find it hard to imagine a butternut falling off of a tree and sticking to the coat of a passing mastodon. But, they have it anyway. So when you are picking butternuts, I advise gloves. They also stain just like walnuts do.

I got just about half of the butternuts hulled using the old corn sheller you can see in the picture. I borrowed it from my grandma, thanks grandma! I hulled 219 of them, to be precise. At that point I was already feeling a little strain in my shoulders and forearms, so I put the rest of them off until tomorrow. The black walnuts will be falling from the trees soon. I ran a few of them through the sheller today, too. They clean off a lot faster and easier than the butternuts do, that ovoid shape makes the butternuts difficult.

I also harvested some grapes today, we really got some giants this year. There were a few that were bigger than a quarter! I put some pictures up at the picture link.

All of the animals are still doing great. The turkeys are starting to create a little bit of stink, I suppose we should have realized that as they got bigger so would the mess. Somehow I conveniently forgot about that concept. Still not as bad as the ducks were though!

More canning..

2006-08-28T15:11:00.000-05:00

Sorry I have fallen off on my posting, I'll try to remember to get on here more often and write something.

I did some more canning this weekend, salsa and marinara sauce. I am going to pick up some quart jars and try making a "chili starter" type thing this week. I'll cook down a bunch of tomatoes into sauce and add all of my chili spices and some roasted hot peppers, then this winter I can just brown up some meat and add a quart or two of the sauce to it and have "instant" homemade chili. Seems like it should work, anyway. I'll let you know in a couple of months.

We sold a duck yesterday, that was nice, that was the first of our animals that was bought and paid for. I hope it tastes as good as the one we had a while back. I made an appointment today to have the hogs butchered, October 9th is their final day. The meat locker is only charging $20 to kill them, so I think I will just have them do it. It will be very different without our pigs around, but I am looking forward to that bacon! The turkeys I will be processing myself, probably the Monday of Thanksgiving week. That day is going to be a lot of hard work, but it will be worth it. I imagine the last of the ducks will meet their doom that day as well, so the farm will be free of livestock at that point.

The garden is nearly done. There are still dozens of tomatoes yet to ripen, I have just started harvesting some of the soybeans, and there are a few melons and squashes still growing, but that is about it. I harveted our first cantelope yesterday, it was smaller than a baseball! But it tasted pretty good, all 4 bites we got out of it. It looks like the soil in our garden patch was pretty poor after all, but we did the best we could and got quite a bit of food out of it, next year will be even better!

Pickling day

2006-08-21T14:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we did a "test run" at pickling and canning. We did just a few jars of sweet pickles, sweet/spicy pickles, pickled kohlrabi, pickled beets, and spicy green beans. I also made a small jar of fresh salsa just to test the recipe. Hopefully we'll be borrowing a pressure canner in a week or so and start putting up some soups and stews. We are going to have bushels of ripe Roma tomatoes soon, so salsa and spaghetti sauce are on the agenda also.The pickled stuff all looks pretty good, can't wait to eat some of it.

All of the animals are doing well, the big pig is over 200lbs now. We might end up butchering the pigs sooner than I was originally planning. We were looking at late October, but late September may be possible now. The turkeys have really hit their stride, they look bigger every day.

We had a talk about what animals we might raise next year. We both agreed on turkeys, probably not more than a dozen of them due to space considerations. Nikki wants to try 4 or 5 chickens next spring, which is pretty funny because she was dead set against chickens earlier this year, but I guess after having ducks anything seems easy. We will probably raise a quick growing "meat bird" and if they aren't too much trouble we'll get 4 or 5 more during the summer. I haven't completely decided on pigs yet. If we do raise them, we will probably get 3. I'd like to get a different breed, something that isn't white so that they are better protected against the sun. I think that would probably be it.

Home again

2006-08-15T10:24:00.000-05:00

I took a 4 days off last week and headed up to northern Wisconsin with some friends to drink a lot of beer and do a little fishing and successfully accomplished both things.

I came home to find that the turkeys looked like they had doubled in size and a garden that had sprung to life. Green beans have appeared, as have pods on the soybean plants. The Charentais melons are the size of a softball, there are a lot of large tomatoes with a hint of orange, and there are carrots in all different colors ready to be dug up when needed. I think I will dig up a parsnip this weekend and see how big they have grown.

Breakfast somehow got a cut right underneath the base of her tail, she must have scratched against something sharp, but it is healing well and it doesn't seem to bother her at all. The pigs are enormous and growing fast, they are getting pretty bossy around mealtimes, so we have been working on the best strategy on feeding them without getting knocked over or shoved around too much. I am afraid that one of them is going to hurt itself climbing up the fence or onto the other's back, trying to get their face into the buckets while we're filling them.

The 3 ducks are doing well, it is so unbelievably much easier to care for them now. I still don't think we'll ever raise ducks again, though. Around this time next month they should be capable of laying eggs, we shall see. .

And then there were 3..

2006-08-08T09:03:00.000-05:00

I got the last 3 Pekins butchered on Sunday, with a little help from Nikki with the stubborn pinfeathers. So if you asked for a duck, they are ready for delivery. Now we have just the Mallard hen and the two Indian Runners. Makes the chores a LOT easier not having so many ducks around. It's quieter, too.

The turkeys have had another growth spurt, they are getting BIG. Still not anywhere near a thanksgiving turkey size, but for the first time I believe they will be a decent size bird by the time November rolls around.

Still no big slicing tomatoes from the garden, but I did get up there on Saturday and rig up a new support system for thje plants using some old cattle panels from down in the barn. We are starting to harvest onions and hot peppers now . I have never been very successful at raising onions but this year they did marvellously. Especially the red onions.

I am already getting excited about next year's garden. I have done a good job of keeping next year's plot weed-free using my rotating composting system, and all of that organic matter should really loosen up the clay in our soil. I'm hoping for tomatoes the size of volleyballs.

Some relief from the heat

2006-08-04T09:22:00.000-05:00

As you can see, the sunflowers are doing pretty well! I am 6'4" and I believe the plant on the right side of the picture is almost twice as tall as I am by now. "What are you going to do with the sunflowers?", you ask? I have absolutely no idea. I just like them.

Some other new pictures are posted in the photobucket albums at the link, you can see how big the turkeys and pigs are getting.

Speaking of the turkeys, it looks like we have just one more left to sell as a pre-order for Thanksgiving. I want to keep a few turkeys as backups in case anything happens to any of the pre-ordered birds. It shouldn't be too hard to sell the extras the week before turkey day if it turns out that we have extras. I think all of the ducks are spoken for too. I have decided to try to keep a couple of the ducks to see if they will lay eggs, especially now that I discovered that at least one of my Runners is a female.

Yesterday I discovered that our Pekin ducks can fly! Well, that is they can fly if they get a running start. And if they are running downhill. With a headwind. Okay, they can jump pretty far while flapping their wings. It was slightly impressive. The mallard hen took right off but then looked slightly embarassed that she made it look so easy and landed just a little past her cousins. Luckily the ducks always travel in a group so I shouldn't have to worry about her taking off on me.

The garden is doing well, picking lots of cherry tomatoes now. It is definitely zucchini season, we had zucchini lasagna and fried zucchini slices for dinner last night. The weather is suposed to be nice and cooler this weekend so I should be able to get some work done on the lawn and in the garden. And I'll have to find time to butcher the last 3 Pekins for those that have asked for them. Should be a good busy weekend.

Comments

2006-08-03T11:51:00.000-05:00

Sorry, but I had to turn on the feature that requires you to type in a verification word to post a comment. It isn't too much of a hassle and it (hopefully) keeps advertisers from making fake comments like the one posted yesterday.

Not much new to report. We are supposed to get a break from this heat tomorrow, so that will give me a chance to catch up on some things I was putting off due to the heat.
I did learn one thing yesterday, how to estimate the weight of a pig. All you need is about 5 feet of string and a calculator.

How To Measure A Pig:

Measure the length (in inches)of the pig from the top of it's head to the base of it's tail.

Then measure around the body right behind the front legs. (Note: throw some corn or other treat in front of the hog to distract it!)

Multiply length x girth x girth and divide by 400 and it gives you the approximate weight in pounds.

By this calculation Breakfast is around 180lbs and Lunch is about 164lbs right now!

Another heat wave

2006-08-01T10:28:00.000-05:00

It has been crazy hot here again, as it is everywhere this week it seems.

I didn't get much done last weekend because I was having back problems, just starting to get better now. We went to the county fair on Sunday and had a good time looking at all of the 4-H animals and eating deep-fried food. Looks like we are doing just fine with our pastured pigs, they have the same general shape as the ones we saw at the fair. I'm guessing that Breakfast is pushing 200lbs now. I need to take some pictures and get them posted soon. The pigs are doing just fine in the heat. I fill up a big mudhole for them every morning and then I give them a nice cool shower with the hose when I get home from work.

The garden is going along pretty well, picked a few zucchinis already and some cherry and pear tomatoes. We almost have enough cukes picked to start pickling them. There are a few canteloupes getting started on the vine, no watermelons yet though. Seems late, but we'll see. I'm thinking about sticking a few more seeds in the garden yet for a late crop of radishes, carrots, beets and few more things maybe. Not until this heat backs off a little though.

Duck dinner redux (ha!)

2006-07-26T10:39:00.000-05:00

We had roasted duck, haricots verts, and garlic wild rice for dinner last night and it was outstanding! I made a sauce with red wine and some berries and currants that I picked last weekend, but the duck didn't really need it. I was amazed at how light the meat was, it was just a bit darker than chicken breast. As someone who has eaten a lot of wild duck, I was expecting it to be much darker. One duck was just about perfect for two people, there was only a little bit left when we were done. It was very rich and very delicious, but I still don't think I will bother with ducks again. Maybe one or two....

Picked a couple of cherry tomatoes out of the garden last night and they were great, some of the Yellow Pear tomatoes are getting close to ripe and I can't tell when the Green Zebras will be ripe because they stay green! I guess it will be trial and error. It also looks like will be picking zucchinis this week. I heard someone once describing their neighborhood this way, and it also applies to our neck of the woods, I thought it was pretty funny : " No one locks their car doors around here, except during zucchini season!"

Duck dinner

2006-07-24T12:56:00.002-05:00

EDITED FOR ALL OF THOSE SEARCHING FOR A DUCK PLUCKER:

Check out the photos here for an inexpensive home-made plucker: http://s81.photobucket.com/albums/j227/Ardwyn_Farm/poultry/

Please email me at dougjonz@yahoo.com if you have any questions.

I like this picture, it looks like the turkeys are planning a raid on the ducks. Who on earth could have predicted, even just a few years ago, that we would have a scene like this in our yard? The unpredictable twists in the path are what makes life exciting I guess.

There are fewer ducks on the farm now than there are in that picture. I think we will have roast duck for dinner tomorrow night! I'll let you know how it is.

I got to use my "$6 Duck Plucker" yesterday and it worked like a charm. It is a simple contraption, just 3" rubber "fingers" cut from a bungee cord mounted around a 4" PVC end cap with a long carriage bolt as the driveshaft . I just chuck it into the drill, wire down the trigger and away she goes. Once I figured out how close to hold the bird to the spinning drum it was quick, maybe 3 minutes to completely defeather a duck. I'll post a picture of it if I remember.

In other news, it looks like the pigs may be completely sold, still waiting to hear back from someone on the last 1/4 of a pig. That is a relief, even if the last 1/4 doesn't sell we can just add it on to the 1/2 we were keeping for ourselves. More bacon for me!

Speaking of bacon, we'll be harvesting the first tomatoes this week and I can't wait for that first BLT! I told Nikki that I'm going to eat nothing but BLTs and sweet corn for a month. The rest of the garden is doing pretty good too. Some of the sunflowers are pushing 10' and they are just starting to get their heads.

If anyone is interested in a duck, shoot us an email or give us a call, we could probably spare a few.

Failure!

2006-07-21T15:56:00.000-05:00

Since I posted an entry with the title "Success!" the other day, I thought I'd better share some of the failures so that people don't start thinking we're perfect!

Sweet corn. Total and complete failure, the tallest stalks are only about 3 feet tall and they are already starting to tassel out. I don't expect to harvest any corn from my 5 rows of corn, and since the stalks are so short the companion beans are going to need a different form of support or they will be a failure too. The only thing I can think of is that the soil is no good for corn, but nearly everything else is growing so well!

The pear tree. Hundreds of pears, but they have developed some type of scale or other disease. They are all undersized and ugly looking.They might still make good pig feed though.

Beets. The first planting of beets I did are stunted and don't appear to be growing. The second planting did great, however.

Ducks. Not really a failure as they are all healthy and happy and ducky, but I had a very romantic notion of ducks calmly wandering about the yard. Unfortunately the reality is they are loud, unfriendly, demanding and messy creatures.

We survived...

2006-07-18T15:32:00.000-05:00

We survived the heat wave, all of the critters included. The swimming pool sure helped us, even though by Sunday afternoon the water temperature was up to 85°. A nice storm front came through yesterday evening and dropped the temp from 93° to 75° in about 20 minutes and it was very welcome. After it passed we sat down by the barn and just watched absolutely constant flashes of lightning filling the sky to the south for about half an hour. It was tremendous.

The pigs seemed to take the heat better than anyone on the farm, it actually stays pretty cool in the barn basement area that they have access to, and along with a big mudhole and a few soakings with the hose they were just fine. The ducks went through about 7 gallons of water on Saturday, luckily I thought up and built an automatic refilling waterer for them that holds just over 5 gallons, so it's a lot less work for me. I am pretty proud of that waterer, there are even some really bad pictures of it in the Poultry album.

Also in the Poultry album are some pics of the turkeys from this morning. No doubt about it, Whitey is a Royal Palm tom and is going to be a striking looking turkey when he is mature. We also have a Blue Slate tom (Ghost), a domestic Wild Turkey tom (Smarty), and 5 Bourbon Reds, at least one tom, maybe 2 (Brownie x 5). Whitey and Ghost are featured in today's picture.

HOT!

2006-07-14T11:47:00.000-05:00

It is supposed to be really hot this weekend, mid 90s and muggy, so I am glad I finally have the pool straightened up, I might spend the whole weekend in it.

I found a really nice spot for a mud wallow in the barn, it doesn't dry out like the old spot did, so the pigs should be happy and cool. I've got another packet of Pig Gatorade on standby though in case they get stressed.

I believe the ducks are intentionally trying to aggravate me at this point. I go out to fill their kiddie pool every morning and if I walk away to do any other chores they come and stand on the sides of the pool, letting all of the water drain out over their feet. So I have to spend 15-20 minutes every morning standing there doing nothing, just to keep them away while it's refilling. I tried posting the dog by the pool but they just go stand on the other side. They also spend the night in the coop and sleep right next to the water faucet, so that there is always a nice giant accumulation of duck manure right where I have to walk.

We did have one moment of amusement from the ducks yesterday, one of them found an old bird nest and somehow got it entangled on it's bill, it looked like he had a big gray beard. This scared the daylights out of the other ducks, they started quacking like crazy and running away from the "bearded" duck and, since they always travel as a group, he went running right after them! Which made them run faster! It was pretty funny and also shows just how dumb they are.

A day no ducks would die

2006-07-10T13:12:00.000-05:00

None of the ducks went to meet their maker last week. My neighbor stopped over and, in discussing the ducks, told me I'd be crazy to kill them now because I would be picking pinfeathers for hours, so I'm putting it off for a few weeks. They continue to be the least popular creatures on the farm, and their newfound interest in quacking their heads off is not winning them any points.

Grandma Jones and Leonard came by yesterday to see the place, they seemed to think we're doing OK . It was great having them over to see the place. We picked a couple of quarts of mulberries for my great-uncle Don, who is a big fan of mulberry pie. I hope Betty, my great-aunt, doesn't mind making one!

I picked and shelled peas on Saturday, looks like we will have enough to freeze some. I also harvested some carrots, trying to pry carrots out of our clay-heavy soil is a frustrating process. The ground just does not want to let go! Next year's garden soil should be a little fluffier with all of the organic matter we are adding to that patch. All of the tomato plants have little tomatolings growing on them now, so you can be sure that I am getting more and more restless every day , looking for that first sign of red.

In other news, the pool is open! Finally have it all filled up, balanced out and cleaned up, looks like this weekend is going to be a warm one so that will be nice. My nightmare now is that the ducks will find it, oh please, don't let the ducks find it!