They're here!

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.

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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)

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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!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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!

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

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?

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

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

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

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..

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!

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..

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

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!

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..

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!

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!

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?

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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..

..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!

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

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..

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

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

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..

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

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

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

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!)

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

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!

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...

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!

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

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!

Horror!

So I walked up the hill to the little woods to see if any of the wild black currants or gooseberries were ripe yet and, to my shock and horror, found a FOURTH mulberry tree growing on our property! I have decided that I am going to pretend it doesn't exist, I don't have the time to pick berries from yet another tree.

I got a LOT of weeding done in the garden yesterday and it needed it. The Yellow Pear tomatoes look like they are trying to take over the garden, they are very bushy plants. Zucchini has blossomed and so have the canteloupes and cucumbers. I also found a Napa Cabbage growing in the garden that I never planted and I do not even own those seeds, very odd .

The compost/deweeding plan for next year's garden bed seems to be working really well, hopefully it will result in much fewer weeds than in this year's garden. Basically I am hauling up the bedding from the hogs and birds and letting it compost in place in what will be next years garden. I let it sit for a week or so to kill the weeds underneath, then I turn it over into a new spot to kill the weeds there and encourage decomposition of the bedding material.

Happy Fourth of July

Hope everyone is having an enjoyable holiday. I got up this morning and read the Declaration of Independence and then got to work. I picked 4 more quarts of mulberries and a quart of black raspberries, still need to get the currants picked yet this afternoon, looks like we'll get 3 or 4 quarts of those too.

I took the day off yesterday and cleaned out the duck coop (yuck) and got a lot of weeding done in the garden. I also sharpened up the hatchet and made a special knife for dispatching poultry, at least 2 ducks are going to the freezer this week. Then I twisted my ankle and had to take a break so I spent most of the afternoon inside.

Anyway, happy Independence Day!

Mulberries

A few little-known facts about mulberries:

- Mulberry leaves are the sole food source of silkworms.

- The last Tuesday of May is International Mulberry Appreciation Day.

- The berries are very high in resveratrol, a substance from which anti-cancer, anti-viral, anti-aging, anti-inflammatory and life-prolonging effects have been reported.

- They have a very high sugar content, second only to grapes.

- We have them coming out of our metaphorical ears!

I started picking mulberries today. First, I made the annual Pact With The Robins. They are welcome to all of the mulberries at the tops of the trees if they stay away from our cars and drying laundry afterwards. I picked 2 quarts of them (pictured above) in about an hour today, just from one limb of one tree. We have 3 mulberry trees. PLEASE come and pick some mulberries to take home. I'll even provide latex gloves ( if you don't want to stain your hands purple) and cold beer. Take a duck home with you too! Hopefully I will figure out a local farmer's market to sell berries and some other produce at soon, things are just busy, busy, busy. Black raspberries are really starting to ripen and so are the currants, so I have to get as many mulberries in as I can before they distract me.

Everything else is doing well, have started to get some responses from localharvest, which is encouraging. Picked the first kohlrabi (or as I call it "the alien vegetable") today, carrots are getting to be harvestable size. Some of the turkeys are starting to strut around all macho-like, all 11 inches tall of them, it is funny to watch.

See you at the farm!

Come and get 'em

Start making your plans to visit the farm, and bring your ice-cream pails, because the berries are ripening. I picked a handful of black raspberries and mulberries yesterday, by next weekend we will be swimming in them.

We are going to be selling some berries this year, but there is no charge to come and pick them yourself, please feel free to do so.

Speaking of selling, we are now affiliated with LocalHarvest.org as a means of contacting even more potential purchasers. You can see our listing here:

http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M14200

You can also do a search and find other sources of fresh local food in your own area.

Lots of work ahead

We are just starting to see signs of ripening raspberries, mulberries, and blackberries. When they all get ripe it is going to be a LOT of berry picking, the raspberry bushes are absolutely astonishing in their bounty. I guess that's what happens when you clear out the old growth and prune them correctly. We are going to need friends and family to come over and pick berries too, there is no way we could eat all of the berries we are seeing grow right now.

In the garden my experiment in growing pole beans and corn next to each other is not working. The corn is growing too slowly to provide support for the bean vines. Next year I will try again but plant the beans 2 weeks after the corn, should be enough of a head start. I picked all of the radishes out of the garden yesterday, most of them were bigger than my thumb and wow, were they hot! Nikki and I are each giving them away to co-workers, there are just too many. That's what happens when the seed packet falls halfway out of your pocket and you unknowingly plant radishes throughout 1/4 of your garden.

All of the animals are doing well. The ducks are already big enough that I'm thinking of whacking a couple of them next week. They really are such a nuisance and so much work that I can't wait to be rid of them. Who would have thought that 7 ducks would be harder to care for and messier than 2 pigs?

Success

A while back I noted Nikki's comment that she would believe in growing vegetables from seed when she had her first salad completely from the garden. Well ,last night we had one. Butter lettuce, mesclun greens, radishes, peas, green onions and baby beets. It was great!

I took a few more pictures of the critters yesterday, they are growing so fast! The ducks are losing their down and feathers are just starting to show up, I bought them a kiddie pool to splash around in and they really enjoy it, there are pictures in the 'Poultry' album. The turkeys have been driving me batty, they are constantly escaping. They don't go far, they just sit outside the coop and yelp to their friends inside. But trying to keep track of them is a job. This morning I was cleaning out the duck's area and turned around to find 5 turkeys calmly walking around in the grass outside. So I caught them one by one and put them back in their enclosure and got back to the ducks.Two minutes later I look down and there are 2 turkeys standing in front of my shoes. So I put them back on their side of the coop and sat Cash right outside the gap between the fence and the building while I went down to the barn to get some fencing to close it up. I walk back up to the coop and Cash is still sitting there, but there are 3 turkeys outside the fence walking around him! I got the gap closed up and they were all still inside after going down to take care of the pigs, so I guess it worked.

A few new pictures of the pigs are in the 'Pigs' album at the link, they are growing fast too. I have the one picture of me with Lunch tucked under my arm that was taken just a few weeks ago, I don't think I could hold her up with one arm anymore, and I'm not sure I could pick Breakfast up at all.

The pic at the top is "Smarty", the bronze turkey. It looks like we have 4 different heritage breeds of turkey, I have my suspicions about which breeds they are but I'm waiting for more feathers before I commit to anything.

A sick pig

I went down to the barn Saturday morning to feed and water the pigs and noticed right away that Lunch wasn't interested in eating. Normally both of the pigs are crowding me as soon as I walk in the corral, looking for their food and a scratch behind the ears, but Lunch was still laying down in the barn. I tried offering her a pail of milk and when she wasn't even interested in that I started to worry. Saturday was a really hot day, so I hoped it was just the sudden heat wave that was making her listless. I made a big mud wallow in the back corner of the barn where it is always cooler and sprayed both pigs down with the hose every couple of hours. I also bought a vitamin and electrolyte mix to add to their water, basically Gatorade for pigs, and by 2 in the afternoon she was eating and walking around, by nightfall she appeared to have made a full recovery and has been fine since. That was a huge relief.

The birds are still doing fine, the ducks just keep getting bigger and bigger, I expect some of them to be at the 3 pound mark this week, and the mess they make has grown right along with them. It doesn't help that they appear to have no interest in being outdoors at all, even though they are free to move out into an enclosed pen at any time. The turkeys, in contrast, spend most of their time outside. I have the turkeys trained to come inside or outside at my whistle, another point against their supposed brainlessness. Yesterday was flight training day for the turkeys as they took turns making test flights, some of them about 12' long, up and down one of the enclosures.

The garden is still thriving, we had some friends over for dinner on Saturday evening and I forced them to take radishes home with them, I think we pulled just over 2 dozen giant radishes out of the ground that day.

Garden explosion

I don't know what changed, but the garden has just gone crazy this week. Things that didn't seem to be growing well or getting any bigger have just gone berserk. Picked a few pea pods earlier in the week, the second radishes are already huge, kohlrabi is starting to swell and the tomatoes are really putting out some serious vegetative growth. I'm having fun, but still waiting for the first big setback, I just know the insects, raccoons,rabbits and deer are lurking.

The ducks are driving me crazy. I want to put them outside due to the horrible mess they make inside but they still have no feathers and I don't know how they would do. But they are huge, some of them must be close to 2 pounds already. The turkeys have plenty of feathers and I think could go outside, but some of them are still small enough that they could step through the chain link fence.

Speaking of the turkeys, their reputation for stupidity is undeserved from what I have seen so far. They are friendly and don't seem to be any dumber than the ducks are. I opened the door to the outside pen for a little while yesterday and they figured out how to go in and out right away. At this point I am a big fan of the turkeys and am not sure I would bother with ducks again. Pretty much the exact opposite of how I thought I would feel about the birds. I am also encouraged by the prices that people get for fresh turkeys around Thanksgiving, which are much higher than I thought .

The pigs are still pigs, spoiled ones. I was reading about how other people's pigs devour grass clippings, mine won't touch them. Corn is disdained unless it has a beer or milk mixed in with it. They will dump everything out of their feed bowls to get the dinner scraps out and then ignore everything else until they get hungry later. I have cut back on their feed a little to encourage them to get out in the pasture more often instead of laying around the barn all the time, seems to be working.

Power outage

We lost power at the farm for a while last night, the funny thing was that neither Nikki nor I realized it until I went to make sure the birds had enough feed and noticed that their heat lamps were off. So at nightfall we built a fire in the firepit and roasted some marshmallows and got a surprise fireworks show from a summer festival in Port Washington. It was 15 miles away but we still had a decent view. Then the fireflies put on a smaller display above the pasture, it was a fun evening.

I've thrown everything I read about raising birds right out the window. They were supposed to stay in their bins for about 5 weeks and I was supposed to carefully regulate the temperature, decreasing it by 5 degrees per week. Well, I decided that was nonsense. The ducks were getting so big they were walking all over each other in there and the turkeys were pecking at the sides of the bin in frustration. So I separated the coop into 2 areas, threw some straw on the floor and hung their heat lamps from the ceiling and they are much happier. The turkeys alternate between resting under the lamp and making mad wing-flapping dashes all about. The ducks are still making a big mess, but they have a larger area to do it in. One of the ducklings has lost it's 'peep', it now makes a sort of croaking, strangled attempt at a quack. Still no feathers on the ducks but the poults are feathered over half of their bodies.

We had the last of the radishes from the first planting last night, more will be ready in about a week. I had to start pinching off blossoms from the tomato plants, which breaks my heart because I really want tomatoes but I keep telling myself it's for the greater good. Also took off a few blossoms from the peppers, the Hungarian Wax peppers had already gotten a good start on me so I let them go. The asparagus came up and skipped the edible stage and went directly to 3' tall fully seeded stalks, so we missed out on that.

Pictures

I finally got a few more pictures uploaded from this slow old computer on dial-up. You can see how the garden is growing and how big all of the animals are getting. I think the ducks are doubling in size every day. Above is a close-up of Lunch.

Everything is growing

Everything is growing and getting bigger on the farm, except for me. I've lost about 15 lbs already this spring and I'm going to have to buy some new clothes.

The ducks and turkeys are thriving, I've been pulling them out into the sunlight when it's warm. It is supposed to take 5-6 weeks of gradually reducing the heat in the brooders from 90° before you can let them run free, but they seem to get used to cooler temperatures faster than that. I'd say it won't be more than 3 weeks before I'll put them in their pens and give them the option of coming inside under a heat lamp if they need to. I've gotten faster at cleaning their houses so it isn't quite the chore it was before. When I'm cleaning out the brooders I put them into cardboard boxes, this morning an adventurous duckling leapt up and sat on the edge of the duck box and then flapped it's little wings and jumped into the box of turkeys. I guess it wanted to see what they were eating.. The ducklings have also had their first swim. I used a paint roller tray so that they could walk up the inclined surface easily if they wanted to get out of the water. It was fun to watch them take turns jumping in and out of the water. The turkeys' wings have lost their down and are now fully feathered. Every now and then one will start running and flapping it's little wings, no successful take-offs yet.


The pigs are growing, as well. I'm guessing that they are both in the 60-70 lb range right now. Breakfast is still ornery but seems to be calming down a little, maybe it is just adolescence.

The garden is still doing well. All of the soybeans, pole beans and corn have sprouted, we are almost out of the first planting of radishes, the second planting should be ready in about 2 weeks. We had guests for dinner on Sunday and had a salad made exclusively from the garden, and I tossed some potato wedges with olive oil, sea salt, and fresh garden herbs and roasted them to accompany a beer-can chicken from the grill.

In wildlife news, we now have a rooster pheasant strolling around the yard and squawking. He walked within 30 feet of us sitting outside on Sunday. Haven't seen the fox again, but there was another wild turkey sighting Saturday morning .

Morning chores!

It just hit me , I have morning chores. I'm going to have to start getting up a little earlier.

This morning I headed down to the barn to feed and water the pigs. Breakfast was even bossier/crabbier than usual. I can't wait to eat that annoying pig!

After that it's up to the coop. First I checked the temperature of the brooders, it was a little chilly, I'll have to lower the IR bulbs a little bit in the evenings to compensate for the cool nights. Then on to cleaning out the brooders.

Let me tell you, ducklings are smelly, messy creatures. They fling water and feed all over the place and their droppings are quite foul smelling. I would rather clean out the pig barn any day. The turkey brooder was a piece of cake compared to the duck's. The ducks also seem to eat a lot more, but it may be that half of their feed is flung against the walls. It is always party time in the duckling brooder, I guess.

Next on the list was checking on the garden and giving it a good drink of water. We had a little rain last night so it didn't take as long as it might have. All in all it's about 30 minutes of work.

We've got birds!

We received a phone call at 6:15 this morning, "Hi! This is the post office and we've got a box full of peepers for you!" So I hopped in the car and went to pick them up. It was a small cardboard box with lots of holes and various small bills and beaks popped in and out of them on the drive home, accompanied by a lot of peeps and chirps.

I finished the second brooder box last weekend so everyone had their own home right away. We got 7 birds that are definitely baby ducklings and 9 more that are little chicks or turkey poults or some combination thereof. The ducks took to their new home right away and started eating and drinking with a fury. The turkeys were listless at first, but once I got them underneath the heat lamp for a while they perked right up. I dipped their beaks in the water and then in the feed and that seemed to help them figure out where everything was and when I left they were merrily dashing around and running over each other.

I tried to take pictures this morning but I couldn't convince them to hold still long enough. I'll try again this afternoon when I get home.

Garden List 2006

Wow. I walked up to the garden yesterday to make this list and , once written down, looks like a heck of a lot of stuff! The list looks bigger than the garden.

So here it is, the contents of the 2006 garden:

• Rhubarb
• Zucchini
• Butternut squash
• Canteloupe
• Charentais melon
• Cucumber
• Watermelon
• Pumpkin
• Sweet corn (2 varieties)
• Pole beans
• Cabbage
• Leeks
• Red onions
• White onions
• Green onions
• Sunflowers
• Radishes
• Carrots
• Beets
• Parsnips
• Bibb lettuce
• Salad greens
• Kohlrabi
• Peas
• Cherry tomatoes
• Yellow pear tomatoes
• Green Zebra tomatoes
• Red tomatoes (3 varieties)
• Roma tomatoes
• Red, yellow, and green bell peppers
• Hungarian hot peppers
• Habanero peppers
• Cayenne peppers
• Soybeans
• Sage
• Lavender
• Dill
• Chives
• Basil
• Rosemary
• Garlic

Whew!

Spring's Bounty

We have seen even more wild creatures in the yard since I last wrote. The day after first seeing the turkey in the yard he was back again, strolling calmly through the middle of the yard in the late afternoon. Later that evening as I walked into the kitchen my eye was drawn to the backyard by a flash of red. It was a red fox. She was carrying a dead rabbit, presumably to feed a den of kits. I felt conflicted on seeing her. On one hand it is really cool to see a fox, on the other I am getting my ducks and turkeys this week and was hoping to have the ducks roaming the lawn in about 5 weeks. Maybe they will survive if I pen them each night.

Our friends, family and neighbors will be happy to know that I drained the pool and scrubbed it clean this weekend. Hopefully a few cases of beer will convince the local volunteer fire dep't to stop by with their tanker truck this week to help me refill it. 27,000 gallons would take an awfully long time to fill with a garden hose.

The pigs are still doing great, getting bigger and bigger. I finally broke down and bought them separate troughs, because the big one would just stand in the old one to keep the little one out, whereupon the little one would just flip the whole thing over onto the floor. They were wasting a lot of feed that way.

Walking through the yard at this time of year is just amazing. Every day something new is blooming. Yesterday bright blue irises blossomed among the fading tulips. The raspberry bushes are now a sea of small flowers.White star shaped flowers are popping up everywhere. The mulberry trees, which were still bare 2 weeks ago, now are fully leaved and small green berries are already forming. The pear tree is so loaded with tiny pears that I don't know if the branches will support their weight when they are fully grown.

The garden is also incredible. I never dreamed it would be so successful this first year. Everything seems to be flourishing. The pole beans broke the earth yesterday morning and by nightfall were 3 inches tall! I have planted so many things that I don't know if I can even remember them all. Maybe I will go make a list and put that on the blog tomorrow.

Living the Wild Life

Oops, that should be "Living AMONG the Wildlife".

When I got home from work yesterday afternoon there was an enormous wild turkey running around the yard! I will admit my first instinct was to shoot it, but logic won out and instead I scattered some cracked corn in the general area I'd seen it. Maybe we'll get a nice local flock and my spring and fall turkey hunting trips won't require more than a 100 yard hike. Other than rabbits and squirrels that's the first game animal I've seen in the actual yard, but there were deer tracks in the garden a few weeks ago.

I was a little worried about Breakfast's eyes, the eyelids looked a little swollen and inflamed. Nikki thought I was crazy and it turned out she was right. Well, only about her eyes being nothing to worry about! They look much better now, it was probably just dust from the fresh bedding I put in there the day before. That is a relief.

Speaking of the pigs, it looks like we have one entire pig sold already! That's pretty cool, I wasn't even thinking about trying to sell them until the fall, especially since they still have about 180lbs to gain between now and then. But I guess many people are interested in what we're doing here at Ardwyn and are interested in the final product, too! I have been getting a lot of comments on the blog, I think it's amazing how many people are interested in a couple of goofs just trying to raise a little food. But I'm glad people are enjoying this, don't be afraid to comment!

Queen of the Pigs

I believe that Breakfast has decided that she is the Empress of all things Porcine and that I am simply a vassal, providing her with her twice-daily royal meal.

When she hears me open the door to the feed room and start mixing feed she will walk out of the barn into the corral area and begin grunting at me. If she determines that I am taking too long she starts pacing back and forth and gives an urgent series of squeals, telling me to get with it.

Yesterday morning I decided to see just how far I could push it. I filled the feed bucket, walked into the barn and just stood by their trough. Breakfast started off by shoving her head against the back my calves, grunting quite loudly. When this failed she started trying to flip the feed bucket out of my hands with her snout, squealing in frustration. When I raised the bucket up out of her reach this was apparently too much for Her Highness to accept, she started biting my shoe! I was put back into my place because that tactic worked.

The garden is doing great, except for the 4 tomato plants I put out. Mother Nature decided to throw me a curveball and have a nice frost on the morning of May 22nd. Our last frost before that was, I think, April 14th, so I wasn't even listening to the weather forecasts at this point. So 4 of the plants I have been tending to indoors for 2 months are now quite spectacularly dead. I'm just glad I didn't put all of the plants out!

A good day's work

The ground was dry enough that we got a lot of work done in the garden today. It is now entirely fenced in, and today we planted butternut squash, zucchini, watermelon, muskmelon, some kind of French melon (freedom melon?), pumpkins, cucumbers, 2 varieties of sweet corn, and pole beans. I also moved 4 tomato plants to the garden from indoors.

I built one of the two brooders needed for the birds coming the week after next. I used a giant plastic bin and cut a hole in the lid and covered it with wire mesh. The infrared light will hang above that. Then I built a platform for the interior out of the same wire cloth, it looks like it just might work. I think I've read enough now about how to brood ducklings and turkey poults because I'm starting to find conflicting information, so I will probably just ignore all of it and do whatever seems to make the birds healthy and happy.

Tomorrow I'll start getting the lawn mowed and then up to Green Bay to see Lexi.

Now I'm Uncle Farmer Jones!

My little sister had her baby, so I'm a first time uncle. Alexia Morgan Haight was born on Wednesday afternoon and, by all accounts, is the prettiest, happiest baby in the land. I can't wait to meet her, we will head up sometime this weekend if the new parents are up to it.

Not much new on the farm, the bats have returned and just in time because I saw a gaggle of mosquitoes trying to carry off my dog last week. Sunflowers have sprouted in the garden and I got in there yesterday to attack some of the weeds that exploded during this recent deluge. The grapevines have started to grow leaves so I must not have killed them all with my slash and burn pruning this winter, that is encouraging.

Have been researching how to care for ducks and turkeys, every reference I find says that ducks have amusing personalities and are fun to watch. I will somehow have to convince Cash the dog that they are not for him to eat. I talked to the production manager at the cheese factory that is on my way home and he had no problem with me picking up a bucket of whey for the pigs every week or so, the pigs will be happy with that.

Life is good on the farm and we're enjoying spring, even though there are many projects to work on. I really have to start getting the pool ready for summer, I should call my cousins and have them yell at me about it, I'm sure they could motivate me to get to work.

A new plan

A decision has been made and yesterday I ordered one of the "Barnyard Combination" packages from McMurray Hatchery. We'll be receiving 9 ducklings and 6 turkey poults sometime during the week of the 29th. I'm not sure I want that many turkeys so I might see if the guy at the feed store will try and sell 2 or 3 for us.Of course I should probably take into account that some of them won't survive to adulthood. The package we ordered lets the hatchery choose which varieties of the poultry they send, so it should be interesting to see what we end up with, they will probably all be just plain white! They are also a "straight run" which means a mix of males and females. I'm looking forward to the possibility of duck eggs, I hear they are pretty tasty.

The rain has continued and is supposed to continue continuing, so getting any seeds into the garden this weekend is looking more and more doubtful, but we shall see. At this point everything I have planted has sprouted, parsnips are finally up and the cabbage is just starting. The onions are enjoying the drenching, they look amazingly healthy. I still haven't finished fencing in the garden, have to get on that before rabbits and deer clean us out. If I do get anything in this weekend it will be sweet corn and pumpkin seeds and maybe a few tomato transplants.

Nikki took some really great pictures yesterday of a rainbow to the south of the farm, even got a few with the pigs in the pasture and the rainbow behind them. I put a few in the Pigs album at the pictures link. I also tried using one of them as the new header for the blog, seems to work differently on different PCs, I don't know why. I guess that's why I'm not a web developer.

No pheasants...

..at least for now. We had a grand total of one chick hatch from 17 eggs and it died sometime Saturday night. I guess they must have been shaken up pretty good in transit since both shipments had broken eggs in them. Nikki was at the feed store on Saturday and the owner said he's getting 300 pheasant eggs in soon, maybe we will try again. Otherwise I have thought about maybe getting a few ducklings and skipping the whole egg segment of the life cycle. We'll talk about it and make a decision later this week.

The weather has been absolutely awful, cold and rainy. Luckily it didn't get cold enough to damage anything in the garden but I am glad I resisted the urge to put tomato plants in early. If the rain doesn't let up I might not even get the tomatoes in by this weekend, the soil is much too wet to work right now.

I was gone all day Saturday seeing my good friend Ron deliver the student commencement address at UW-Oshkosh and taking Mom out for a surprise pre-Mother's Day lunch.Came home Sunday morning to find the pigs had a growth spurt. I can't believe how fast they are growing. They look more like pigs and less like piglets after only 2 weeks. They cleaned out their trough completely from both feedings yesterday, so I added another cup of each of the 3 components that make up thier feed. So now it's 3 cups of spent brewer's grain, 3 cups of cracked corn and 3 cups of soy meal twice a day.

May is 'Eat Locally' month

Well, I had a big long diatribe here about industrial agriculture but I deleted it because I vowed to myself when I started this blog that I would keep politics out of it and I was getting awfully close to the edges.

So instead you get this. May 2006 is "Eat Locally" month.

Try to prepare even just one meal a week with ingredients grown in your area. The local McDonald's doesn't count! I know it's difficult right now in Wisconsin because there aren't many farmer's markets open yet but a meal of fresh fish, asparagus, and rhubarb crisp sounds pretty good and all of those things are in season right now. Look around, get to know who is producing wholesome, fresh and trustworthy food in your area. I guarantee you'll enjoy your meal, and not just because it is fresher than anything you'll find in a supermarket.

New pictures of the yard and it's springtime blooms are in the photobucket albums. New garden pictures too!

No pheasants yet and today was day 28. I think we got duds.
Edit: I forgot that we got some more 3 days later, all hope is not yet lost

Waiting is over, the work begins

Well I have proved to Nikki that you can plant seeds and get plants from them, she is still skeptical though. I believe her statement was something like "I'll believe it when I have my first salad." So I thinnned out the leaf lettuce and salad greens yesterday and washed them off and served her a tiny salad of what a high-priced restaurant would call "microgreens". Mission accomplished!

The garden is growing very well, the beets sprouted sometime when I wasn't paying attention, so only the parsnips and carrots are left to sprout from the first planting. Cabbages got planted on saturday. I'm thinking of cheating and putting some tomato plants out a little early since it has been so warm and sunny. Since I have 19 plants started indoors I'll be all right even if some of them don't make it. By the way, does anyone need any tomato plants?

As far as the critters go, the pheasants are supposed to hatch sometime this week, still no activity there. The hogs are gettting bigger every day. I posted some new pictures of them at the Farm Pictures link, in the Pigs album, naturally.

Nikki and some of her girl friends went out for dinner on Saturday and at the end of the evening one of them said "we should give the leftovers to the pigs!" so they asked the waitress for a styrofoam box. She said the look on the waitress' face when she came back to the table and saw all of the plates scraped clean and only the one box was priceless.

That's all for now.

Birds!

Since this our first spring at the farm, I am learning more every day about some of our seasonal residents, the birds.

Yesterday morning I hiked down to the barn to check on the pigs and was greeted by a male barn swallow as I flipped on the lights. He flew up and hovered in the air like a hummingbird, not 2 feet from my face. He seemed to regard me as though committing my features to memory. Then he perched on a fence rail and watched me feed the pigs, making sure I didn't have any designs on his new nest in the far corner of the barn. As I walked back up to the house the bubbly squeaks of starlings and the coos of mourning doves filled the darkness.

Coming home from work, after stopping at the feed mill, I parked in the driveway and while getting out of my car saw a hen pheasant bobbing her head in and out of a tall clump of grass near the grapevines, maybe keeping an eye on her cluster of olive-colored eggs? A prehistoric raspy croak drew my attention skyward where a trio of
sandhill cranes glided on enormous wings toward the top of the hill, below them a merlin floated on a rising wind, his black-barred tail announcing his species as clearly as a name tag. In the raspberry bushes near the house a cardinal called "what cheer, what cheer" and I had to agree.

This morning, though, was the most amazing thing. As I walked toward my car I pressed the 'unlock' button on the remote so that I could open the hatch in back. The short "beep, beep" of the alarm sounded and 2 seconds later I heard it again. I was fairly sure I hadn't accidentally pushed the button a second time, but shrugged it off. As I was unloading some things from the back, I heard it again, "beep beep". I stepped back from my wagon and pressed the button, the car beeped and immediately the sound was repeated from a cluster of pines at the bottom of the hill. I stood there laughing for a minute or two, pressing the car alarm and listening to the response from an unseen bird. I wonder if he thought he was wooing a partner?