Back to Work
October 18th, 2015 · No Comments · Posted in food news
I may need a month to recover from my recent trip to DC. Ostensibly to prep our rental apartment for winter, a five-day break from farming turned into a moveable bacchanalia with old friends. But when does it not? Hence, no blog writing for the last week. The best I could do was post a few photos on Facebook. Did you happen to see the one where we bumped into Alice Waters at the Sunday farmers market?
Meanwhile, my nephew Reid, a recent graduate of Penn State’s online program, has moved in for a month to get a taste of farming. He’s been helping keep the animals fed and watered. And here he is this week learning how to eviscerate chickens. My wife declares him to be a rock star. We’ve had so many guests who show great talent in the art of chicken slaughter, but none of them stay. All we have to show for it is a gallery of photos like this one.
Now we have just 50 more broilers in the field, scheduled for harvest end of the month and into November. As temperatures drop, they eat like crazy just to stay warm. Hopefully they’ll get big and fat as well so we have something to show for all our efforts.
Last night, in fact, temperatures dropped into the 20s and the forecast for tonight calls for lows in the teens. That means bringing in all the watering cans so they don’t freeze solid. Electric heating elements went into the larger troughs to keep water liquid. I moved the goats back into the main paddock overnight so they’d have hay to sleep in out of the cold.
This morning, Emily gets her second hormone shot in what seems like a never-ending quest to get her pregnant. Still we have not heard from the guy who supplies our winter hay. I was close to giving up on him but talked to our feed supplier yesterday and he’s still got hay in the fields waiting to be cut. So we just sit tight.
Also creeping up on some kind of deadline: building a winter shelter for the goats. They’ve so outgrown their little shed.
Seems like there’s always something to worry about on the farm
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