Moonmeadow Farm

Bill, the New Pig

2009-07-19T08:11:00.003-04:00

We picked up a new pig last week---thank goodness they don't stay this cute, because we'd never be able to eat them! Dixie seems happy to have him around now, though she wasn't all that impressed at first. We're trying to figure out how to get her to the boar sometime soon.

Peach Trees

2009-07-17T08:49:00.006-04:00

The peach trees they are loaded
The branches are bending down
Well I pick 'em all day for a dollar, Lord
As I go ramblin' round boys
As I go ramblin' round

Sometimes the fruit gets rotten
Falls down on the ground
Well there's a hungry mouth for every peach
As I go ramblin' round boys
As I go ramblin' round
---Woody Guthrie

We're mostly back online these days. Sometimes it takes a long time for the modem to connect, but I think it's the phone line, as others in the area are having the same problem.

The garden is beautiful---rain is so wonderful!---and the weeds are happy and vigorous, too. We've been mowing ragweed that's taller than me, and with a push mower!

The peaches are ripening, and quickly rotting, as peaches here tend to do. One of the trees broke yesterday, even though it was propped up---the weight of all those peaches was just too much. The Early Elberta we planted last year is loaded, too, but not quite as much as the other two, and the peaches look healthier. I think we'll probably keep it, but replace the other two older trees with one more Elberta, and a couple of plums. Organic peaches seem to be nearly impossible here!

Unplugged

2009-06-29T13:56:00.002-04:00

On Thursday the 18th we had a horrendous thunderstorm. It was very isolated---indeed, nobody else around us seemed to take quite the hit our little holler did. I didn't get the computer unplugged in time and it got seriously zapped by lightening. My good neighbor is kindly working on bringing the poor thing back to life, and I'm re-learning about life without a computer! It's probably good for me (sigh).

So I'm at the library now, which is quiet and peaceful and air-conditioned. It's pretty nice, and I've decided I have no complaints.

In the Garden

2009-06-12T06:45:00.002-04:00

Peaches

2009-06-10T06:29:00.002-04:00

Blueberries

2009-06-09T06:18:00.002-04:00

Patting Ourselves on the Back

2009-06-08T07:08:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was one of those exhausting but rewarding days on the farm---we got so much done! Our friend JB came over and the five of us accomplished the following:

Sheared the last three sheep. With scissors. Assessed the fellows we'll be eating this winter.
Walked the horses the two miles to our friend's house, where they're going to spend a little time on his much lusher pasture.
Put Delmonico, the steer in the back of the pickup and drove him over to the same pasture (one of the most terrifying things I've ever done).
Repaired the cow stall, which was missing a wall.
Cleaned up the barn, especially the aisle and feed room. Labeled all the feed barrels.
Did a bit of fence repair, while marveling over how much easier life is without goats.
Propped up all the groaning, overloaded branches on the three peach trees.
Dug a couple of garden beds by hand.
Wheelbarrowed four loads of manure from the barn to the garden, and spread it on the beds.
Killed, skinned, butchered, and froze the last two Muscovy drakes. Made a pot of stock from the carcasses.
Walked the farm sitters through the chores. Had supper together.
And, of course, all the usual chores: Milked two cows twice for a total of seven gallons of milk. Walked the two cows to their daytime pasture, walked them home in the evening. Waited until the pig wasn't looking and sprinted up the hill with three gallons of sour milk to dump in her pan, while NOT getting zapped by the electric fence. Gave a bottle to the soon-to-be-weaned Fanny the Spoiled Rotten Lamb. Skimmed seven gallons of milk to get three or four quarts of cream, and washed the jars so we'd have a place to put the current seven gallons of milk. Poured off the latest batch of kombucha and started a new batch. Cleaned up the kitchen after the duck butchering. Cooked supper.
Collapsed.

Today looks like it will be much the same.

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Now playing: Talking Heads - Tthis Must Be the Place (naive melody)
via FoxyTunes

Mini Vacation

2009-06-06T20:51:00.003-04:00

The garden is nearly planted, we've almost finished shearing the sheep (we'll be done tomorrow), the goats are all sold (to a great home, too), and we're going to go on a little mini-vacation this week. Two different friends will team up to be in charge of the farm and chores, and we are going to enjoy a few days of seafood, salt water and sand. Hallelujah.

Bees

2009-06-03T07:39:00.003-04:00

We got bees yesterday, through the bartering generosity of a neighbor (milk for honey!). I am mesmerized by the bees---I love to stand out there and watch them, and listen to their hum.

We had gotten bees last fall, but due to a number of traumas, they didn't make it through the winter. I feel much more confident about this hive.

Summer's Cauldron

2009-06-02T18:31:00.006-04:00

Drowning here in Summer's Cauldron
Under mats of flower lava
Please don't pull me out this is how I would want to go
Breathing in the boiling butter
Fruit of sweating golden Inca
Please don't heed my shout I'm relax in the undertow

When Miss Moon lays down
And Sir Sun stands up
Me I'm found floating round and round
Like a bug in brandy
In this big bronze cup
Drowning here in Summer's Cauldron

Trees are dancing drunk with nectar
Grass is waving underwater
Please don't pull me out this is how I would want to go
Insect bomber Buddhist droning
Copper chord of August's organ
Please don't heed my shout I'm relax in the undertow

When Miss Moon lays down
in her hilltop bed
And Sir Sun stands up
raise his regal head
Me I'm found floating round and round
Like a bug in brandy
In this big bronze cup
Drowning here in Summer's Cauldron

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Now playing: XTC - Summer's Cauldron
via FoxyTunes Summer's Cauldron
XTC

Goats---the End of An Era

2009-05-31T16:17:00.003-04:00

Little by little we're getting rid of the goats. It's a little heartbreaking---they've been such a big part of our lives for the last decade (or more). They're just not a good fit for us now, though, and we're so lucky to be finding good homes for them.

A Present!

2009-05-30T20:10:00.003-04:00

The coolest thing happened today: I got a surprise gift in the mail. It is a wonderful book that I've had wishlisted at Amazon. I did a little research and discovered this post on cryptogon. What a lovely, lovely thing! I feel such a sense of delight, maybe out of proportion to the gift itself.

Thanks so much!

Fanny, the Little Tiny Baby Lamb

2009-05-30T05:23:00.001-04:00

Fanny has grown a bit, as you can see from this picture. And no, she does not still live in the house!

Strawberries

2009-05-29T07:12:00.002-04:00

The girls have been bringing home pails of wild strawberries, and Bernard makes the most wonderful ice cream with them, using heavy cream, the berries, and just a little bit of sugar. Makes a great supper!

A Poem by Marge Piercy

2009-05-24T08:08:00.000-04:00

To be of use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
--- Marge Piercy

Rain

2009-05-16T07:58:00.002-04:00

No pictures yet of the garden---we had a serious storm night before last, and my beds got a little beat up. I felt bad about it until I went out yesterday afternoon and saw whole driveways washed out into the road---suddenly my little bit of garden bed damage seemed pretty insignificant! The good news is that our half of the county is now out of drought according to the U.S. Drought Monitor----time for a party!

We're off to the market this morning. I'm not sure how long I'm going to keep doing the market---I'm not really making enough to justify the time, especially now, at such a busy time of the year.

Synchronicity?

2009-05-14T09:50:00.004-04:00

Yesterday my three helpers and I got a lot done in the garden---I'll try to get some pictures today after I get the beds all put together in the wake of the tiller.

A funny thing happened in the evening: my helpers had asked me to meet them at my friend SJ's house, since they were on bikes and there are a bunch of pretty scary bear dogs between his house and mine, so I picked them up in the car, and at the end of the day I drove them back down to SJ's. SJ was in his barn when we got there, and he had some folks in there with him and they were all looking at his goats, so being kind of nosy, I wandered in to see what was going on. The people were there to buy goats, and I sort of joined in the conversation. At some point SJ said something using my name, and one of the women looked at me kind of intensely and said,"Rosemoon?", to which I politely replied, thinking she was just responding to my unusual name, but she sort of leaned forward and said,"Rosemoon and [insert DH's name here]? We're W and T!"

Years ago DH and I did a bit of traveling, and we made good friends on the road. We've known our friends D and J for twenty years---they've since settled in central Tennessee, and we've sort of drifted apart, mostly from my own lousy ability to stay in touch, but over the years we've spent a lot of time together, at our place(s) or theirs. There was another family that they were very close to, and also spent a lot of time with, but whom we were always just missing. We would get to D and J's house and they'd say, "Aw! You just missed W and T!" We were constantly missing each other by days or hours, and after a while it seemed bizarre that we had never met! My brother knows and loves them, and I became friends with T on facebook, but still, twenty years later, we'd never met. Until last night in SJ's goat barn in the middle of nowhere. Where W and T had come from south Georgia in response to a craigslist ad for goats. They had no idea we were in the area---they thought we were somewhere in South Carolina!

Isn't it a funny world?

A Poem

2009-05-14T06:56:00.001-04:00

I found this wonderful poem here: Hollin Farms

GOD SPEED THE PLOUGH

Let the wealthy and great
Roll in splendour and state.
I envy them not, I declare it.
I eat my own lamb,
My own chickens and ham;
I shear my own fleece
and I wear it.
I have lawns; I have bowers.
I have fruits; I have flowers.
The lark is my morning alarmer
So jolly boys now,
Here's God speed the plough.
Long life and success to the
farmer.

Overdue Update

2009-05-13T05:39:00.003-04:00

Once we got the fence around the garden completed, it was full speed ahead on digging the beds, most of which were all but destroyed by chickens and wayward pigs. Except that it's been a lovely, cool, wet, Appalachian spring, the likes of which we haven't seen in a few years! It's been gorgeous, but very, very hard to dig in the garden! Yesterday was dry and sunny, and the day before it only rained in the morning, so I think it's actually going to be dry enough to prepare some more beds today. I have four young strong people from Wildroots coming today to work in exchange for dairy products and eggs (and lunch), so I think we'll haul manure, clear weeds, break the beds, and maybe even crank up the tiller I've borrowed (also in exchange for dairy products) from our neighbors. I'm very excited to see how much we can accomplish!

Looks like Dixie the pig might be getting bred in the near future---I'm looking so forward to baby pigs. We've been looking for a Gloucestershire Old Spot boar (or sow or weaners), but they're proving difficult to find around here!

I'm also trying to sell this bull for our neighbor. He really doesn't want him back, and we'd really like to get him gone now the both the ladies are bred (to calve in January---sheesh!) Not having too much luck selling him on craigslist so far.

Today in the Kitchen

2009-04-22T07:32:00.000-04:00

This is where I spend an enormous amount of my time. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with my kitchen, and sometimes, like today when it's sort of cleaned up, I even think it's photogenic.

Pearl and Maude

2009-04-21T08:19:00.000-04:00

April

2009-04-20T20:01:00.004-04:00

That's our house down on the left.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

2009-04-14T11:06:00.004-04:00

It's hard to find time to use the computer at all right now, much less actually write anything! It's crazy around here---that special spring crazy, that I forget about every year in the winter when I'm pining for spring.

Liath is in heat, which has called forth a neighbor's Great Pyrenees, who Saturday tried to kill Bernard's geriatric beagle, and darn near succeeded. Liath is scheduled for a little operation next Wednesday, but in the meantime Bernie the Pyr is proving resistant to confinement. He's back again this morning, locked in a stall in the barn, waiting for his owner to show up and take him home. It sounds like he may be scheduled for a little operation himself!

Confinement seems to be the issue of the moment, as we've had escaped horses (I woke up to the sound of a car horn the other morning, and went out to find Marlene the Haflinger faced off in the road with a car, whose occupant was, fortunately, laughing), escaped goats, escaped sheep, and of course, the perennial ducks in the road. The chickens are mostly out of the garden, though an occasional one flies over the fence. We're building a chicken house, which will have a pen, which should hopefully solve the problem. The bull is still nursing from the cows, but we've got milk to spare right now, so we don't really care. We'll have to keep him until at least 1 May to know if the cows are bred. He's very sweet, but it'll be nice to have him gone, just because of the added aggravation he brings!

We're all tired, with aching muscles, and we all fall into bed at night.

Edited to add: Oh boohoohoo! Listen to me whine! I've got it made and I know it!

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Now playing: Dwight Yoakam - It Only Hurts When I Cry
via FoxyTunes

Spring Snow

2009-04-07T14:12:00.002-04:00

Fanny, the Beautiful and Spoiled Lamb

2009-04-07T07:14:00.003-04:00