I take the frames in the house, scratch the combs to open them up and run them through the basket extractor.  The frames sit inside a spinning basket and centripetal forces work to sling the honey to the outside wall of the extractor where it runs to the bottom and flows into a filter bucket.  Once the honey settles through the filter, it can be bottled immediately.  From 5 frames (not quite full), we got a little more than 10 pounds of honey.  Enough for the year for us, so we’re happy.

Now we just have to figure out how to process the wax.  That will be our next project (added to the bottom of the queue).

We also had a ton of other squash and zucchini and green beans.  Jamie grilled a bunch of the veg and made several batches of zucchini bread and a green bean and purslane salad.  It was pointed out to us that we had purslane growing in our garden–we had considered it a weed.  It’s actually a very healthy, tasty and versatile green.  We absolutely love “wild” food like that.

As far as the bull goes, we coordinated with a local farmer who keeps a herd of herefords, dexters and galloways.  His galloway bull normally just stays with the herd.  We transported the bull here yesterday and he’ll stay through the end of August.  We had three options when it came to breeding our cows:

• Artificial insemination (AI)
• Buying a bull
• Leasing a bull

The main benefit of AI is not having to “manage” a bull, even short-term.  You also have a much larger range (essentially unlimited) of bulls to select from.  However, the downside of AI is that you have to have someone who is trainied in bovine AI do it and you really have to watch your cows to know when to “pull the tube” (literally, out of a cryogenic freezer).  Also, the success rate is generally much lower than using natural means.  Given that we are busy with other things at the moment, it seemed too involved a process, but it is something we’d reconsider in the future.

We also considered buying a bull.  In this case, we would have bought the bull, brought him over to breed the cows, and when he was done brought him to the butcher.  This would have simultaneously bred the cows as well as replenished our supply of hamburgers and hotdogs.  The downside is primarily cost, but also the unpredictability of a bull someone is willing to get rid of for a price we’re willing to pay.  Keeping a bull full time doesn’t make economic sense for us given the small size of our herd and the hay/feed/vet costs associated with his upkeep.

Our third option is the most traditional.  We would lease a bull, bring him to the farm, have him breed our cows and return him to his original herd when finished.  While the selection of breeding stock is more limited than AI (luckily our area of the state has a good number of cattle operations, so the selection really isn’t that bad).  It’s also a bit more “hands off”.  We bring the bull in for ideally 2 cycles (cows cycle every 28 days just like people) and have a good change of bred cows at the end.

We chose belted galloway primarily because they are genetically polled (hornless, which is dominant so our horned cows’ offspring would be hornless), cross well with dexters, they are very hardy and the fact that they tend to throw smaller calves (a concern of ours given we have small dexter cows).

Hopefully this will be a success and we’ll have at least one if not two calves next spring.  Stay tuned!

The garden is amazing, all of the things that failed last year (beans, corn, squash) are thriving.  It looks like the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant will produce amazing amounts, and even our potatoes are doing well.  We began harvesting greens for salads the last week of May and yesterday Mike mowed down the greens section as it was just too weedy.  But, for a good solid month and a half, we had daily salads.  We will start some lettuce and other green seeds and transplant them for a fall crop later this month.

The fruit trees and bushes are looking a little sad, not enough rain, so we are having to water.  We got just enough raspberries and blueberries this year to eat as we pick, hopefully in years to come we will get enough to preserve as well.

The cows are great, we moved their pasture and they seem to like being closer.  We will be having a sweet Belted Galloway bull come and stay with us for a month or so to breed our girls.  The two CVM rams and our goat are in the paddock behind the barn.  In September they will all go to the butcher for meat and pelts.  Our four ewes are great and the little ram lamb is getting big.  The pigs are flourishing with all of the garden leftovers and the rabbits will be bred soon.  Our goose hatched two eggs (one gosling died, it’s stomach wall had not fully closed).  The surviving gosling is so cute and follows it parents everywhere.  We did have a duck sitting on eggs, but something must have disturbed her nest, as the eggs are all gone.  One chicken hatched a few rouge chicks, and we rehabed a rooster that was attacked by the fox.  Our turkey poults are getting big and next week we will move them to an outside run.  We will also be getting a shipment of broiler chicks and roosters to raise for meat.  We will be trying a new technique with the meat chicks, raising them on the grass, so hopefully they will be less gross.  If this doesn’t work, then no more broiler chicks for us.

We have been having lots of gatherings at the farm.  The food is amazing and it is so nice to be able to share in the bounties of our harvest with friends and family.

Enjoy your summer and remember to eat as much local food as you can with the people you love the most!

HOWEVER, had we given her mother a very inexpensive shot the month before the lamb was born, we could have prevented this from happening.  We feel horrific about the loss of this animal and hope that if you raise sheep, you never go through what we went through.  Now we know to give this shot during the spring shearing, right before lambing time and also two months after the lambs are born.  We learn hard lessons on this farm, and this will be a mistake that we hope to never repeat.

Good-bye sweet Leaf Dawn, we hope your body nourishes the grass and returns you to the circle of life on our farm.

We got our angora and deer pelts back from the tannery.  They are very lovely, the angora in particular.  In fact, it is so lovely, and the goat meat has been so surprisingly good that our male wether Clem will be joining the two rams this September in the freezer.  We also got all of our fiber from the mill, the roving from the ewes is lovely, and as nice as the mohair rug yarn is from the goat, it is nothing in comparison to the pelt.  So, we may even see if we can set up an arrangement with a local angora goat farmer to take two animals off of their farm each year to be raised for meat and pelts, more like we do with our meat sheep than our fiber sheep.

Hopefully now that life is settling back into a regular rhythm, we will be back to posting regularly.  But, seeing that it is summer, and we will be pretty busy with the garden and livestock, we will do our best.

Enjoy the season!

Our other ewe is due any day now.  Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

I am thinking that our boy also needs a good shearing!

Last Friday our sheep and goat shearer came to the farm to remove the winter fleeces from our flock.  We really like her; she can work with all of the fiber animals people regularly keep (sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas), she knows tons about general livestock health, and she is willing to come to small farms and shear even as few as one animal at a fair price.

The two Leicester Longwool ewes each gave us five pounds of really beautiful fleece.  After shearing, it was clear that one girl (Clementine) was bred, her nipples were quite enlarged and her vulva was starting to get full.  Our other girl Clarabelle *might* be bred, she had a few signs, but not as conclusive as her sister.  It could be that she is not quite as far along, or that her body just reacts differently.  Last year, our cows gave birth three full weeks apart despite being bred at the same time with the same bull, so we will wait and see what happens with our two girls.  They were with the ram from 12/15-1/15, so they are due any time between 5/15 and 6/15.

Our new CVM/Romeldale ewe Francis also gave us five pounds of beautiful fleece, the color of fog or smoke, very lovely.  Her fleece is so different than the longwool.  The CVM fleece has a super fine crimp, while the longwool fleece makes spirals.  Both wools are perfect in their own right.  The CVM fleece is incredibly soft and good for items worn close to the skin.  The longwool fleece is incredibly strong and lustrous, good for outerwear, rugs, and lace.

Clem, our angora goat, gave us seven pounds of fleece, but his was a bit dirtier and yolkier (sheep grease is called lanolin, goat grease is called yolk) so when clean it will likely yield the same amount of fiber as the girls.  Clem and the two longwool ewes get shorn twice/year, while the CVM ewe only gets shorn once/year.

I skirted each fleece, discarded any vegetable matter and really yucky bits, then kept about half a pound each of CVM and longwool to clean and do some hand felting projects.  I set aside some raw fleece to use in a trade for some lovely prints by an artist friend of ours.  We took the rest of the raw fleece (about 16 pounds) plus about four pounds of cleaned mohair from the fall shearing to our local mill, Still River Mill in Eastford, CT.  It is run by an amazing couple who abandoned their previous lives to become farmers and run a fiber processing mill in eastern CT.

Here is what I LOVE about fiber.  Each different fleece is perfect, all you have to do is know what the right use is for it.  Our mohair is on the course end of the spectrum, but this also makes it very strong and lustrous.  You wouldn’t want it in a hat or scarf, but it is PERFECT for making rugs, so it will be turned into rug yarn.  Then, once life has returned to something resembling normal after this baby is born, I will put my new loom to good use weaving rugs for our home.  The CVM and longwool will be turned into roving that I can spin into yarn, dye, and knit into wonderful garments for my family.  Just like the key to cooking meat is all about knowing what cut you have and what the best method for cooking it is, the key to working with fiber is understanding the inherent qualities of the type you have and using it in a way that maximizes those qualities.

Once an animal has hoof problems, they can be incredibly difficult to get rid of.  We had tried a quarantine for our goats, keeping them in the garden for a few weeks and off of the pasture in hopes that the hoof rot organisms would die without constant contact.  Apparently that wasn’t enough.  We have wet land, and we learned that once an animal has hoof problems, they tend to be chronic.  None of the other animals have ever had hoof problems, just the one goat.  So, we had a decision to make.  We do not run a farm sanctuary.  Animals that need constant medical care and aren’t able to carry their own weight don’t really fit into what we’re trying to do here.  Plus, we don’t want animals to have a diminished quality of life and be suffering, or otherwise not attaining their full potential and enjoyment.  We know other people (and farmers) who feel differently than we do, but that is their opinion, and we respect their choices and also expect to have respect for our choices in turn.

Having decided that we did not want to continue to care for Flora (the two main factors being her diminished quality of life and our limited time and resources) we had to decide whether we wanted to try to find her a new home or end her life.  We quickly decided that finding a new home was not the option we wanted, even if we were completely up front about her problems, we would never feel right about passing on a less than ideal animal to another person.  I called our town butcher, initially thinking they could take care of killing and skinning her and we could at least send her hide off to be tanned and turned into a rug.  They said that as long as we had not given her any treatments inside of the documented wait period on the bottle (for example, on the penicillin it says to wait 10 days from the last dose before slaughtering) the meat would be fine and safe to eat.  I was skeptical, never having eaten goat, I had no idea what to expect.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.  I knew that from a health perspective the meat would be completely fine to eat, the hoof problems did not effect her at all internally and the treatments had been discontinued well outside of the time period suggested by the manufacturer.  For me, there was just something about eating an animal that had been NAMED and not intended to be eaten.  Its not that I felt a particular attachment to this goat, but it just felt different.  We asked the butcher to grind the meat figuring that we would most likely give it a try, and if we didn’t like it, we would feed it to our dog.  It seemed like it would have been a shame to just discard her carcass and would not have shown her life the respect and value it deserved.

When we went to pick everything up, we came home with about 23 lbs of ground goat, her hide (as well as a deer hide that we bought from the butchers to send off to be tanned), and her head and horns (which are “curing” in the woods in our property).  It was sad that we had to process an animal that we had not intended to, but it seemed like the biggest sign of respect we could give to her was to use every single bit of her body; meat for nourishment, hide for warmth, and skull for educating our children and others that come to the farm.

So, I took one pack of the ground goat and made four different samples with it; one with just some garlic powder and seasoned salt like I would do for hamburgers, one with fennel and seasoning for breakfast sausage, and two with Indian spice mixes I picked up from the local Indian market.  To be honest, the meat was very good.  It was exceptionally lean, and to us, almost flavorless, therefore making it the perfect meat to use in heavily spiced dishes.  Our beef, lamb, and pork are all so wonderfully flavorful, I am often loathe to put anything other than a little salt and pepper on them while cooking.  The goat was so mild in flavor that it didn’t overpower the other spices.

After some research on the internet, I learned that goat is actually starting to become a specialty item in some cities, being called “chevon” on the menu.  It has long been popular in Caribbean and Indian cuisines, and it appears to be gaining popularity here in the States as well.  While we have no intention of raising goats for meat, we do feel that we were able to make the best choice in an otherwise unfortunate situation, and that luckily, we will be able to honor the life of our sweet goat by making wonderful meals for our family and friends.

On our farm, we have a perimeter fence (48″ field fence with a strand of electric fence running around) around the entire “back-yard” which is about 11 acres and includes the ponds, barn, all of the livestock, pasture, and garden.  The cows are contained in the back half of this area, in a roughly L-shaped pasture of about five acres which includes a small pond and stream.

All of the chickens, ducks, geese, sheep, and the goat free-range in our “back-yard”, meaning that we get frequent visitors right up to our back door, namely the chickens and Clem our goat.  It also means that when we are outside, we tend to have a bit of a “posse” wherever we go.  It consists of the following animals: Zsaka, our eight-year old vizsla, Marty, our three-year old cat (who really thinks he is a dog and goes EVERYWHERE with us, even more than Zsaka sometimes), Macs, our thirteen-year old cat and very first pet, Clem, our angora goat wether, and Clementine, one of our Leicester Longwool sheep.  We also often have two speckled Sussex hens with us, especially if we have food.  We give them occasional treats, but not so many as to make them spoiled and pushy.

Today the kids and I were sitting on one of our favorite large rocks in the small stand of trees next to the coop and the previously listed animals were all with us.  Clem, Marty, Zsaka, and Clementine were laying down on the rock, the kids were climbing and collecting sticks, and the chickens were looking for bugs.  It felt so surreal, like something out of a Disney movie.  I hope to have many more days like this, with my children and animals all peacefully co-existing and quietly sharing space together and in harmony with nature.