North Branch Farm

2012 Debut

2012-01-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

A quick run-down of the last month and a half:

-We killed three pigs and two steers for meat, and Seth shot his first buck on the last day of hunting season. Our freezers are overflowing with meat. Help us! Eat it!

-Dolly, our Haflinger draft pony, became very ill and had to be put down. We miss her.

-We made buckets and buckets of sauerkraut and fermented ginger carrots with our new shredder-grater attachment for the Hobart mixer. Yummm...

-A new helper around the farm, Willie (formerly of Village Farm in Freedom), is giving us a hand and hoping to work with Tyler on logging with draft horses and milling lumber.

-our friend and housemate Chris Williams is splitting every last eligible stick of firewood on the farm in return for his room and board. In his free time he is teaching himself leather belt-making, playing with Ada and baking delicious cheesecake.

-We are mostly subsisting on a diet of meat stews and sauerkraut, with eggs thrown in for variety, and are enjoying it and feeling healthier than ever.

-Seth, Ada and I moved into our New House. We are reveling in Not Driving Anywhere for days at a time.

-The farmhouse residents (Tyler, Gib, Elsie, and Chris) insulated the ceiling of that house and have enjoyed a much-improved interior climate ever since.

Hope all is well in your lives in the new year--take care.

Ada eating her first snowball while we make applesauce and apple butter.

Our hams, bacon, and deer jerky smoking in the smokehouse, newly relocated to the farm.

The Winter CSA (this was pick-up #3) in full swing in our redecorated and re-purposed mudroom.

Harvesting parsnips before the ground freezes up.

November's Elixir

2011-11-24T15:12:00.001-08:00

Last week, Elsie, Chris, Minh, Ada and I all headed over to Paul Bernacky's Wayback Farm in Belmont with 18 bushels of apples and a lot of empty buckets and came back with...CIDER!

Enjoying the cider on our way out

Filling buckets with cider.

The whole cider-barn-contraption, running off a belt from the tractor.

Juice starting to trickle out of the press

Minh and Elsie letting out the first bit of cider that came out while filling the cloths.

CSA and Barrel Washer

2011-11-14T05:22:00.001-08:00

This time a week ago, we were madly painting, harvesting, re-organizing, and setting up our new barrel washer in preparation for the our inaugural winter CSA pick-up for our 33 members who we support in the noble challenge of eating healthfully, locally, and seasonally through the winter months. We had a boomingly successful first pick-up day and are already looking forward to the next one. The enjoyment we get from people coming to our farm and getting excited about our vegetables is topped only by the feeling of satisfaction we get afterwards thinking about our food being eaten across the state. Below are a couple photos of the assembly of the root washer inside the little greenhouse we built for it:

Seth screwing on the slats of the barrel

View of the greenhouse built onto a rock wall

...looking down the barrel

And here's Ada, asleep during an applesauce making party.

Woodmizer encore

2011-11-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

Greetings, everyone!
In the press this month, Seth and Tyler made the front page of the monthly magazine Acres USA, "The voice of eco-agriculture," as stars of an article on the profitability of portable sawmills. You can't read the article online, but email me at northbranchfarm(dot)monroe(at)gmail(dot)com and I can forward you the pdf if you're interested. The barn floor, which we were in the process of re-boarding at the time the article was written, is now finished and we danced on it at our wedding and then loaded it up with round bales of hay the next week.

The sawmill has seen a lot of use lately: Seth milled up 13-foot long hemlock strapping which we bent around a jig and used to form frames for a wooden, gothic-arch shaped greenhouse. This greenhouse will shelter the barrel root washer for which we purchased a kit from Grindstone Farm in NY and will hopefully be assembling later today! Unfortunately, our only 13-foot long sawlog was at the bottom of a large pile of hemlock, so rather than moving all those logs aside, Seth just milled his way to the bottom of the heap and got us a nice, large stack of two-by lumber as a byproduct of building our little 20'x12' greenhouse.

November's coming along fast and hard, and here at North Branch Farm we have been taking advantage of a nearly endless stretch of crisp, sunny days to get our winter storage crops harvested and packed away into the root cellar. Our harvest started way back in July with garlic, then moved on in September to onions and squash.

Chris and Anna and Eric load squash onto the horse-drawn haywagon before a supposed hard frost that didn't happen.

In October we cleared out our cellar and brought in the bulk of the harvest: carrots, cabbage, rutabagas, beets, leeks, celeriac, and apples. We've been packing most of our crops into bulb crates for storage, and they've proven great for just about everything; not only do they haul vegetables well, they can also be used to carry firewood, laundry, lunch food, books, and just about anything else on the farm. They stack great, they're sturdy, they're lightweight, and they're easy to clean. One drawback: they're plastic. Someday we'll get back to wood.

Bolero carrots, a storage hybrid from Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Mammoth Red Rock cabbage, from Fedco Seeds. Our green storage cabbages are Bartolo from Fedco and Storage No. 4 from Johnny's.

The last two days have been potato-harvesting days. Using our little old horsedrawn potato-digger, we dug up the quarter acre of potatoes then sorted and picked them up by hand.

The potatoes had a rough year between the wire worms, late blight, scab, hollow heart and lots and lots of rain, but due to our enthusiastic over-planting we will still have more good-quality potatoes than we need for our CSA and ourselves. And the 2500 lbs of culled potatoes? We plan to eat them while they're still good, then set up a cooker outside and boil them for our four pigs. I was inspired by reading a little James Herriot this summer and in one of his collections of short stories he tells how the old farmhouse compound he lived in, in England, not only had a built-in pigsty, but that pigsty had a built-in wood-fired cooker in order to cook up potatoes and other pig food. Our pigs will surely appreciate hot boiled potatoes on a cold fall day, if we can figure out a system that works well and doesn't get anyone scalded.

Finally, for a different perspective on things, here are a few pictures of our area and North Branch Farm from Elsie and Tyler's ride in Elsie's dad's plane:

Belfast


Mount Waldo

The hub of the farm: barn and silo, greenhouse, old house, new house, veggie fields.

The farm from much higher

So...until the next time, stay warm and eat well.

All spiffed up!

2011-10-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

Happy rainy October, everyone!

It's been a busy one so far. Seth and I got married on Sunday, October 9th, and in preparation for that grand and festive event many folks from our families (most broadly defined) rallied round and helped with some serious farm beautification. The barn roof (less milk room and silo connector) got finished. The greenhouse got plastic. Everything but a couple of tons of loose hay got moved out of the barn, the floor got vacuumed and the rafters swept. Every pile of odds and ends around the grounds got a firm dealing with and the farm is looking better than new.

The inside of the barn--this is for our former apprentice Pauravi, if she's looking--her dream come true! My sister is shop-vac'ing the whole thing and the cider press is wedged away in a corner.

Our greenhouse! We did it!

The inside of our greenhouse, our new favorite hangout spot, temporarily hosting winter squash, onions, dry corn, popcorn, and dry beans.

A couple of random newlyweds.

New calf spurs blog entry

2011-09-25T10:06:00.000-07:00

Some photos of the farm taken from the roof of the Yentes-Quinn house, clockwise from Northeast-ish:

First, the top end of the vegetable field with blueberry acre behind.

Then the lower part of the vegetable field, with the fruit tree nursery in the foreground (and chicken tractor off to the right).

Southeast view of cows, pigs, Mount Waldo, and the beginnings of a greenhouse frame sticking out from behind the barn.

A better view of the barn

And the farmhouse, home garden, and Kioti tractor, plus a corner of our handsome grey standing seam metal roof thanks to CO Beck and Son.

Seth and Ada playing on the floor--since that photo, Ada Ruth has successfully turned one! This weekend is the Maine Organic Farming and Gardening Association's Common Ground Country Fair, with all kinds of neat talks, demonstrations, tasty foods, wonderful friends to meet up with and ideas for new projects (just what we need, right?). Strep throat keeps me home writing blog entries, though.

News from the last couple weeks:
The 320-pound 2011 garlic crop is cleaned, graded, bagged, and ready to go. (Let us know if you'd like to purchase German White seed garlic, bulbs size 2"+, for planting this fall, $12/lb).

The onion harvest is drying on the hayloft floor, and some that weren't quite dead enough at harvest are turning their few leaves ceiling-wards in hopes of a few more days of sugar-storage. Unfortunately, they're having a hard time photosynthesizing in that cavern and we are reminded of Monty Python and the Holy Grail: our little onions, after losing most of their roots in getting ripped from the soil and being bumped about and lugged into a dry, dark location are still screaming "I'm not dead yet!" and "It's only a flesh wound!"

The winter squash is also harvested and waiting on hay wagons for us to find a suitable curing spot for them, and the 1/3 acre planting yielded two full hay wagons, which we preliminarily have estimated to be about 3 tons or 6,000 pounds. We sent a few hastily-chosen specimens to the Common Ground Fair and won prize ribbons on almost every one!

We're excitedly looking forward to the winter CSA and subscriptions have been coming in over the last couple of months. We're not full to capacity yet, so if you'd like to be the lucky eater of luscious, sturdy vegetables this winter, be in touch with us. We can't wait to feed our friends and neighbors.

And finally, yesterday our cow closest to pet status, Ella Rose, had her first calf, a heifer! She then went on to suffer milk fever and a prolapsed uterus but the vet came out and put it all to rights, and it seems like everyone's doing well now. [Bookworm's note: In the past month I have read three of the four James Herriot books: short autobiographical stories about vet work in Yorkshire, England. I think Dad read them to me years ago, and they are just as intriguing as they were and haven't lost the cheesy closing line to each chapter. But now I know that milk fever used to be treated by inflating the udder with a bicycle pump. Yikes!?!?] I haven't even seen the new babe yet, but she's sure to be a beauty.

So, until next time...enjoy these beautiful days and eat your summer veggies while you got 'em!

Ramblin' in the new mown hay

2011-07-25T03:54:00.000-07:00

It's hay season! A smattering of photos to illustrate some of what that's like

Ground-driven PTO forecart (for tedding) and John Deere No. 4 Big sickle bar mower

Chain of...command? fools? Loose hay loader, Anna on hay wagon, Seth and Ada on the forecart, draft horses making it all go.

Tyler and Gib bringing in a full wagon-load.

The barn, filling up with loose hay

The sweetie herself

The gang: Tyler, Elsie, Andy, Gib, Pauravi, Ada, Anna and Seth! Thanks to our hard-working, humorous helpers on the farm.

2011-07-13T03:36:00.000-07:00

A small collection of photos to give the feel of the farm these days:

High bush blueberries in pots, for sale.

Hazelnut "tubelings," now happily growing in the nursery along with baby American chestnuts, amelancher cherries, grapes, and all kinds of other tasty and interesting edibles.

A portrait of the garlic--we have about a quarter acre of it altogether.

My porta-farm. Hundreds of cabbages and other brassicas traveled to the farm via Volkswagen. Those little seedlings are now more a foot tall!

Beautiful Tyler and Elsie coming home from a star performance in Monroe's Memorial Day parade.

Milking Reagan, one of our six Milking Devons.

Barn reconstruction continues...

Gib's brilliant solar hot water heater. For some reason, it only works when the sun shines, but other than that it's awesome.

Crop mob (volunteer work party) came on July 3rd and helped mulched the acre of high bush blueberries.

Sadie's heifer calf. Of the five calves born, we have four heifers and a bull.

Good-bye from Ada, and all of us!

Planting season 2011

2011-05-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

With blackfly season halfpast, all the seeds in the ground, and a half-inch of rain tumbled down to get them started, we're basically sitting around drinking lemonade and sunbathing. But when we're not busy doing that, we're weeding the garlic and blueberries, building and fixing horse equipment, waiting for calves to be born, deworming sheep, working on the barn roof and floor, doing chores, and plotting what we will do differently next year. So we're not exactly lollygagging around, but I, at least, have a little more time for contemplation than I have had over the past few weeks.

One "how did I get here?" moment hit me yesterday: sitting in the kitchen of a house on a farm in Maine of which I am part owner, pre-chewing boiled roadkill deer for my eight-month-old daughter who is standing on my lap, crowing at me, and driving a matchbox army tank across my face. There's a snapshot of life for you.

But to back up a couple of weeks, before the grass really started growing and when the cows were still in the barn, Tyler, April and May did a lot of chicken manure spreading in the pastures and hayfields. Here are a couple more shots of that activity.

Seth's Herculean task for the spring was twofold. With some skilled assistance he planted both one acre of high bush blueberries for a future pick-your-own patch (that's near on 800 blueberry bushes) and about four thousand young trees in his tree nursery.

The Demere great-grandparents are back in town!

...and the blackflies are vicious. The sun-hat-bug-net combo is effective but not popular with Ada Ruth, who has three tooths (and countless opinions).

The winter vegetable CSA planting is complete save 750 cabbages, 100 kale, and 50 broccoli that need to get transplanted out in two or three weeks. We've had a dry spell for the last week and a half and got the last of the seeds in the ground just as a thunderstorm opened up on us yesterday afternoon. Red and white onions, leeks and garlic are all growing well, as are celeriac, Brussels sprouts and a first round of kale, broccoli, and red cabbage. The winter squash; sweet, dry and pop corn; potatoes; carrots; beets; parsnips; rutabaga and dry beans should all be popping up out of the ground in the next week or so. In the home garden we recently transplanted out all our cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, summer squash, zucchini, and cucumbers. Elsie's early plantings of spinach are getting big enough to eat and the lettuce is not far behind. Edible podded peas are also in the offing; rhubarb and asparagus seasons are coming to a close. As I walked down the driveway with Minh last week, he gave the perfect guided tour/summary of the season: "New spruce needles coming out. Sugar maples. Rasperries are blooming!" And this morning he and I checked out one more sign of the times: a big snapping turtle laying a nest of eggs, somewhat inconveniently, in Lucretia and Oai's pile of compost they purchased for their garden. So that's the word from the field, until next time.

Tyler the Magnificent

2011-05-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

Everyone works hard around here at whatever it is they're doing, and this post is a special Ode to Tyler. Tyler has undeniably made a lot of things possible, including:
-reflooring the barn, by recruiting Graham for the winter so that he would have a safety backup while working horses and felling trees, by leading the milling up of 8000 board feet of 2" thick hemlock, by leading the work of moving all crap in the barn from one side to the other and back again (or in the case of the piano, shoving it over a bank), tearing up old and rotten floorboards, and putting down the fresh new floorboards
-Seth and I living off the farm while we build our house, by taking on even more of the livestock responsibility, including chores and reviving steers sick with hay belly and making sure there will be enough hay for all critters to stay fed until grass season arrives
-getting bills paid on time (without him, who knows if they would get paid at all)
-having all the right fields prepared at the right times for things like grazing, blueberries, and CSA vegetables
-getting a greenhouse set up this year
...and the list goes on indefinitely.

Basically, Tyler is generous, smart, strong, capable, knows how to strategize and work towards a goal, and has no fear of responsibility that I am aware of. Thank you, thank you Tyler! Three cheers for Tyler. Here is a picture of Tyler with April, May and the manure spreader, fertilizing pasture (and himself) with chicken manure. While Tyler may, at times, find himself covered in poop, he is never, ever full of it.

Easter Saturday, a well-known holiday, was celebrated by the usual meal of Eggs Benedict and a hard-boiled egg hunt. Both took place indoors due to inclement weather.

Moms of new babies reveled in being fed by others and relaxing.

The pregnant cows have today marked their one week anniversary of Spring as defined by living outside and no longer having to stick their heads through metal bars to get food.

One of the new baby lambs born in April on the farm. We have four girls and eight boys, and a mix of black and white ones. If anyone wants to see some good sproinking, come on over to the sheep pen.

Last and least (in size, not spirit): Ada Ruth on a ramp-hunting venture with Seth and my parents. She is no longer the proud owner of a toothless grin, i.e. Ada Ruth has a tooth! Cinco de Mayo!

Thank you one and all for your kind readership and infinite patience. Happy Mother's Day to all!

Signs of Spring

2011-03-31T13:39:00.000-07:00

The croci at Chris and Jonathan's house are going wild, like preschool crayons poking up amongst last years dead stalks of lilies, hollyhocks, morning glories, and other summer beauties. Little Ada's asleep on my chest, our neighbor has pulled out his taps, and the temperature is solidly above 40. But, this is what is says on the NOAA website:

Tonight: A slight chance of rain and snow before midnight, then snow likely. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 31. South wind around 6 mph becoming calm. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Total nighttime snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches possible.
Friday: Snow before 2pm, then rain and snow. The snow could be heavy at times. High near 35. Breezy, with a northeast wind between 11 and 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 4 to 8 inches possible.
Friday Night: Rain and snow, becoming all snow after 11pm. Low around 29. North wind between 13 and 18 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 2 to 4 inches possible.

The cliff notes are: predictions of 7 to 14 inches of NEW SNOW on April 1st, 2011! Is NOAA allowed to play April Fools jokes? Because if they are, that's what I think this is. Unfortunately, I think enough people's lives and livelihoods rely on them that they probably are NOT joking. And, I have to say, the sky is a bit overcast. I'm ready for warm weather, real spring, and more flowers. If they all get snowed over, I'll just sit in front of my computer watching this picture until things thaw out again:

The fruit of many weeks' labor, a few cords of wood, and the futile moving of sap from roots to twigs of a stand of noble sugar maples:

The beginning of our spring garden and winter CSA: thousands of onions and hundreds of leeks are starting to sprout. The celeriac, a slightly surly vegetable, has yet to show its cotyledons. Lucretia and Lân are on watering duty.

Lao and Gib picked up a roadkill deer and Seth and Graham butchered it for the tasty eating pleasure of the Yentes-Fulford-Etc clan.

Ada enjoying a new view from her own personal chair--and now I can eat lunch without covering her in food. Ada's doing splendidly well. On the same day as the first high-chair-sitting was the first pushing-up-onto-hands-and-knees.

And...Ada once again. Being a star.

2011-03-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

This past week, Lucretia and I, with assistance from Elsie, Minh, Lân and Ada, started our first round of seedlings: onions, leeks and celeriac. We're a little late, but within the range of normal. Nothing has sprouted yet, but I expect to see some baby onions in the next week. Seth has been working at Fedco trees and pruning other people's fruit trees lately in addition to many other exploits. Here is one of the old apples he pruned and its very prominent graft line.

Here are Ada and I asleep, Ada in an unusual but of course darling position. She just passed her six month birthday.

And here is Ada, laughing at Seth as he plays peekaboo with her over the edge bed.

Short but sweet--more photos of the farm to come!

In like a lion?

2011-03-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

March seems to be coming in like a big wet, snarly lion. And while it may go out like a lamb, we won't be going out with lambs, because our lambs aren't due until April! Our sugaring season has been a bit funny so far; it's been either warmish and gray or frigid and sunny--either way, the sap hasn't been pouring out of the trees and, in fact, we've only collected sap once. My camera's battery freezes up so easily that I had to drive by the farm and take photos through the window of the car. Here we have the product of many hours of work by Graham, Tyler, Gib, Elsie, and maybe others:

Trees--mostly hemlock--that were felled got hauled out of the woods by April and May and were then milled into 2" thick boards on our Woodmizer sawmill. What you see in stacks here is the future floor of the barn's upstairs. Soon we will have no more holes, no more skinned shins or tiptoeing around or covering holes with big sheets of plywood!

Here's the barn, silo peeking out from behind, and Seth and Anna's house with a newly finished roof in charcoal gray.

Anna and Ada hanging out at the apartment, modeling a killer sweater knitted by Rachel, a killer knitter. It has owls with buttons for eyes across the chest.

The ash post and the upstairs of our house, which I can't wait to live in.

Ada, her slowly shrinking hemangioma (ear bump), and her new trick: chewing on cups.

Drip...drip...drip

2011-02-24T08:25:00.001-08:00

Here at North Branch Farm, we have broken the stasis of winter. Proof is in the dripping taps in the sugar maples, the ever-lengthening days, and the flock of cedar waxwings devouring the remaining Amber Cider Crab apples. It feels great, but there's also a sense of impending chaos and obligation that comes with the growing season.

Over at the farm the other day, Graham and Tyler were converting a horse-drawn sickle bar mower into a horse-drawn, ground-driven PTO shaft. This means that we'll be able to use power generated by the wheels spinning over the ground, pulled by April and May, to run equipment that we could otherwise only use behind a tractor. Pretty exciting! I don't think I could explain the details without making a mess of it, but stop by the farm someday and if any of us are around we'll show you how it works.

North Branch Farmers will be making their first appearances at MOFGA-sponsored CSA Fairs this weekend, looking for members for our 2011-2012 Winter CSA. Come out and see us Sunday, February 27th, from 1-3pm at the Unitarian Universalist churches in both Bangor and Belfast. We are growing all kinds of tasty storage crops, including carrots, potatoes, squash, garlic, onions, cabbage and beets, to give out over the course of next winter. If you'd be interested in coming by the farm and getting a pile of our veggies every other week from November 2011 to February 2012, let us know!

Ada's waking up, so I'm back on momma-duty. Until soon!

February Thaw

2011-02-11T07:16:00.000-08:00

People are calling it a February "thaw" which you'd think would involve the temperature rising above 32 F. But it seems to count as a thaw when it gets warm enough that salty road ice melts and the sun beating on dark roofs causes the snow to shed off. I turned 26 three weeks ago and Lucretia gave me a new download cable for my birthday, so now I'm able to make use of photos taken again. Phew.

Our fabulous winter farm assistant, Graham, is back after a couple weeks helping prepare for the season at his next farming gig. The oil furnace at the farmhouse ran dry, sucked up gunk into its pump and filter, and died a gurgly death. This motivated a whole house fuel-reconfiguration which involved installing a woodstove in the basement to prevent frozen pipes and hooking a copper water tank to the Waterford wood cookstove in the main room, which now heats more than enough water for dishes, showers, laundry, etc. Not to mention the increased thermal mass and increased classy rustic-ness of the scene there.

The livestock had a bout of malnutrition that caused the steers to get weak and lethargic and the sheep to eat their own wool. When we started feeding them selenium, salts and kelp meal they got chipper again and seem to be doing much better. All the critters are in the barn now except for April and May, the Percherons, who eat hay and snow and work in the woods with Tyler & Co a couple times a week. I asked Seth if he had noticed the horses getting stronger, and he said, "I don't know. Actually, their butts have changed shape...they've gotten more square." I think they're pulling their weight, so to speak.

Seth has been putting in time on the Yentes-Quinn house, which may actually get a roof next week! Here is a photo looking out the east end of the upstairs of our house. I couldn't get it to rotate for some reason, so for full effect you should turn your computer screen 90 degrees clockwise or look at it while laying your left ear on your left shoulder.

Ada Ruth in one of her very first unassisted chimp sits, dad as spotter...

and he has quick reflexes.

Sweet Ada Ruth in a puddle of nap drool.

It's good to know you all are out there, living through winter in its various stages and thinking of us every now and then. We think of you as well, despite sparse posts here!
Happy Valentine's Day,
Anna

New Photos!

2011-01-28T05:31:00.000-08:00

2010-12-02T14:40:00.000-08:00

Here's that ram I was talking about:

I think he's done his time here and is ready to move on to his next home.

Here is the Yentes-Quinn house:

It's come a long way since this photo, but this will help mark the progress until I get the newest shots loaded. Seth, Lao and Craig put in a few days every week on the house, and it's amazing how quickly it grows in this framing stage. We were out there today, taking advantage of briefly thawed ground to plant tulips, narcissus, an azalea and an English walnut tree.

Here is a shot from the 2010 Slaughter-a-thon, more subtle than last year's but no less cheerful. In two bouts, two pigs, three lambs and two steers were added to the freezer. Tip of the year: to add less lead to the environment, use a sledge hammer instead of a gun. Tyler, Seth, Jonny and Graham were on this crew.

And for lack of any other strictly farm-related photos, here are a couple of Ada Ruth and her 'rents:

In the nursery, helping out digging trees to send to the Fedco warehouse.

In the apartment. The orange hat reminds me: everyone I know who hunts managed not to get shot this November, but no one I know managed to tag a buck. Better (retroactive) luck to rest of you.

2010-10-29T11:04:00.000-07:00

I am about as disconnected to the farm as I've ever been, but I have been missing it and wanting to give an update on it--as best I can. So here it is:

Ovine: The big, new sheep have been combined with the small, old sheep and they are happily grazing inside their electronet fence. I said we were done acquiring animals for this year (maybe I said it more than once) but I was mistaken: we bought a ram. We'll keep him for a month or two and then sell him to another young farmer who keeps sheep not far away.

Porcine: The two little piggies are just about of feed, which means that their lives are just about over. We'll wait for a good weather before we do them in.

Bovine: Cows moved into the barn for the winter about two weeks ago, along with the Haflingers, and, as such, the barn smells, all of a sudden, quite barn-y.

Chick-ine (?): All happily living in their tractors. Donated Araucana roosters are in the belly or in the freezer, and our new batch of hens should be laying in six to eight weeks. More eggs: something I'm looking forward to.

Dry Beans: Almost totally threshed and winnowed--a beautiful palette including Jacobs Cattle, Jacobs Gold, Marifax, Bumblebee, Calypso, Pinto, Crow River Black, King of the Early, Cannellini, and Black Turtle beans.

Tyler, Elsie & Dad at the thresher

Winnower, or fanning mill.

Final drying in the barn on screens.

Equine: April and May have been plowing and discing the future veggie and blueberry fields. The seat on the disc harrow broke while Tyler was sitting on it, so now he's mostly just plowing. And attending the animal power field days in Vermont, and getting all fired up, and looking after the farm in all its small intricacies and huge needs. Thank you, thank you, Tyler.

Welcoming Ada Ruth!

2010-10-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

The long pause on blog entries has been due not to a dearth of excitement but rather to an overwhelming amount of momentousness! Our baby, Ada Ruth Yentes-Quinn, was born at 4:23 am on Wednesday, September 22, 2010. She weighed 8 lbs, 3 0z, was 20 3/8 inches long, and she is a star. Chris and Lucretia attended the birth, and of course Seth. Julie, the other midwife, almost made it, and had she been driving at 80 mph from Mount Desert Island instead of only 70 mph she would have gotten here in time--as it was, she was there for most of the important parts afterward.

I want to give a giant thank you to everyone who has helped us out in the last two and a half weeks with food, laundry, dishes, company, and work on the farm. The local family members kept us overflowing with tasty dishes and help in many forms from day one, and the not-so-local family members have been beating back the piles of dishes and diapers and building our house and threshing our beans and mucking our barn for close to two weeks now. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thanks also to everyone who sent kind words through phone, mail and email. It has been such a boost, even though I may not get the chance to personally thank each person.

Here are some photos of Ada and our families, for those who are interested.

Just a few minutes after she was born...

Chris giving Ada her newborn check-up, under the watchful eyes of the family.

Above: Ada about to get weighed.
Below: Copious numbers of photos of Ada and people who adore her.

David

Mary Kate, my dearest one and only sister.

Gran, Aunt Mary Kate, Greatgran

Granhappy

Grandad

Ada and a good view of the super-cute hemangioma on her ear--something that will probably go away by itself over time.

Noni and Grandpa

On the second floor of our little house!

Mountains of Treasures

2010-09-20T04:33:00.000-07:00

Dear friends--
Oh my goodness gracious, how time flies! I thought it had been barely more than a week since our last post, but it looks like it's been a full two and a half. Let me see what I can pull together.

We had another epic round of salsa-making in early September. I forgot to take a picture of all of the tomatoes together, but we really did have mountains of them. I think we're over the peak of that mountain though; they're starting to slow down now that we are getting nights in the low forties. Here are some of our puniest little cherry tomatoes...oh wait, those are Brandywines.

They make great turbans, too.

Other mountains of treasures we have on our farm:

Chicken manure, trucked in from southern Maine, four 32-ton loads. Here are two of them.

An ever-increasing supply of woodchips (good for mulching blueberry bushes and fruit trees), dumped by the road-trimming crew that is working its way through downtown Monroe. Here are three loads, but we now have over ten:

Mountains of dedicated hard work: while Seth and I scurried around preparing for last weekend's framing party, Tyler, Elsie, Gib and his friend Matt tackled the long-standing barn roof and laid down those panels until there was no more metal to lay.

This was the morning, three panels in.

And here was the end of the day, twenty panels and a new farm record!

Mountains of livestock:
New sheep arrivals (6), and probably the very last of the new livestock for this season:

Black face=friendly, white=skittish. They weigh about three times as much as the stunty Coopworths we have, and they are meat-fiber crosses. Mountains of trouble? They may be that too as they have already broken out once, but they seem quite herd-able.

Little chickies, all growed up! We lost a few to an unknown predator, but the chicks have since grown up enough to not be such tasty morsels, and they really appreciated getting moved into an outdoor movable chicken tractor. They are now grass and bug enthusiasts.

As we speak, Tyler and Seth are getting the horse-drawn plow ready to go, and Tyler hopes to be plowing in the peas-oats-vetch cover crop with April and May today! We are having Too Much Fun on the farm, and are happily working our hearts out as the days get shorter and cooler. We had our first light frost two mornings ago, September 18th, and we are all looking forward to the Common Ground Fair this coming weekend. On our local community radio station, WERU, all the DJs are playing fall season music, and the transition from summer to autumn feels so tangible right now. I hope you all are enjoying these days, wherever you may be!

Putting Food (and Housing) By

2010-09-04T07:18:00.001-07:00

Most recent to least, some photos of the Seth-Anna slab.

Insulated concrete forms (ICFs), assembled and ready to be filled with concrete.

Seth on a hot one, putting it all together. Don't worry, the house will not be built ENTIRELY out of styrofoam, despite appearances to the contrary.

Full (almost) view of the slab.

Slab pouring party!!!

Tom and Patrick, preparing forms for concrete pads to use up extra concrete.

Pouring concrete pads with leftovers. Seth, Tyler, Danielle, Cretia, Minh, Anna, Jonny and mystery person.

Keeping our eyes on the prize.

Gib and Jonny supervising while Seth power-trowels the drying slab for a smooth finish.

Gib screeding the 'crete, Chris and Tyler moving it around while Anna chats with the concrete delivery man.

The 7:30 pm to 1:30 am salsa canning party: 16 gallons of salsa, done!

Our main fuel, sea salt dark chocolate.

Gib and Seth, nutty at midnight.

Tasting the fruits of our labors, halfway done.

Newcomers once again

2010-08-23T14:00:00.000-07:00

Bovine report:

This past week on the farm was an exciting one; we gained four new members and had one fabulous visitor. First, Seth and I drove to Vermont and bought a bull. We wanted a bull because we have six lady-cows and we'd like them all to calve next spring, and there are no bulls of our particular breed in the immediate vicinity. Our breed is the American Milking Devon, which is a now-rare breed of cattle that was the first type of cattle brought to North America, or at least to what is now the Northeast United States. Despite the specificity of the name, one of the best things about these cows is that they are bred to retain the tri-purpose nature with which they arrived on this continent: they can be trained as oxen, used for milk production, and also eaten for beef. In fact, there are even stories of single cows being milked and worked as oxen at the same time, and still tasting delicious at the end of their lives. So, we got us a daddy cow, and so far he seems to fit right in with our herd. His former keeper called him Billy Bob, though he doesn't have an official name. We get to choose it, and the only rule is that is has to start with Meadowbrook since that was the name of the farm where he was born. We're thinking of Meadowbrook Nebuchadnezzar, at my dad's suggestion, but we're still open to other ideas. Let us know if you have any, preferably starting with "N."

I haven't taken this guy's portrait yet, but he looks pretty much like all the others except he's got horns and they come straight out from the sides of his head.

Ovine report:

We finally have sheep! I have to say I was about ready to send them to the freezer on their first full day here, but I think we've moved past that phase (for now), and today they look and sound cute. I think they're Coopworths, which is a breed that's especially well known for their silky longwool fleeces. And my dear friend Eliza, who is not an ovine but a homo sapiens, is modeling one of the three little buggers we just acquired in the two photos below.

Eliza was a major trooper during a multi-hour sheep chasing mission over the weekend, and also a superb bundle of energy and adventuresomeness during her three-day stay here at North Branch Farm. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

August Progress

2010-08-13T07:35:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, Family and Neighbors,
Please excuse the long silence--I was away in North Carolina and my camera was dead. Both situations have been remedied, and we are back in full swing in both blog and farm worlds. Here are some images from the farm.

Veggie Art:
Many weeks ago, on July 26th, Seth used our first major cucumber harvest to do some sculpting. The main variety of cucumber used is Suhyo Long or Shantung Suhyo Cross, we're not sure, and they taste EVEN better than they look. Sweet, crispy, tangy, and delicious.

Our first and so far only eggplant harvest consisted of these four beauties and two shiny round apple-green ones.

The Pre-Slab:
And though this is more personal than farm, here are a couple photos from the Seth-Anna-young'un house building project. In the first, Seth, Tyler and I are just beginning to lay down tubing on top of sand and remesh for the radiant heat. Notice the color of the tubing? Red. This would have been about 4:30pm on Monday afternoon, the day before the slab pouring.

6:00pm: Lucretia, Oai and Minh come over to check it out. Oai tells us it looks like we have the wrong kind of tubing. Internet search confirms suspicions.
7:00pm: Tyler leaves for Bangor; last minute purchasing of correct material successfully completed at our favorite big box store, Lowes. Anna and Seth remove bad tubing.
8:30pm: Tyler returns with the goods (and our friend Destiny).
9:00pm: Anna, Seth, Gib, and friends Patrick and Abbey start to lay down correct tubing.
10:30: Tubing-laying completed amidst thunder, lightning and showers. In bed by 11pm.
5:15am, Tuesday: Anna and Seth are back out at the pre-slab again, putting the finishing touches on before the concrete arrives.

And here, Jonny and Seth are standing on the nick-of-time finished radiant system at 6:50am the following morning, minutes before the concrete truck arrived. I just can't stop feeling grateful to all the people who helped out with the pouring of the slab, photos of which are yet to come. Thank you Jonathan, Gib, Tyler, Chris, Destiny, Patrick, Lao, Danielle, Lucretia, Minh, Tom, other people I might be forgetting, and the two fine men of State Sand & Gravel. There is hope for this little house!

New TV!

2010-07-20T06:07:00.000-07:00

...You all might be thinking, Anna and the North Branch Farm gang don't seem to be the TV-watching type! But looking at a noisy box with little things moving all around can be quite calming and mesmerizing. Here's what I mean:

CHICK TV!
I highly recommend it over the conventional type. It's cheaper, more interactive, and provides food for the belly as well as food for the eyes. In this picture you can see 22 of the most precious baby chicks in the world: 16 Barred Rocks (those end up black and white striped and lay brown eggs) and 6 Araucanas (hawkish-looking blue egg-layers).

The cows have given us trials and tribulations for the month of July: Psycho-killer Sadie Rose (picture a cow from Ghost Riders in the Sky: "Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel/Their horns were black and shiny and their hot breath he could feel) threatened anyone attempting to milk her after her calf was born with a well-manured hoof deep into the eye socket. We decided to let her be; she is a good cow in her own way. Filet Mignon and Earl of Hamburg, the two beef calves, were happily in a little calf pasture until they learned to break out and started roaming the farm (both sides of the road), and so as not to be outdone in mischievousness Mara, one of the yearling heifer calves, made escaping from the main herd a routine. That was only mildly inconvenient until the three of them started stampeding the garden and hanging out in the road. They are now in quarantine in the barn, which brings new complications, as Mara enjoys beating up Earl most intensely while we undertake our twice-daily milking of Maple, causing the normally placid mama cow to stomp, roll her eyes, kick, and give concussion-worthy swats with her tail to the head of whoever is milking. The flies don't help. Cow drama makes an okay blog subject but doesn't do much for our quality of life; we hope the bovines fall back into their quiet old routines soon.

The garden, on the other hand, has been a pleasure. The CSA is going beautifully, and while snow and sugar snap peas, spinach, scallions, and the other spring veggies are on their way out, we have early summer root crops like baby carrots, baby beets, and new potatoes to usher in the high summer vegetables, notably cucurbits (cukes, zukes, and summer squash) and nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant). Portraits of some of the upcoming garden stars:

Green zebra tomato

Daikon radish top

Bell pepper

Eggplant!

To finish up, the previous two weeks' CSA boxes:

And lastly, if you want a little bit of backstory on my agrarian interest and move to Maine, you can look at a piece I wrote in the newsletter of the school I went to from preschool through 12th grade at http://www.cfsnc.org/uploaded/News_and_Events/We_and_Thee/2010_Summer_W&T_Summer_2010_%28web%29.pdf

If you give a mouse a cookie...

2010-07-08T08:13:00.000-07:00

Making hay reminds me of the picture book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." As in, if you want to make hay, you're going to need a side-delivery rake:

And if you need a side-delivery rake, you're going to need a forecart to hook it to:

And if you want to pull the forecart, you're going to need some hardware, and if you don't have it already, then you're going to have to blacksmith it up at your forge:

And you're definitely going to want some horses to pull that whole rig, and aren't they just beauties:

I've had requests for a belly picture, so here it is, 6 months big:

CSA and Hopefully Potable Water

2010-07-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately, no photo for CSA boxes on week 1.
CSA box week 2:

Spinach, head lettuce, walking onions, garlic scapes, parsley, and radishes.

Here, Seth is digging a trench from the new well to the house with the Kioti tractor and his own strong back--multiple cave-ins and re-diggings later, the line is run, pump and pressure tank installed, and we have new running water in our house as of yesterday, 7/1/2010! We still have to wait until we have all the silty gunk is purged out of it until we can test it and find out if it's good to drink, but at least we have 60 psi of pressure. In the words of the well-driller, that's enough pressure that "you won't need no soap to get clean in the shower." Sweet.

CSA box week 3: Lamb's quarters, spinach, radishes, parsley, cilantro, and scallions. Yum!

New Arrivals

2010-07-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I experienced long minutes of frustration on the new blog host and decided that maybe later I will venture again into the wordpress realm, but for now we'll stick with the tried and true (and reliably speedy) blogspot. Sorry for the long absence, but despite so much to catch up on this will be a relatively short entry due to blazing sun and my excitement for weed-killing.

On June 23, this little guy was born. Elsie took a Rose Family portrait (Ella Rose on the left, Sadie Rose and baby bull Rose on right) right when she and Tyler found him; still wet and nursing well. He has major spunk and will plow through most any fence in search of tall grass or shade to lie down in for a nice nap; I think he's a rabbit-deer-cow hybrid, with long ears, strong legs, and a cute snub nose.

The other new additions to the "farmily" over the last couple weeks are April and May (named after their birth months in 1995), sister 15-year-old Percherons who have spent most of their lives so far in Saco, Maine. Now they grace our farm with their massive bulk, power, and patience. So far they have eaten a lot of grass, pulled people around for a cart ride, and raked a few acres of hay with a side-delivery rake. All in their first two weeks! They have far outstripped Dolly and Riley, our bossy attitude-y work ponies, in terms of both productivity and mellowness. And in the size of their feet. Just imagine dinner plates. Seriously. April and May are pastured across the road from our house, and when the flies are bad they tend to stomp a lot and you can hear their stomps while sitting here at the computer.

Three butts.

At the watering trough: April has white and face and feet, May is solid black.

Gearing up for some real work.

New Blog Host

2010-06-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

Dear Faithful Readers,

I have moved the North Branch Farm blog to http://northbranchfarm.wordpress.com/ and am trying to figure out how this new host works. I don't think the blog will be disappearing from here any time soon but new entries will go up on the wordpress site. Hope you enjoy it! And if we don't and you don't, we'll be back here in the blink of an eye.

See you over there,
Anna

Woodmizer in Action

2010-06-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

A much-welcomed rainy day affords time for the computer, so I bring you all the next episode of snippets of life on North Branch Farm.

One of the many treasures we inherited with the farm is a 1989 Woodmizer LT28, which is a sawmill not so very different from the one we borrowed last summer to mill up wood for Seth's and my (then) cabin. Tyler and Seth have been working persistently on getting this one up in running condition, and just a couple days ago, the final replacement parts we needed came in the mail and we fired up the old machine! The sawlogs we're working with in the pictures are from the red pine and balsam fir that we had to cut down to make room for our new driveway, and are a little on the small size. However, the red pine is already coming in handy; Elsie is custom making us a set of wooden CSA boxes to carry our vegetables safely to the homes of our brave CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) members. The boxes are beautiful, functional, and made by us and our farm!

Two too sweet brothers!

Tuesday was our first CSA pick-up day, and I was thrilled to send off a fine mix of farm treasures: head lettuce grown by Lucretia, spinach, Egyptian walking onions, garlic scapes, curly parsley, and soft cheese with garlic and herbs made by Elsie. I have worked on CSAs before, harvested on many an early morning and packed many a box, but I have never run one of my own. It brings an interesting mix of responsibility, obligation, solidarity, and adventure--I have a captive audience, and I want them to be caught absolutely breathless by the beauty and quality of the food when they open their box. Can I do it, week after week, for twenty weeks in a row? I hope so.

May the soft rains be followed by warm sun in your gardens and on your faces.
Until next time.

1st Stab at Haying + View of/from the Loo Part Two

2010-06-08T16:44:00.000-07:00

Happenings on the farm just keep...happening. Yesterday we had only broken tractors, and since our tractor hero with the tractor ambulance and his son came by, we now have working tractors and a few easy fixes left to perform. Today was a beautiful day, and Seth and the Oliver and the New Idea Cut-ditioner (mower/crimper) put down about 5 acres of hay. It got showered upon this afternoon but we hope it might be okay anyway.

Here is the mower on the first pass around the perimeter of the field.

Seth and the set-up.

Yikes! Farming!

Today, the well drillers up and left, their work complete; we now have a well with 10-12 gallons per minute of flow that is attached to absolutely nothing. Not too shabby! I can't wait to plumb it into our system. Last week, to give the well a little more leeway, seven of us picked up and moved the outhouse, hence a new view of and from the loo. You may also notice a classy half-door that Gib put on the outhouse, for which we are so grateful. The mulched area you can see in both pictures covers the new septic line, tank and leach field. Hurray! No more shower commutes!

Weekly Reports

2010-06-04T06:22:00.000-07:00

Friends!
The past days have been an exciting mix of projects and events and people.

Almost two weeks ago Ben and Oleh, a pair of WWOOFers, arrived at North Branch Farm. WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, formerly known as Willing Workers on Organic Farms, and is an organization that we have signed up with as a host site. People who are traveling and want to spend time living and working on a farm in return for room and board contact us and then come by for anywhere from a couple days to many weeks. It's a very neat set-up, a big help to our farm, and something that both Elsie and I have done in the past as the travelers.

With Ben and Oleh, we've reclaimed many garden beds at the upper North Branch Farm (Chris and Jonathan's place) that had been swamped by an early flush of annual and perennial weeds brought on by the unusually warm spring. They also have single-, or rather quadruple-handedly, stripped the asphalt shingle siding off the entire south side of the barn and most of the east and west sides. They've mucked stalls, put out transplants, mulched, milked, and cooked many a delicious meal. We are so grateful for their willing help!

Our cruising friends, Mick and Bee, were in town and recently sailed away heading Northeast for Canada--I mention them because they are some of our most loyal blog followers; they win the prize for Most Engaged Non-Biologically-Related Blog Readers, and their reliable ragging and berating has prompted more blog productivity than I'd like to admit.

Bovine report: Maple, our only milker at the moment, has been producing close to 3 gallons of sweet and creamy milk a day. She still kicks like the dickens without the use of some dairy-lore anti-kick methods, and last night we discovered that she has mastitis in one quarter (a cow's udder is divided into four distinct quarters, each with its own teat). We're putting her calf, Filet Mignon, back with her because apparently one of the best ways to treat mastitis is to prevent any milk from accumulating in the infected quarter. Unfortunately, this means he will be drinking ALL of our our milk for the next day or so, but it seems worth it to hopefully cure and prevent the spread of the infection. Sadie Rose is due any day now--she is "bagging up," which means her udder is starting to fill with colostrum for the calf, so we're now pretty sure she is, in fact, pregnant. But when will the baby come? There's no telling. Based on her temperament and last calving, we're likely to come out for chores one day and notice that she has a calf walking at her side that didn't use to be there.

Ovine report: We are signed up to buy about 12 sheep! They will be for meat and wool, but we don't know when exactly we'll get them. All ewes and some ewe-lambs, and one solitary ram-lamb. Some of them are Coopworth/North Country Cheviot crosses. Talk to Elsie for details.

Caprine report: We don't have any goats. This is very sad.

Swine report: Chris and Lucretia got us two little shoats, just weaned, about 6 weeks old, one boy one girl! They are total cuties, and that comes from someone who has beef (or pork?) with pigs. We have had them a couple weeks now and they have already grown tremendously.

Water report: The toilet's connected to the septic tank, the septic tank's connected to the leach field, the leach field's covered with grass seed and hay! We can flush and shower to our hearts' content. Simultaneously, H2O Well-Drilling showed up yesterday and put in the first twenty feet of casing towards our new well. Today they are back with more casing and have just set up to start drilling again. Soon we may have potable water! Below is a picture of the drill rig that Seth took just as they were starting to set up yesterday.

Baby Shapley-Quinn report: alive and kicking! 5:30am daily is apparently a great time for in utero aqua-aerobics, which is fine by me.

Garden report: After over half an inch of rain yesterday, eight acres of plowed and cover-cropped fields are starting to sprout up, the dry beans are coming up, and our transplants are glorying in plenty of hydration. Can't wait to be eating more fresh veggies!

Breaking Ground Part Two

2010-05-28T04:47:00.000-07:00

A driveway for the new house! The first three pictures were supposed to be a panorama, top would be on the left and bottom on the right, but I don't have the ability to stitch them together.

And a slab! Seth and Jonathan making final adjustments to the staked-out footprint (26' x 32') of our future house.

Less than an hour later: Wade has dug out for the slab.

The view south from the future house

Breaking Ground Part One

2010-05-28T04:25:00.000-07:00

We have had a long run of hot, sunny, intermittently steamy days with temperatures up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, which irks me mostly because we do not yet have ideal watering systems in place for animals or plants but also because when I moved away from North Carolina I thought, "Well, at least I will get away from the oppressive summer climate." Come to find out that global warming is plotting against me personally.

But truly, things look to me like they will turn out alright. Last summer was incredibly cool and wet, and yet still we had enough food to eat through the winter. If this summer proves to be the opposite, just look out for our killer melon crop and an abundance of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and squash.

Below is a series of photos of the initial day of plowing and disc harrowing in the future vegetable fields. Oai and Minh are buzzing around on the lawn tractor they found in our barn that Oai fixed up.

Four-bottom moldboard plow at work.

Jonathan and Tyler plowing off into the sunset...

Swiftly Speeding Seasons

2010-05-20T04:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome, everyone, to a time of pretty cows on pretty pasture!

What else is new? Seth, Tyler and Elsie are taking turns on our two biggest tractors the International--"Big Red"--and the Oliver--"The Green Giant," one with the recently repaired four-bottom plow and the other with the disc harrow. Yesterday, they opened up close to three acres of fresh ground which we will seed into a cover crop of peas, vetch and oats (PVO) as soon as possible. I'm trying to avoid the fumes of gas and fountains of hydraulic and transmission fluids that periodically come spraying out of the tractors and their implements.

Our noble hero Wade of Guy Hanson and Son is here with bulldozer and excavator, having already built a driveway to the future Seth-Anna-little person house. He is now grinding away on a leach field so that someday in the not-so-distant future we may be able to let our dish- and bath-water down the drain instead of dashing it all over the front lawn.

Wildlife sightings:
A pair of Baltimore Orioles (Jonny said they are suckers for citrus fruit, so after I first saw them I put out some oranges that I got from the Belfast Co-Op compost and lo and behold there was the momma bird!).

An old man in a truck stopped by to say he had seen a lynx or a mountain lion in our back field that same day, and that he thought it was 5 or 6 feet nose to tail.

Neighbors shot a wild turkey on our farm and gave us the carcass. Yum!

A pair of ospreys was spotted circling over the barn and checking out the river a couple weeks ago.

Bald eagles hang out around here too. Come see them!

We thought about baiting the feline predator with Mignon the calf, just so we could get a glimpse of it, but decided against it in the end.

Progress in the garden, dark soil after a night of rain.

This non-descript photo tries to show the new driveway, but mostly shows off one of our new topsoil mountains.

I'm signing off, everyone, to go enjoy the last few hours of daylight. Enjoy!

Two Weeks (+) in Summary

2010-05-06T06:18:00.000-07:00

Spring has been charging forward with a vengeance here at North Branch Farm, and we are soaking it all in! A little over a week ago, Tyler and I spent some time on the barn roof and between our efforts and a couple of other stints around the same time, the north side of the barn is ALMOST completely roofed. There are only twelve more panels to put up (we've done more since the photo I'm posting here was taken).

In the cattywampus photo below, you can see the garden on the north side of the barn and Seth's and my cabin platform behind it. The heavily mulched area in the near left corner of that garden is where we recently put in 350 baby blueberry plants. The plum trees on the far side of the garden are now in full puffball bloom and smell riotous. You can consider this a "before" picture, because on May 10th we're expecting Wade the Heavy Equipment Operator to come and start digging a driveway behind those fruit trees, a foundation for Seth's and my house in front of the platform, and a leach field between the garden and the barn.

Here is the view looking south from the barn roof--Mt Waldo is the looming peak on the left in the background, and in the foreground is a second garden plot we'll be using this year. In the middle are many many acres of beautiful but neglected pasture and hay fields.

Here you can see the detail of the hip of the metal roof, where the shallow upper pitch meets the steeper lower pitch.

The barn as it looked at the end of April:

Gib and Sammy, the 6 1/2" long painted turtle he found sunning itself on Rt 139.

For Lucy: Bleeding hearts on the front walk that I noticed were blooming when I got back from dropping you off at the airport. They haven't quit yet.

"Still Life with Peas"

This is the amazing seeder that I loved and thought I would never own, because the manufacturer stopped making it. Johnny's Selected Seeds is now carrying it again and Seth gave me one as a gift. There is nothing better for seeding medium-to-small patches of greens and many other small-seeded crops, and this was my seeder's maiden voyage.

Looking back at progress in the garden south of the barn on Wednesday, there are peas in the nearest bed, mixed greens in the back left, and spinach, radishes, cilantro, carrots and beets all crammed into the back right bed. More to come soon, I am sure!

Photographers-in-Residence

2010-04-21T04:56:00.000-07:00

Good day, all dear friends!

It's the season for spending every daylight moment outside, for listening to the American woodcock and the spring peeper, for ahhing and aweing at fresh, hidden wildflowers, for joining the families out hunting fiddleheads and fishing in streams. Exodus from the hearth fires! Banishment from the computer screen and its horrible buzz!

But today it chilly and grey, so I'll take the chance to share a bit with you and look at the big picture of what's been going on lately. Last we spoke, new cows had just arrived on the farm and Lane had spent a week at North Branch Farm. Exactly a week after Lane left, my parents and our good friend Lucy Pryor arrived at the Bangor Airport from the Sunny South (NC and VA, respectively) to spend a week pushing our farm forwards. And in the midst of their efforts, someone else was pushing too...

Part 1: A Son is Born
The following are pictures of our new mama cow Maple and the birth of her Jersey-Devon bull calf, Filet Mignon. When Tyler got home from teaching weekly violin lessons, he found her with the water bag already out, and after an hour or more of labor, this was as far as she had progressed: front hooves out:

Chris ruptured the membranes and she and I each grabbed one not-so-little hoof to assist in getting the little guy out.

Before long, Jonny and Tyler joined the fray, and while Maple nobly pushed and heaved, the humans hauled away.

Within a few minutes, out the calf slipped, and Maple the good mama checked him out and licked him down.

Chris and Minh also checked him out, but they did not lick him down.

A stiff breeze was blowing and the little calf was starting to shiver, so Elsie did follow-up duty to Maple and rubbed him until he started trying to stand up.

Up and at 'em!

We were all pleased with the healthy status of both mama and baby, and not too alarmed by the fact that we had had to pull the calf out--though it was Maple's second calving and should have been a breeze, she was bred to a Jersey bull and Jerseys are a good bit larger than Milking Devons. Chris claimed that just by the size of the hooves she could tell a bull calf was on the way, and a bull calf is a good thing for us: he'll keep our fields shorn and poop on them, and in a year two we'll send him to the freezer. Welcome, Mignon!

Part 2: Digging In
One of the most exciting projects of the week was The Planting of the Blueberries--Seth received about 350 baby plants by mail and they needed a nursery home. We dug into Ralph and Barbara's old garden and found fluffy, sandy, loamy soil--slightly deprived in organic matter, but with a lot of potential and nothing bigger than pebbles in the mineral department. The sod, however, was creeping in from the edges and took a good bit of beating back. Below, Seth is using the hand-forged broadfork we won in an auction. Behind him you can see up into the field where we'll eventually move these blueberries when they're big enough.

Blueberries in their temporary holding pens in front of the barn.

Looking back towards the barn, Mom/Kathleen strips the peat pots off of the blueberry plants and Anna then plants them.

Part 3: Victories
One project that Dad/Todd--sometimes with a team, sometimes solo-- stuck with throughout the week was the removal of the fence surrounding our front yard.

Lucy and Mom took care of our chicken tractor, whose tarp covering was so old that the chickens could just pop out through the holes when they wanted to and poke around in the icky old sludge pile nearby. They put on a brand new tarp and then added PVC-pipe skids so that the tractor could be towed around easily even by people weighing under 150 lbs.

There are two victories implicit in the photo below: number one is that we managed to get Tyler and Elsie's beautiful tent platform and tent set up before our guests arrived, and number two is not only did our guests not freeze to death, they actually enjoyed their guest house on the river!

Part 4: Lucy's Eye

Milkweed Pod

Hellebore

Trout Lily

Cinnamon Fern

View of the loo (new addition: avian apartment)

View from the loo (new subtraction: the next day, the funky elm tree was cut down to make way for our future leach field)

After an incredibly productive week, the parental clan headed out and left us to our own devices. In the intervening period, we have made yogurt from Maple's extra milk, put five more panels on the roof, stripped shingles off the entire north (silo) side of the barn, and gotten multiple new wwoofer requests. We can't wait for more great friends and friends-t0-be to spend time with us on the farm!

The week in review: lovely ladies and cows

2010-04-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

This has been a GREAT week because we have been visited by a very dear friend of mine, Lane. She is a star. Below, you can view her participating in the activity of the morning, tree-limbing. We climbed in trees along the edges of fields and cut off limbs below 20 feet. It was kind of like practicing to be a porcupine or a koala bear.

The other reason it was a great week is because we tripled our herd of Milking Devons. Tyler and Elsie drove to northern Vermont on a epic one-day cow recuperation mission. They arrived back in Monroe with a full trailer (two pregnant mama cows and their two daughters) just after dark on Monday and we gave them a full-on welcoming party. Lane was the official cow photographer.

Above: Maple and Ryan, the two mamas, on their first day. Below: The welcoming committee.

Below:
Anna: "How much poop does this cow have on her butt, before I go shoving her around?"

On Monday, my first day off from work with Lane, she and I hiked Bald Rock Mountain in Lincolville, and both the weather and the location were beautiful. This is the only picture of the two of us there that doesn't look like I am having a major illness.

Four Days and Four Nights

2010-04-01T03:41:00.000-07:00

Friends, family and neighbors--
It has rained like crazy here, one-tenth of a biblical scale flood, I calculate. Also, Tyler and Seth had another fun, engaged, and profitable concert--this time at the Down East Country Dance Festival in Topsham, ME. We're still cranking along on the farm; we are now equipped with a chipper and I am looking forward to a visit from my dear friend Lane Raskin this weekend.

Spring Wishes to you all,
Anna

A Pregnant Pause

2010-03-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

After a long absence, I return to give you good tidings of great joy: Seth and I are pregnant! The baby's coming sometime around the end of September, and we are SO EXCITED. Absolutely thrilled. Here is me in the greenhouse back at Chris and Jonny's place eating spinach to get lots of iron. This picture was taken only weeks before marauding geese busted in and munched spinach to their hearts' delight. All I can say is that they had better all be pregnant. Meanwhile, I am puzzling over how a new baby, new farm, and hopefully a new house will all compatibilize themselves in our lives while I work 40 hours a week packing seed potatoes at Moose Tubers and 10 hours a week at the Belfast Co-op stocking (or stalking, as I like to imagine) produce. Moose Tubers will only go on for seven weeks, for which I am very grateful.

Anna's new workplace:

Other very exciting news is that Seth and Tyler, as Whiffletree, played a spectacularly successful contra dance at the American Legion Hall--hence the Bingo paraphernalia you may notice in the background--in Belfast about two weeks ago. For those of you not immersed in contra dance culture, a two-member band is quite uncommon and Whiffletree has met with much skepticism in the contra scene, but luckily they have weathered the oft-times cool receptions and succeeded in thoroughly amazing both dancers and dance callers. Below, please find some mug shots of the hot new boy band:

Pig Politics

2010-03-02T05:42:00.000-08:00

In response to those who miss the pig-slaughtering pictures, I apologize. The "Vegetarians Beware" entry was deleted in my absence due to complaints from disturbed readers, and the text is now lost in the ether of cyberspace and our memories.

This seems like a good opportunity to explore the politics of meat, which--if you have read Michael Pollan's articles and books OR watched Supersize Me or Food, Inc. OR let yourself be exposed to popular media of almost any kind--you will be familiar with. Huge corporations at whom we should be shocked simply because they haven't been brought down under anti-trust laws are constantly raising millions of meat animals in horrible conditions and mistreating hundreds of thousands of meat industry workers and flushing tons of pollutants into our environment. The public end of all this is a little skinless boneless piece of flesh on a styrofoam tray sealed in plastic wrap, stamped with a price and sell-by date. When the industry is exposed by writers and filmmakers painting gruesome images of what goes on in feedlots and slaughterhouses, the public (so to speak) eats it up. However, it seems that we as a society are so sensitized to these kinds of images that we can't always distinguish a wholesome and respectful death of an animal from a brutal, dangerous and toxic one.

I respect the perspective of our readers who felt saddened, upset, or frightened by the images of us doing in our three pigs. It is indeed a mixed emotional bag for us, as well--none of us would claim that it's an easy or gleeful task, and it is something that we take seriously and try to do well. So while some of us might struggle with a pig's demise, I feel it is important to offer these images as both contradiction and alternative to the agro-industrial meat system.

If any of you were hoping to follow the guidelines for brining and smoking ham or bacon, you can get in touch with Seth, master of the smoky touch, and entreat him to share his expertise. So, at risk but not with the intent of offending our gentle and kind readers, I will repost our piggy pictures.

Outhouse Relocation Campaign

2010-02-22T11:53:00.000-08:00

This is a pretty self-explanatory set of photos, but the background is: we are using our slightly ailing Ford 8N, Polly, to move our shiny new outhouse to its final resting place.

Loading the outhouse on the forks.

She didn't tip forward on her nose...but she did stall out.

After adding a beefier strap, heading uphill through mushy snow.

Stalled out again, in our future garden!

Delicate work

Wave a level at it, and maybe it will sit flat?

Aaaaah...pooping in style, not in a cesspool.

Valentine's Day Roofing Party

2010-02-22T11:01:00.000-08:00

On February 14th, Elsie and her father John plotted and executed a glorious roofing workday party. In attendance were the five of us North Branch Farmers along with Elsie's dad, her mother Ellen, neighbor Annie, Uncle Roy, and our friends Lao, Danielle, and young Elizabeth. In classic NBF style, quinoa and stir-fry were served at the luncheon, accompanied by wholesome, imported North Monroe drinking water. A fine time was had by all, and Annie's dog Rudy apparently did not die even after having eaten a quarter of a bar of Dagoba New Moon 74% Organic Dark Chocolate. Let's just be glad he didn't find the Eclipse and Xocolatl bars that were also within doggie reach.

It was a good thing the roof workday happened when it did, because previously we had been encountering numerous obstacles that incited bouts of cursing, swearing, throwing things, and abandoning the roof mid-panel-installation. Thanks to our guest crew's soothing temperaments and can-do attitudes born of many years' experience, we made slow but steady progress throughout the day and worked out many of the kinks that had been challenging us.

Elsie spent much of the day roofing our outhouse; it came out beautifully and we now have the confidence that at least one of us can complete a roofing project start to finish. Never mind that the outhouse has 1/320 the area of the barn roof. It looks like Annie is handing her materials and Ellen is prepping drip edge in this shot.

Elsie seams the outhouse roof while John looks on.

Towards the end of the day, Gib and Lao--with assistance--set up a roofing station on the west end of the north side of the barn roof, working back towards the other set of panels that stopped at the peak of the silo connector.

Panel #2 up! The sun was starting to go down, so we soon packed up shop and called it a day. Thanks to everyone who so kindly shared their Valentine's Sunday for the benefit of the North Branch Barn!

Recreational Activities

2010-02-08T05:43:00.000-08:00

Hello to our family and friends, and thanks to Mick and Bee for prodding on the entry-writing front. I would like to offer an official Interweb welcome to Gib, the long-awaited newest member of our household, and I hope to be channeling his excellent writing skills, which you may sample at http://adventuresoficenine.blogspot.com/, here. Seth and I returned a week ago from our sabbatical month in beautiful North Carolina and are rushing headlong, with our co-farmers, into the noble drama of barn-house-land caretaking.

Sunday the 7th of February was a busy day. In the morning, while Elsie and Tyler killed trees with chainsaws for firewood, Seth and I almost completed our NEW OUTHOUSE.

Now, we would choose to use an outhouse anyway for many logical reasons, but the reason we need to have one right now is because of our septic system, or lack thereof. In December, our sinks wouldn't drain. Seth took apart the u-bends under both sinks, and they were---to our amazement--clear! So as he dismantled plumbing in the basement farther and farther from the sinks, he discovered that the pipe where all the drains joined up had clogged to about a half-inch diameter opening, down from the two-inch diameter pipe. No wonder things weren't doing so hot. And in the process of exploring the plumbing, Seth noticed that a cleanout-access to the drain from the toilet was backed up to within inches of overflowing into our basement. Seth and I thought, "We need to get this septic tank pumped." We placed a five-dollar bet: Seth thought the tank would be shot and need replacing, and I thought it would still be usable. So we dug up the lid to the tank, called the pumping company, and waited for the weekend to be over to find resolution to our wager.

Come Monday, the pump truck arrived, lifted the concrete lid, and pumped out hundreds of gallons of sewage to expose not a septic tank but what the pump-man technically termed a Cesspool: a pit in the ground lined with rocks. No separation of liquids from solids, no obvious pipe out to a leach field of any kind. All bets were off. So now we throw dirty dishwater on the lawn, take bucket baths, and are looking forward to our classy new outhouse. Elsie says it can even have a standing-seam metal roof to match the barn.

Side-view

Top view, pre-roof and pre-seat.

After lunch, the five of us took off on snowshoe for a two-hour tromp through the woods. Gib talked to us about sustainable forestry practices, and Seth climbed a leaning dead gray birch for a chaga mushroom. It was beautiful and cold and I found traces suggesting we have a LOT of critters in our woods--deer, rabbits, porcupines, foxes, and probably musk oxen and polar bears too.

Money in the Bank

2010-02-05T08:49:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah, baby...

We are gonna be warm, and our hay is gonna be dry.

2010-01-26T09:11:00.000-08:00

The animals all cozy in the barn

Barn Roof

2010-01-26T08:56:00.000-08:00

Here is the barn roof 1/8 of the way done

The Tyler and Riley Team

2010-01-19T10:56:00.000-08:00

(This is Elsie again)
Yesterday Tyler and I took Riley out of the barn and put him to work twitching out some wood. I also got to drive him and haul out some wood with him for the first time. What a thrill to be half running, half walking behind Riley, who is working hard to drag a heavy log across the field. And what a hard working strong pony he is. It is amazing how much he can pull for his size.

Here is Tyler on his way back to the log pile to hook up to another log. On his way back he retrieved the chainsaw helmet that fell off the sled on the way over.

Metalfest! (revised)

2010-01-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends: (This is Elsie narrating)
We have started on the metal roofing process! Some of you may of seen Anna's earlier post from afar, for she and Seth are in North Carolina for the month of January. I thought I would edit it and elaborate on some of the photos. My dad and sister, John and Edith, so kindly came over for the day to help us get started on roofing our big barn. It was also great to have Seth and Tyler's mom Chris over for the day who we have to thank for these great photos. She also made us the best applesauce cake I have ever had in my life at the end of the day. Thanks to all for helping out.

Here we have Tyler working the shear on the roofing machine, where he is cutting the panel off at the right length. The metal goes into the roofing machine flat and comes out with both sides bent up to create the standing seam.

It is hard to see in this photo but it was the best one I could find to show how both sides of the panel are bent in the roofing machine. The top edge of what we call the low side (the left side of the panel in this picture) is bent into an upside down L. And the top edge of what we call the high side (the right side of the panel in this picture) is bent into an upside down U.

The low side of the panel receives the cleats which are what attach the metal to the roof. That is what Tyler is doing in this photo. Then, the high side of the next panel that goes on will cover up the low side of this panel and the cleats. Then the whole thing will be put through the seamer which will bend the seam over twice to create the double lock standing seam.

This is what the finished product of the seam looks like (taken on a later snowier day).

That is my best explanation of how it is done! Standing seam metal roofs are the best kind of roof you can have living in a snowy area. They have no surface fasteners (nails or screws that puncture the metal that could lead to a leaky roof) and they shed snow much better than a shingled roof. Spoken like a true standing seam sheet metal roofer's daughter!

In this picture I got to use the electric shears! (compliments of my dad) This was the alternative to making a cut 180in long (the length of the panel) through 24 gauge metal by hand with the straight snips, which look like a giant pair of scissors. It very nicely saves your hands and wrists from being quite sore the next day. Instead of making a single cut in the metal the sheers take out a small strip entirely. As you can see when it does that it produces a pretty little curly-Q. Edith is being my helper and cutting the curly-Q off when it got too long. This process is only necessary for the panels that go on the edge of the roof.

And here we all are listening intently like we're in sheet metal roofing class learning from the master himself.

Belly of the Whale

2009-12-17T12:40:00.000-08:00

The view from the shop--finally the barn roof is fully roofguarded!

This is my lovely sister Mary Kate, making friends with Riley, who is the photographer of the following shots. She is being quite brave, making the trip all the way to Maine in the dead of December, and is surviving nicely.

Here's our work party--special thanks to Ly, Steve, Chris, and Jonny for coming out on a chilly Sunday--where we worked on rafters, the silo connector, and exterior trim. We're trying to be ready to start putting metal on the roof tomorrow! Yikes!

Another rib hits the ribcage...we were on the home stretch at that point.

Victory! All rafters have been doubled up! Structural reinforcements have been completed!

Tyler on his way down to Elsie's dad's shop to pick up the roofing materials--if you want to start the truck and it hasn't been plugged in for multiple hours, you have to jump start it--and if it still won't start, you have to take a hair dryer to the gas lines. Today it was 11 degrees out at the warmest, with the wind chill taking it down to -10.

2009-12-03T17:15:00.000-08:00

This little critter was spotted dragging compost out of its bucket and down a hole under our kitchen sink. S/he may have eaten our rug as well, or might have eaten the previous inhabitants and taken over. We hope the latter.

Dad named it Lambbone. It was dragging a piece of a lamb neck skeleton as big as itself out of the bucket. Yeck.

Ralph's Room

2009-11-29T14:33:00.000-08:00

I have extracted from "Draft"--the purgatory of blog entries--these photos Chris took of our current house before we moved in. They are some of the only documentation of the state of the house before we got our hands on it, but they are pretty representative.

This is the room that is now Gib's Room/The Library, back when it was Ralph's room, and Barbara, his wife, wasn't even allowed to go in there. Yikes. We found false teeth, mouse nests of pumpkin seeds and candy bar wrappers, and probably one hundred empty cat food tins, "for painting my model planes," he said, while we were helping him pack up and move out.

This is more or less what the room looks like now--except we've filled it up with many many more books and now it has a permanent occupant!

Opaque Windows, See-Through Floor

2009-11-27T14:58:00.000-08:00

Elsie, hero of the scrub brush, paint brush, pastry brush--and many other brushes, I'm sure--working her magic 3 weeks ago on the house.

Another of my heroes in life, Todd SQ, cinderellaing the storm windows.

I wasn't there at the time, but here we see Gib competing in some kind of barrel-chucking competition--or maybe diving away from a feed barrel falling out of the sky. We received our first delivery of feed grain at the farm last week and have been poisoning rodents ever since.

Sadie Rose in the background and her daughter Ella Rose front and center, looking fat and happy but maybe a little perplexed in their first day on the farm.

And a less cute sight: the white patches in the floor are actually holes through which you can see the joists supporting it. You can also see how Ralph and Barbara laid down thicker boards so they could drive the hay-unloading tractor into the barn. Very sketchy. Not a good place to go walking in the dark.

Porta-Farm

2009-11-25T05:29:00.000-08:00

Adventure of the day: moving Dolly and Riley, our Haflinger draft ponies, a chicken tractor, and twelve Rhode Island Reds stuffed in cardboard boxes from the old farm to North Branch Farm using our new beasty truck. Seth seen modeling the season's fashions.

Oh yes, a House! And Music!

2009-11-13T14:03:00.000-08:00

Here you may enjoy a glimpse of our living room and our library-guest-room-phone nook.

Last we spoke, the barn was full of cars, the yard full of camper-trailers and more cars, and the house was full of old stuff. In the intervening weeks, we have helped the former owners move to a new home and put in a whole lot of time on the house--deep cleaning, painting, making runs to the dump, and more. More than half the cars have flown the coop, and we are mostly left with the big heavy trucks that have trees growing up through them. We are now safely--happily--and slightly coldly--moved in at our new house. We got approval from the fire chief to re-use an old chimney and I expect that by the time I return to Maine from a brief Massachusetts sojourn (wouldn't want to have to attend Seth and Tyler's CD release party, would I?) we will have a wood cookstove hooked up and throwin' off heat, as they say.

Homeownership proves to come with many good and not-so-good surprises that we might have foreseen had we put much thought to it. As it is, we roll with the punches and are doing mighty fine. Lead in the pipes? Asbestos in the floor? Nitrates in the spring? We're still alive and kicking so far.

On another note--a musical one, at that--Seth and Tyler are probably warming up for the concert to celebrate the release of their debut album as Whiffletree at this very moment. The CD is as beautiful as its cover, with artwork by the acclaimed Elsie Gawler. Purchase yours for only $15! http://www.myspace.com/whiffletreemusic

Vehicular Voisins

2009-10-29T08:16:00.000-07:00

Our barn is currently inhabited by vehicles (5 downstairs, 3 up), junk, and trash. Supposedly, the cars are leaving on Saturday and then the barn will be All Ours so we can really get down to business on the inside--sistering up rafters, replacing floorboards, and scabbing in some new purlin sections. That's the scene:

Ralph wants to take this Buick to his new place and thinks he'll be able to get it up and running again. I'm a bit skeptical...

Each of the four of us (Tyler, Elsie, Seth and Anna) are assigned a different horsedrawn equipment book, and Seth says that, based on his readings in Haying with Horses by Lynn Miller, this will be an ideal side-delivery rake for us.

Here are two of the tractors that came with the farm: an Oliver (big, 65 or 70 horsepower) and Polly, a Ford 8N. Somehow, Polly's gear map doesn't match up with the gearshift, and I haven't been able to find 1st or 2nd gear at all. Very mysterious. Ideas?

Back at the Homestead

2009-10-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

These beauties are a few of nearly 1000 lbs of cabbage we harvested this fall, now safely wrapped in newspaper and stowed in the root cellar. Come visit us, and you too can be included in our 2lbs of cabbage per capita per week rule.

The first bake in the bread oven was a raging success--all whole spelt flour in the form of sourdough, potato-rosemary, and cinnamon-raisin-walnut breads.

Roof Antics

2009-10-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

Seth and Anna performing OSHA-approved harness strength tests.

The stationary ventilator decided to eat Tyler for tea. Seth was trying with all his might to pull the ventilator off Tyler, but not until Tyler reached solid ground could he get the purchase he needed to totally extract himself from its gaping maw. In truth, though, both ventilators had to come down, and this was the second one. Any suggestions for weathervane designs?

Vehicles

2009-10-21T17:26:00.000-07:00

Two vehicles currently on the farm: Big Red, the Farmall (staying to make hay with us) and an old pickup (going, we hope) (though we like it) (but we're not mechanics).

More shingles

2009-10-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

On October 17th we stripped the shingles from the northwest quarter of the barn, and on the 18th we got it all dried in as it started raining...and blowing...and snowing...
It's a good thing we have harnesses, although it really prevents us from appreciating what a world-class slip'n'slide we have created.

2009-10-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

The whole south side is stripped and dried in! The rotten wall of the milk room is re-framed, and the green tarp is covering a rotten purlin that we have to replace--but not until the antique Cadillac Coupe DeVille gets out of the way.

2009-10-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

Here we have applied our newfangled roofing underlayments: Rooftopguard and Bituthene. And it's not an optical illusion; the barn is really quite swaybacked.

2009-10-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

End of Day 1, harvesting our new breakfast cereal: asphalt crumbles with tarpaper flakes. Yummy.

2009-10-19T07:53:00.000-07:00

Stripping on Day 1 with Seth, Tyler, Elsie, Megan and me.

Barn Roof Before

2009-10-19T07:37:00.000-07:00

Here's our barn, October 8, 2009, before the makeover began. Note the two-tone shingles and the industrious new farmowners eager to find rot, wasp's nests, and other valuable treasures.

2009-10-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

Congratulations--your quest has brought you to the North Branch Farm Blog!

A Farm Is Born

2009-10-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

So shiny! Here are Tyler, Seth and Anna the day they bought the farm on October 1st, 2009.