If you give a mouse a cookie...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!