Animal Husbandry

My son arrives tomorrow to help finish up the planting of the CSA-ing Scrabble Hill Farm. The baby chicks arrived yesterday evening, here in Great Village, from a hatch further up the hill in Londonderry. Kevin and Heather [check out the website: http://www.activelifefarm.ca] are trying out different breeds, heritage breeds, utilizing stock obtained from the Annapolis Valley, in order to find and develop a good and hardy local bird for meat production, and also for laying. I have 16 Black Australorps and 24 of my grandma Laura Melvina's old standby, the Rhode Island Red... and, alas, as is often the case with these petit dynamos, a minor tragedy has struck. I'd noticed one Australorp seeming to be wanting to doze and being a little bit picked on and bumped over by the others...vowed to keep an eye on him/her [he looks like a 'he' so will deem it so], and thus it was during my next check on the flock that I found him in a little space in a corner, cold and shivering. He's now resting in a box on a towel beside the computer under a lamp, having taken a little sustenance. Don't know if he'll make it, but I now think I know the meaning of the word hospital...there's intervention, and some of it is painful and intrusive, and one is not always sure that the right thing's being done...but you try your best.

Getting the heifers at Limestone Mountain, and the baby chicks here, at Scrabble Hill...big step for me, after the sadness of 2007.

I need to get a digital camera.

Justice at Limestone Mountain Farm!

I cannot give adequate expression to how I felt when the lovely heifers, acquired through the efforts of Ron Gargasz, from McKean Brothers Angus, arrived from Pennsylvania. Just the day before, Bland Fencing had quickly and professionally completed the division of the lower field into three paddocks, so as to make the best use of the pasture through rotational grazing. Dad's old friend from WVU and my caretaker, Silas, had helped with the re-design of the paddock layout and it had all come together.

The heifers are four sweet-hearted animals--calm and with lovely dispositions. Collectively, they have now become known as "The Limestone Girls." In lieu of their long ID#s, they have been individually named Faith, Hope, Charity, and Justice. Faith and Charity are the most sociable of the four, and were soon eating grain from my hand...Hope's quiet and smaller, and so named because I hope she grows a bit...and, finally, Justice is magnificent.

It took four of us to guide them into the pasture on Monday, May 25th, but from then on I was able to move them singlehandedly from paddock to paddock. They are just so sensible and intelligent! Above, here, is Justice...

...thanks to my brother Jim for all his help, and the loan of his camera...more pics soon.

While going over the pastures, snipping away at those pesky multi-flora rose intruders, I found a nice surprise: patches of alfalfa, from when my father had seeded that legume way back in the '70s...persistence, eh?