Summer...

No time to write! Living Life! Photos from the summer on Limestone Mountain...

Spring

Incredibly: the second of June. The world in this hemisphere is blooming, budding, producing...the cattle need to be on the land at Limestone Mountain Farm, for the heavy snows we had and the warm weather early has meant that hay could be made now...but I've no equipment to make hay. There is also the need to feed the land, to keep that nutrient cycling happening, so instead of making hay am working to get some cattle and possibly some lambs on the farm in West Virginia. The pic, above, is from 2005, the last time lambs were on the farm.

Right now, I'm at my little place in Nova Scotia, where at Scrabble Hill Farm there is a cover crop of buckwheat over most of my garden space of ~ 40 X 75 feet, and for weeks, since before I traveled south to the farm in order to meet with lawyer-family-surveyor-realtor-others to get started on the many farm tasks there, I've been eating lettuce, spinach, and radishes, fresh chives, oregano, dill, parsley, horseradish, dandelion greens...and trying to empty the freezer. I put the cover crop in before traveling to West Virginia on 10 May, but because of lack of moisture, some warmth, but then cold again, it's not really begun to do more than sprout. Before traveling south again I will put the coleus and other flowers in to the beds up front, and plant pumpkins, squash, the warm weather herbs.

It's a strange dual life, this farming in two countries...www.limestonemtn-scrabblehill.com. But it is what it is, and gives me, despite the struggles, some great joy.

2010...Looking Backward, Falling Ahead

A unique vantage point, eh? This from the crazy busy year of 2009....at Limestone Mountain.

Making Do...

I've been roasting soybeans and grinding them in my food processor, the latter picked up a few years ago from a church yard sale. I've been doing this because I had run out of certified organic chick starter and the co-op was out of both starter and grower rations of the certified organic variety when I went to replenish my supply on Friday. As a result, I had to buy laying mash, which is lower in protein than starter or grower rations.....and so, in the fine tradition of farming everywhere, I've been "making do" by making my own protein-rich supplement of roasted and ground soybean and adding it in so that they will have the protein they need at this tender age. The chicks have also been enjoying lots of outdoor time (and enjoying all manner of bug catching, as they had perfected that art while still little fluffballs, under the lamp), for my son Edward came home awhile back, and built the first of two planned paddocks for the poultry flock. The chickens have also been enjoying Speerville grains and beans (wheat, barley, oats, and chickpeas). When I have leftovers or extra of these cooked they get them as wet mash feed. They also love all the pulled weeds from the garden. The plan is to reseed the paddocks and get them a decent pasture by rotating between the two paddocks.

Where to Begin?

Summer is the frenzy for the farmer....and I'm not even a full-fledged one, by most folks' standards, more of a fledgling farmer, with wings half -grown. The farm projects are behind schedule at Limestone Mountain Farm. A petition was sent protesting the PATH line that threatens many of the farms (including possibly mine, though to a lesser degree than others') on Limestone and Location. At Scrabble Hill Farm, the baby chicks are now six weeks old and the field corn is way way over my head....here, I stand beside the one patch of lonely rye (planted from some grown by Kelly Cheverie of Prince Edward Isle) that missed both the predations of the neighbour's guinea hens, and the tiller!

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?