Otto has moved on

Otto has moved on to a new life on Long Island.

A woman named Donna and her friend Barbara came to visit him on Saturday. On Sunday, Shanna (former owner) drove and I navigated while we trailered him down to the island.

He has a new Quarter Horse girlfriend named Smoochey.

Making progress slowly

2 weeks to Thanksgiving and I have finally pruned the raspberry bushes. I've got more cleaning to do in the garden.

Sleep issues for my son seem to be done. We've established a routine and an earlier bedtime (8pm). He did have what seemed like a nightmare one morning, but that's to be expected I think.

Otto is for sale. He's just sitting around here eating. He needs something to do. I'll miss him if he goes.

It's cold now.

It's fun to bundle up and hibernate in the house. By February that will be really old but for now it's fun to snuggle with the baby and plan for the holidays.

We saw snow this week. It wasn't enough to amount to even a dusting but it was flying about in the air. At this time last year we had a snowfall of about 8 inches. It didn't last long. I think that was the most snow we had all winter.

If any old wive's tales are to be believed we are in for a doozy of a winter. There are lots of acorns and mountain ash berries. It was a banner year for blackberries.

It's been awhile.

A month just blew by me. I've been thinking a lot about what I could be doing. I'm just running out of time. I just got my son sleeping well. To maximise his sleep he should probably go down around 7:00. At 7:00 I've been home for just an hour and I'm cooking dinner and doing other chores. We settle for a bedtime of 9:00. Not ideal but it seems to be working for the time being.

On another note, my friend Sharon is a Peak Oil activist. She has a blog that makes me think that we (meaning my family) are not doing enough to live simply and reduce our footprint on the Earth. I encourage everyone to read what she has to say (it's very thoughtful and well written). www.casaubonsbook.blogspot.com

Cleaning out the garden.

Lots of stuff in the garden is past it's prime. Most of the cucumber plants have expired. The squash is barely holding on. The tomatoes still have a ways to go and the flowers are a little past peak.

So now the work begins. I have to pull the old plants, weed the asparagus and mulch. I love going into Winter with a cleaned out garden. It gives me hope that I can keep up with the weeding come Spring.

It's time to start knitting. I've got to make a bunch of holiday gifts.

I just love Autumn. I feel invigorated and purposeful.

Winter is coming

I love the change of seasons. It's not even Labor Day yet and it seems like fall already. The temps have been very cool for about 2 weeks. We had rain, wind and mist for 2 days. It really felt like September.

We do lots of winter prep here. The chimney gets cleaned, the old chickens get processed for the freezer, tomatoes get made into sauce and get canned, the garden gets cleaned out, the asparagus gets mulched, the generator gets drained and gets new gas, winter clothes get brought out, the clothesline comes down, the flannel sheets come out, the raspberries get pruned.

A friend asked why we have a generator (or rather, why we have plans for a power outage). The answer is that we can't rely on the power grid to keep us going. My friend never considered the possibility that we may be out of power for any length of time. The fact is that the grid can fail for lots of reasons. In 1991 I lived through an ice storm. I lived in Rochester, NY at the time. I had no power for 12 days. Fortunately it wasn't really cold. I had city water so there was no interruption of service. On our farm we have a well. The well pump needs electricity to get water up from 547 feet. Since the animals need water (we do too, but not as much) we have a generator to make sure we can get along for a short amount of time (couple of weeks?) We also have a wood stove for heat. After Hurricane Katrina especially, we have come to realize that we have to be responsible for our own health and safety, we can't count on "the government" to take care of us.

Lots of flowers...

and Blackberries.

Casey

Casey is a 5 year-old border collie. She is an interesting dog. She'll probably never be a real farm dog because she'll never be off leash. Casey is a really good watch dog. She only ever barks for good reason. Even when she sees deer she only whines.

Flowers and vegetables

The squash are yellow crookneck. The flowers are zinnias and a red sunflower, variety unknown.

We're waiting on some rain. The humidity is supposed to break tonight.

Hot Hot Hot

It's broiling. Since it is broiling, we got our big hay delivery. The unwritten rule is that you will be doing hay on the hottest day of the year. Hay harvesting requires dry weather. Dry means HOT. We stuffed 320 bales into our barn last night and it over 90 degrees and high humidity. Only today is supposed to be hotter. I am so glad that is over with. It makes me feel rich to have our winter forage in and paid for. It's beautiful hay.

Summer squash and cucmbers

We had a lot of rain over the weekend. I have summer squash, zuchinni and cucumbers. I split the first squash and zuchinni in half length-wise and grilled them. They were mighty tasty.

I planted golden zuchinni. It's much easier to see on the plant than regular green zuchinni. Pictures to come later.

Voles and rabbits

Holy cow. I have horrible problems with voles and I think rabbits. The mild winter has us with a population explosion of rabbits. The voles have been steadily getting out of hand.

I think rabbits have decimated my peas and beans. They are also hurting my brussle sprout plants.

The voles have been eating my beets. Last year I lost tons of tomatoes because of voles. They ate the bottoms off all the fruit.

I ordered some Mole-med and got another, similar product. However, it's not supposed to be used around food plants. I guess I need to send it back. My other option is to get an outside cat. I don't really want a cat but we have rodent problems in the barn too. There is a cat hanging around (I hope he's hunting). I've contemplated feeding him. A friend also has a batch of kittens. Perhaps I should invest in some rabies shots and neutering and get some. Unfortunately our road is really busy.

Japanese Beetles

They have arrived. I knew it was going to be bad. They denuded a few leaves on my grape vines in 1 day. I sprayed pyola (organic pesticide) and now they are gone. I'm finding them everywhere. I think some came into the house on my clean laundry.

I also found a very interested customer for my veggies. Every day I go to the post office for work. I'm afamiliar face to the postal people. I brought samples of my eggs to my regular contacts and the other people asked for them. Today I offered Swiss Chard to one of my new egg customers. She was very excited to get it and she wanted 2 dozen more eggs. There may be something to this networking to sell my products.

Next up: Summer squash, golden Zuchinni and cucumbers.

When all else fails, post pictures

Flowers last summer

The horses our Willie and Otto. The red building is our chicken palace.

Reading

I'm reading the Little House books. Many friends that are farming/gardening/homesteading say that they were inspired as children by Laura Ingalls Wilder and her books. I decided to check them out. So far I have read Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie. I'm reading Farmer Boy now. It's about her husband's childhood. I'm liking Farmer Boy a lot. It's all about Northern NY (near where we almost moved to) and farming there. The Wilder family was pretty prosperous. I've noticed with these books that the food is almost a character unto itself. I guess if you spend all your time trying to aquire food, grow food, prepare food, store food, sell food, etc., then eating it becomes more significant. All that work also makes for a huge appetite. I would bet that 5000 calories a day would keep you fighting trim if you were doing the physical labor of farmers in the second half of the 19th century.

Long weekend and holiday

This past weekend and holiday were a bit productive. We made more progress in the basement, defrosted the freezer made a big trip to the dump and went to a party at the neighbors.

We have really good neighbors. We help each other out. We can borrow and lend tools. They have a son who will be able to baby-sit in a couple of years.

In the news: North Korea attempted to test 3 missiles (2 SCUDS and a long range one). All fell into the Sea of Japan. Ken Lay (from ENRON) died of a heart attack. He was waiting sentencing for fraud and some other stuff.

Decluttering

I've said before that we are in the process of decluttering and it is going pretty well. I have new shelving up in the basement that is for essential stuff, like canning jars and equipment.

Every time I go into the basement I find new stuff to throw out, give away or sell.

I tend to think that being clutter free, or at least clutter-less, makes me a calmer more energetic human. I'm more likely to go out and weed the garden or sweep the kitchen or do the dishes. Outside (our yard) is pretty clutter free. All the stuff that could be out there is stashed in the basement.

Next we will do our best to not accumulate more "stuff". Every purchase will be well thought out, no matter if it's $1000 widget or a $.25 widget at a garage sale. It's the 25 cent widgets that get you!

Here's a thought, maybe I'll donate my video collection to the library. That way I'll have access to it (a couple of exceptions, Charlie Brown Christmas, Wizard of OZ, Disney's Beauty and the Beast). Hmmm.

Regional Farm and Food Project

http://www.farmandfood.org/

I haven't looked at their website in a while. It looks wonderful.

Lots of work accomplished

The rain held off this past weekend. I got the carpets cleaned. We made serious progress on cleaning out the basement. The weekend before we had a yard sale and got rid of lots of stuff. We made two trips to the dump Saturday. Then we got some shelving. Lest you think that this has nothing to do with farming, I will say that I couldn't get to my grow light this Spring and ended up buying tomato, pepper and broccoli plants. This is the reason I have no heirloom tomatoes. Now I can get to my light and my work table. I unearthed all the canning jars. I discarded all the suspect ones. Now I'll have all my jars sorted and on the shelf waiting for all those hybrid tomatoes to come in for making sauce (pasta and pizza). Apple sauce, apple butter and apple preserves are also on the agenda. I may try to make apple cinnamon jelly too.

I feel so productive.

We had serious thoughts about moving.

A job opportunity came up for my husband in Northern NY. Land and taxes are cheap up there. We decided against. Neither of us wanted to move. We like our place. I would regret leaving all that we have built to start all over again.

One of my reasons for staying is that I really want to see how great I can do things here. I really would like to build more garden beds and landscape around the house. This is what it looks like now. Kind of blank and stark. There are apple trees to the left. They aren't growing very fast. I have lots more plans. It'll take a long time to do everything, but it'll be worth it. What few flower gardens I do have are maturing. I had my first peony blooms this year. We have a humming bird stopping by now and the blue bird babies are close to going out on their own.

Another reason for staying is that there is a great market in the area for good food grown locally. The Regional Farm and Food Project is here and they are very good at marketing local produce and sustainable agriculture. I'll post a link when I get a chance.

last summer's garden with a view of the Catskill's and our horses

What would you buy?

Planning a garden for market sales is all about having that which everyone wants and still having a product that sets you apart from all the other corn and tomato farmers. What would you buy? I'm having fabulous luck with my lettuce and spinach this year. I've managed to beat back the slugs with wood ashes. The flowers are coming (sunflowers, cosmos, zinnnias) but a long way off. The voles have decimated my pea pods. Broccoli is on it's way. Tomatoes look good, but I only have hybrids this year. Peppers look better than they ever have, but that's not saying much. Cucumbers, zuchinni, pumpkins and winter squash look good so far.

I also have wool, in yarn and roving, and eggs.

I guess the wool sets me apart.

What to write about?

Hmmm. I never thought I would want to share with anyone who wanted to know, but this is a great way to share our progress with family and friends. A website would be just too much.