On the FARM

Time goes by so fast! It is already the middle of November and I am attempting to prepare myself and the farm for my winter break. My job at the FARM ends on November 30th and I will not return until February 1st. For me it is a bit stressful mainly because I have taken on new responsibilities and it will be hard to hand over my newly acquired tasks. The FARM has been making some changes and reorganizing things so that my position shifted from “farm hand” to “farm and livestock coordinator”. This for me is a huge promotion. I am now in charge of all livestock matters from feeding and ordering grain all the way to breeding and sending animals off for slaughter. Those are big responsibilities for a little girl!

So the past few weeks have meant me sitting down with Matthew and Wes and figuring out exactly what each of us are responsible for. I have spent countless hours at the computer updating animal records, entering information into spreadsheets and organizing all of the animal paperwork into a filing cabinet. This is a little different from what I normally do in the course of a day. I don’t want to be misleading though, I still am out cleaning pens and caring for the animals every day. These past few weeks we have trimmed the cows hooves with Doctor Atwood and Maggie White, Moved the lambs to lots of new pastures, Pumpkin our red angus cow had a calf on Halloween that we named Boo, and we have also started our breeding program for the sheep. Walter our ram wears a harness with a chalk like crayon attached to it and it leaves a brightly colored mark on the ewes (momma sheep) once they have been bred. All of the sheep as of now have been marked. The way we can be sure they have been bred is to change the color crayon on Walters harness and see if they get marked again. Aren’t farmers smart?

The pigs are in the corn maze! and boy was it an event!

It took Wes, Meredith, Ross, Emily and I along with 3 after school program kids, Layla, Benny and Alex to convince all 8 piglets to get into the trailer. We used three red plastic pig panels to separate out a piglet and then had to pick up its front (or back legs) and then push them into the trailer. Let me tell you, these piglets are hardly piglets. The smallest one weighs at least 150 pounds. We probably could have picked a different day to move the pigs, considering the winds were at least 50 miles an hour at any given time. The pigs have a white light weight house in their pen which also had to be moved. Yesterday it seemed more like a sail then a house. Every time we picked the thing up, the wind took it right back down and blew it about 10 feet.  Finally we got it into the back of the dump truck and once again as we turned onto the road it took off once again. So we dragged it over to the corn maze and let it blow into the spot we wanted it. Thank goodness it was still there this morning!

Walter (our ram) has been put in with the ewes (momma sheep) and has promised to do his best to give us some happy, healthy lambs next spring. Walter wears a marking harness so we can tell when the ewes have been bred in order to help us predict when they will give birth. Our cows are doing very well roaming around in their huge pasture. The calves are growing fast and have lots of energy. Thinking of becoming a farmer? Tess our oldest female beltie calf is looking for a home! 

Unfortunatley today our field trips cancelled. It is understandable though considering it was pouring rain. Although I would have loved to clean potatoes with the high school Irish History class and explain why farms exist to second and third graders, the free morning allowed me to tend to some badly needed cleaning. The meat birds that start off in brooder a and then graduate to brooder b before finally moving to the chicken tractors outside, are still in the barn. We moved them to a different stall with access to the outside and some clean bedding the beginning of last week. This morning when Melinda opened the barn she was unhappily surprised with a disastrous odor. Man do those chickens know how to “digest food”. So I spent the morning shovelling out their stall with Melinda. They were very happy the school kids didn’t show up.

We are also trying our best to keep our pigs on pasture. Pigs need to forage for grass along with their grain to maintain their pig-ish figure. The pigs had pretty much turned their current pen to dirt (that’s what they do!) so today Emily helped me set up a new pen for them with some fresh grass. They were grazing all over like crazy!

When I went into the fencing stall to put away the old pig fencing I could hardly get through all of the clutter in front of the bucket where the supplies belonged. So I took a half hour to straighten up the fencing supplies so they could be accessible to others. I wish these spaces could stay organized for longer than a day…

PM chores brought my attention to our darling laying hens. While going into the coop I couldn’t help but notice the manure that had accumulated on the floor. So to top off my day, I scraped out the hen house and gave them some fresh bedding. They were so excited they repaid me with eggs!

I added a few pictures to the old farm picture site www.photobucket.com/farminstitute check them out!

Yes fall certainly is here. We can feel it in the air and we can definitley feel it in our work load. Emily, Kristen and Wes have been working hard to remove the last of the produce from the gardens and then finally put themto rest for the winter. This means squash squash and more squash. The shelves are stocked full with delicata, carnival, and butternut squash ripening for our pleasure. I have been eating squash every night! Wes has been disking the gardens, turning all of the dead plants under in hopes of returning the nutrients back to the soil for next year. Some of the plots are being cover cropped to keep the nutrients present over the winter.

The turkeys are getting huge and it is almost time for us to start thinking about Thanksgiving. Turkeys are still available so help our hard work pay off and reserve a fresh, local, free range natural turkey! The piglets are also getting HUGE and soon they will be headed off into the corn maze to graze and demolish to their little hearts content. Priscilla’s ducklings and Carla’s turklings are all out wandering the farm yard and experiencing real life as a farm animal. They get to come and go as they please and explore the wonders of the outside world. It is amazing how soon they start to look like adults.

My days have been spent helping Melinda with field trips (The kids at the West Tisbury school were awesome yesterday!), setting up fencing for the cows, re-seeding the lawns around the building and starting to clean up and put things away for the winter. Although we chip away at tasks each day, our to do list remains long and the days seem to go by quicker and quicker. This weekend is the Living Local Harvest Festival so Wes has been preparing everything for our burger and sausage booth. Come check it out!

It was a wacky morning. The entire farm is covered in fog (which is better than being covered in a hurricane!) and the animals are deciding to be a little odd. The sheep were all out, the turkey was sitting on top of his shed (which he has never done before), one of the piglets decided to shove his face into the dirt and leave it there while the others enjoyed their breakfast and Priscilla and her ducklings decided they had cabin fever and somehow broke out of there pen and are waltzing around.

Although he had us scared for awhile there, Toby the new calf has wowed us with his spunk and energy. The calf has had a fever since the day after he was born and no matter what we tried we just couldn’t get it down. Although his fever is still sometimes in the 105 range (normal is 101-103 in most calves) He has been running around like crazy and putting up a good fight when temp taking time comes around. These are sure signs that he is feeling better.

The farm institute made Hy-Line history on Thursday when Emily and I brought the first ever milk goat on to the elegant high speed fast ferry from Hyannis. Thanks to a High School pal of mine, we were able to bring “Pearl” our new Saanen milk goat on board in a large wire dog crate that sat on top of a wagon. I will have to snag the pictures from Emily so you can see it to believe it. Hy-Line liked the idea of the farm institute so much that they even waved the freight charges. Thank you Chip and the rest of the Hy-Line workers!

It sure seems like the farm is slowing down, mainly because all of the summer farmer/teachers are leaving! and camp has ended, but in reality the farm is in full swing and there is more tasks than hands to complete them. Everyone thats left is really working hard and spending long days trying to get everything done. A normal work week for Wes and I starts with a meeting with Matthew where he gives us this weeks to-do list. This week I think we got 4 of those. So hang tight, it may take awhile for the next blog!

I am so sorry I did not get a chance before now to welcome our new calf, Toby. Naya had her calf on August 19th, surrounded by almost all the TFI campers and staff. Although he is friendly and vibrant, he has unfortunately had a fever. We have been giving him some medicine and making sure he is eating and drinking. He has definitely been getting lots of love and we hope he will be romping with the other calves in no time. Our media elective was able to catch some of the exciting afternoon on film. I will try to upload the pictures, sometimes I have trouble.

Another surprise was the 7 ducklings a very determined priscilla hatched earlier this week. I was really excited to see the eggs finally hatching because she seemed like she had been sitting on the nest for months. Duck eggs are extremely tough and some of the ducklings took an entire day to get out! You will have to come by and see the little yellow fluff balls.

This week has been very much an eventful one. It is our last week of camp and because farmer/teachers need to go back to school, I had to step in and teach a group of kids for the week. Luckily my mom decided to come help me and we have been having a blast with our kids making felt snakes, moving chicks and picking carrots. I hope the kids got as much out of the experience as I did.

Last weekend was the Martha’s Vineyard Ag Fair and I am proud to say our cows Kiga and Tess along with our piglets, Scooter and munchie all took home blue ribbons. By Sunday, the animals were definitely ready to be reunited with their herd.

Next week things will settle down, we have been plowing new fields for next years corn maze, building new pens for animals, fixing equipment, trying to stay on top of ordering feed, and still trying to figure out why our fences aren’t functioning properly.

Ahoy blog readers! There is much to be blogged about. Today we did not let ourselves get stressed out about the bad weather. Instead we decided it was a great time to move our hen house considering the hens were mostly all inside, hiding from the rain. We are really trying to stay on top of our animal moves to be sure that the animals have fresh grass, ground, and bugs to enjoy! Our meat chickens have all been doing well, not to many unexplained deaths (however, this is a common thing with such a large number of birds).  The turkeys are SO big. Today the turkeys were also moved to a new pasture. We have a large roof on wheels that the birds use as a shelter and roost which is surrounded by an electro mesh fence. So far all is well with the turkeys. The camp kids have been having great success (today included) with moving the turkeys and keeping them alive and well.

Still no calf for Naya. She is pretty bagged up (meaning her udder is filled with milk) but still no baby. Our cows seem to prefer intense rain so maybe tonight is the night. Matthew and I had a walk through with our vet, Doc. Breese today. The board decided it was a good idea to have her come to the farm every month to check up on all the animals. It was extremely helpful and we of course trying our best to keep all of the animals happy and healthy.

Our corn maze is now open! Trust me, its a challenging maze. You should definitely stop by and get lost!

Sorry about the lack of pictures recently. I no longer have a digital camera and am trying hard to get some pictures for the site. Have an extra camera lying around??

Welcome to Ruby’s calf who was born early Sunday morning. He is rambunctious and healthy. What more could you ask for?

Sundays are normally good days. It’s just me and a farmer/teacher at the farm doing chores and then what ever activities are possible for us to complete. Today we had two projects in line. Putting away the grain shipment and cleaning out brooder A for our chicks coming tomorrow. Emily Richardson came with me today and helped me finish up chores. All of the babies are getting SO big. Although chores are pretty much my favorite part of farm life, they are taken over by 100 or so youngsters during the camp week. Sundays are my days to check in with all the animals, make sure all of the chore instructions are up to date and make sure everything is a -ok.

The little calf is getting SO big! I have added some pictures of her, the piglets and the fast growing turkeys! All are doing well. Still no calves from Naya or Ruby…

Every FARM staff member has a chore they must do around the facilities to keep everything looking good. My chore, as the farmhand is cleaning the grain room. At the beginning of the summer I cleaned most of it out and did some re-organizing but as the weather gets warmer, the grain gets moldy. Unfortunately I had to compost a bunch of moldy grain and found a few questionable bags (which we would never feed, but we have to open the bags to tell if it is really bad inside.) So today, I took everything out of the room (which by the way is rat proof) all of the grain and pallets and swept out the entire thing. The Farm ordered two pallets of grain (which is a lot) so I needed to unload all of those 50 pound bags and then stack the old bags on top. Believe it or not, this took most of the day.

While I was getting covered in mold, Emily cleaned brooder A and we plugged the heaters back in (the temp needs to be at least 96) and got it all set for tomorrows arrivals!

Come by the farm and take part in some of the farms happenings!

Photos are at www.photobucket.com/farminstitute !

I apologize for the lengthy pause between farmhand blogs but you must understand this is not a bad thing! The only reason for the lack-of-blogs is because I just have not had the time (or the energy) to sit down and write one. It just means that summer on the farm is in full swing! And that I was gone for a few days to watch my sister get married (yes i will upload a picture of me in a fancy dress, people keep asking me!)

On Friday we will have finished a whole month of camp! All of the animals are doing well. Ruby and Naya are still holding out on us, no calves yet unfortunately. Tomorrow Doctor Breese is coming to check out all of our cows and give them some routine shots and make sure everything is going smoothly for our girls. We have been attempting to solve the fencing crisis of 2008 but are inching forward with little luck. Some of the farmer/teachers and I went around the entire fence line and snipped, fixed, bent, screwed and attached various wires to other various wires and posts in an attempt to get the fence holding a decent charge. Our fence charger is pumping out 12000 volts and our fence is only showing us about 3600. Not enough to keep a sheep, let alone a cow in! We have a few other things to try so we are again slowly making progress.  Right now the sheep are free ranging through all of the North pastures and the cows are being contained by a single wire directly connected to the charger. Please feel free to come down to the farm and share your fencing/electricity expertise!

We also cut and baled the last of our hay (i hope/think so at least) and have cleaned out a winters worth of bedding from the cow barn.

The goat kids, piglets, lambs and calf are all doing wonderfully but getting bigger by the day. We have started rotating Lightning (our momma sheep with triplets) and Jessup (our momma goat) around to random temporary pastures so they can take advantage of all the fast growing grass.  Be sure to stop by and see all of our critters and to taste some of our delicious produce.