My day off

On Sundays I try to take it easy.  I am milking in the mornings, since we need the extra milk to feed the new calf.  She is on a nipple bucket now, drinking two gallons of milk each day.  Also, both Blackie and Lucky have a lot of milk, and their poor overfilled udders need the relief of being milked twice a day.

So I knew I would have a couple of hours of work this morning, and the greenhouse would have to be checked.  I hand water in trays - no automatic watering system in there.  I figured by 9:30 I would be settled down with my bacon and eggs, a big cup of cafe au lait and one of the three books I set out this morning before I left for the barn.

The cows don't usually pee or poop while I'm milking.  This morning, there were two poops and a pee.  Lots of cleaning to do, and it slowed down the whole process.  We are having an open house next Sunday, so I started working on some walls and the concrete pad in the holding pen since I had gotten into the groove.

At 9 am, I took the milk cows back to their paddock.  I am pretty sure that Quattro is going to calve very soon, but she was fine.  I went back to the barn and finished up and was in the house by 10:00.  I had to do a load of clothes, thanks to the morning gifts from the girls.  While it was running, I went out to the greenhouse and took care of the plants; by then the clothes were ready to hang on the line. 

There was a calf in the pasture with the dry cows!  What, did Quattro have her calf?  But she was in with the milkers, and this calf was with the heifers and the dry cows.  Did her calf get under the fence?  It was already on its feet, so it is a strong one.  I then noticed Smarty Pants hovering around, and butting away any visitors except Sam, the dad.  She had her calf!

I hopped over the fence and checked it out.  Another heifer!  And a beautiful one at that!!  She definitely looks like a Guernsey. 

I called Kathy and she came over to help me get mother and daughter into the nursing pen.  Mom will stay with her for the next three days.  Our first calf is still in there, but we partitioned off the pen so that she would be by herself, since Smarty Pants is being extremely protective of the calf, more so than some mothers.  We will be checking to make sure the new calf nurses.  Sometimes heifers are a little confused about what to do with that first calf, even though they appear to be a good mom.  I will go out after milking this afternoon, and between the milkers and me, we will make sure she latches on to her mom.

It is now 3:55.  I gobbled a couple of pieces of bacon while I was waiting for Kathy.  The books are still sitting there.  The clothes are on the line and have to be brought in and folded.  I will have to go out to make sure the calf is nursing around 5:00, and getting her to latch on to her mom may take awhile.

Perhaps it will be a slow evening.  Perhaps I will have time to pick up one of the books.  Or perhaps not.

The wandering goose

I took food and water down to Androo's geese this morning.  The goose is back.  I didn't see her, but I heard her, very definitely.  She is hanging around, and that is good.

Next step - leave Androo's geese in the pen another two days, then open up the pen so that she can join them inside the pen at night.

Last step - try to figure out who is dating whom!!

The grand experiment

Still no geese.  And the female hasn't been sighted in over 24 hours.  Today Androo and I built a fence around an old trailer that sits beside my pond.  Then we put cracked corn in a bowl, threw some straw in one corner inside the trailer, got a big bucket of water and headed over to his house to pick up his three geese.

We brought them to the new pen and unloaded them.  They will be making goose noises, and our hope is that they will attract the two missing geese.

One thing we think happened is that we didn't get the pairs right when we split up the geese at my house on Monday night.  The geese ran in two different directions.  Had they been mates, they would have left together.  So my guess is that each of them is trying to find their true mate.  They will probably show up at Androo's tonight, while Androo's geese are now here at my house.

If the goose (the female) shows up but no gander (the male), then Androo will leave one of his ganders for her.  If the worst happens and nothing comes of this, then all three geese will go back to Androo's (and probably with wrong mate but hopefully they will get over it).  And when I buy a new pair in August, when Mattie says the next ones will be ready to leave home, at least I will have a proper pen.  So much for letting them run.  It just didn't work, not with all of the ponds and wetlands around here, and of course without the proper mate.

Many lessons learned.

Tomato hammocks

One of my readers has asked me to post a picture of my tomato hammocks.  I learned about these from the book No Work Gardening by Ruth Stout.  It's a great book, in and out of print from time to time.  If you can find a copy, and if you like to garden, then it is worth the investment.

To make the hammocks, pound in two 6' T-posts, 30" apart, every seven feet.  Then get some metal rods (I got some from the hardware store and had my auto mechanic cut them to 30" for me) and insert them in the T-posts about 18" from the ground, the length of your row.  

Now you will lay 36" chicken wire, sometimes called poultry netting, over the posts, supported by the rods.  Then repeat this process putting the rods in 34" from the ground.  You should now have two horizontal layers of chicken wire at 18" and 34" for the tomatoes to grow through.

I use 2" netting for three reasons - it is cheaper, it's easier to install, and the tomatoes will grow up through it easier.

To finish the process, I heavily mulch under the row well before I am taking tomatoes out to plant.  I do not move the rows - they stay in the same place year after year.  If you use mulch properly, you are actually building new topsoil every year.  The mulch doesn't have to be turned under - just let it lie on top of the ground and compost.  Ruth Stout has much to say on that subject, and she kept everything in her garden in the same place for decades.  No rotating.

I let the plants die off in the hammocks.  By the following spring, they are very easy to pull out of the hammocks, since they are dry and brittle.

In each seven-foot section of the row, I plant five plants in a "W" shape, inverting the "W" in every other section.  That is, the tomatoes are not put in a row exactly in the middle, but are alternated, with the three at the top of the "W" closer to one side, the two at the bottom of it closer to the other.  Since I save seeds, I plant three of each variety together, and take seeds from the middle tomato plant.  Even though tomatoes are not prone to cross pollinating, it assures the the plant you got your seeds from had neighbors of its own kind on both sides.

You might have to tuck in a stem or two here and there.  Some of the bigger plants will want to spill into the walkway. I have two 100' rows like this, and I mow between the rows. It's nice to have a lawn to sit in while you are picking.

I've been using this method for five years now, and I highly recommend it.  In fact, I highly recommend just about everything Ms. Stout recommends in her book.  Smart woman, was Ruth Stout!

Lost

Still no camera.

Still no gander.

It appears that the goose is living in the wetlands between my and my neighbor's farms.

I am sad.

Why farmers walk with their heads down

While I was married, my then-husband felt it was his duty to improve me, often telling me how to talk, dress, cut my hair, pick my friend - and how to walk!  He criticized me for walking with my head down.  Yes, he was right, I often did that.  I really did try to keep my head up and look straight ahead, but it didn't feel natural to me.

One evening we were at my mom and dad's farm, and when we left, he criticized the three people in the car because he could smell manure.  "Who has manure on their shoes?" he queried.  We all looked.  We were all clean.  Then my daughter quietly said, "Have you checked your shoes?"

Since all of us swore our shoes were clean, what could he do but stop the car and check his own shoes?  There, on the bottom of one shoe, packed neatly from the front of the heel all the way through the arch, was dog poop!  We tried hard not to laugh.  I don't think we succeeded.

I said, "Now you know why farmers walk with their heads down."

Here's another case in point.  This evening, the milkers told me that they saw a goose in Paddock #17.  I headed down there with some bread.  I want the gander to stay here, and I'm not above bribery.  Still only one of the pair is to be found.  And as I said, I was pretty sure it was the gander.

He didn't want the bread.  He half flew, half walked away from me, out of the pasture and into the pond.  I watched him swim away from me.  He wasn't tempted by the pieces of bread that I threw his way.  I turned to leave, with my head down, of course. 

There on the ground, about three feet from the edge of the pond, was a magnificent goose egg!  I would have missed it if I hadn't been looking down.

Obviously, the one that is left isn't a gander!  Androo has a goose and two ganders, so I may be buying one of his ganders, but I continue to hope the old boy is going to come back home.

A ten-egg day - sort of . . .

There are ten hens left in my flock, plus of course Buster the rooster.  I have been waiting for a day when 100% of the flock laid eggs.  Finally, yesterday, in the midst of all of the excitement about the new calf and a new pair of geese, there were ten eggs.

However, it wasn't quite like I expected.  These are weird hens - hens that lay eggs at my feet on the ground outside the Moop, for instance.  Read about that one here: Jewel laid at my feet.  So should I have been surprised by what happened yesterday? 

I could see the nest was really full (when I have 50 hens, will they all try to lay in the same nest?), and I excitedly counted them out - one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine - once again, so close but no cigar.

Then I turned to leave the Moop and saw that egg #10 did in fact get laid yesterday.  However, the hen was obviously perching when she did it.  One smashed egg directly below the perch.  Sigh . . .

But still, it was a 100% 10-egg day, wasn't it?