JohnO is destroying the old hog hut and enclosure...  We utilized everything we could off this and now the space previously occupied by American Guinea Hogs and Asian Heirloom Hogs will be raised beds for mangels and daikon for animal and human use, Saskatoon bushes (oh my, these things are wonderful to eat and lovely landscape plants) and put into food production for animals and humans.  Since there are lots and lots of logs to use and the ground is so very poor here (barring the pig manure), I'll scrape some of the composted equine and goat manure to fill the beds.  Because I've got free-range chickens, I'll have to fence off the raised beds because they're so industrious they'll scratch out all the plants and dirt looking for grubs and bugs!  Chickens do an amazing job when you want them to and are very irritating when you don't want them to.  It's a balance, really...

Ruby Jayne is never far away.  This is a fairly large area and should work out well.  Heather and I planted mangels and sugar beets, but the ground is so hard (hardpan) that they didn't make it.  Even the Oaxacan corn I planted isn't doing well.  Very yellow leaves (low nitrogen) and not growing.  I'll try to help, but anything I put around the plants will be scratched away by the chickens.

Planting in the existing log raised beds...  again!  These were the best 'investment' I could have ever made.  I was trained in using row garden (open, plowed and raked patch planted in rows) but this?  This is far superior, especially for poor ground and ease of weeding.  The plants are up, the edges are defined.  What's not to like?  My son, Heather and Anthony all helped over Mother's Day weekend.  It was glorious.  I planted a straw-bale bed (to the right of Anthony and the garden cart, but quickly realized that a straw-bale bed only lasts one year.  The straw bales break down quickly.  So, I cut two very long logs and pushed them into place alongside the straw bales, one on each side and broke the bales down a bit.  Next year (or even this year) I'll put arched cattle panels in between the logs for vining crops.  Cucumbers, melons, beans, squash, whatever.  I like morning glories, so some of them too!  Here in Indiana, we can pretty much toss out seeds and they'll grow.  Amazing weather conditions...  And with composted equine and goat and hog manure?  Even better...

The 'blank' spot where Ruby Jayne (the dog) is laying was another straw-bale bed.  It broke down and then was covered in quack grass (a noxious grass) and Creeping Charlie (an annoying vining weed used long ago for bittering beer).  So I destroyed it with Bob 185 (the Bobcat) and will most likely leave that mostly open...

Best.  Weekend.  Ever.

the 'crew'...  thank you thank you thank you!  Anthony wants to learn how to butcher.  He's a foodie like me and Vince and Heather (and Aaron - Heather's fiance).  Now I plan to get a Hereford Hog (it's a heirloom hog but is a larger hog) to see how it's growth pattern works out.  I'll have Anthony come and help.

Heather took the picture so couldn't be in this one.  And in case you're wondering?  I'm 5' tall (ok, maybe less) and was standing on a 10" clump of dirt to make this look a little more "even."  Vince on the right is a full head (at least) taller than I am...

It would be dumb and damaging to take it out now.  The honeybees have incorporated it into their hive.  It's theirs.  All is not lost.  There was enough room to slide a frame down the side and several down the side to the bottom of this pic.  Doh!  The feeder and queen cage should have been taken out and frames should have been placed fully in this.  But it'll be ok.  Promise.  Don't get caught up in your "vision"...

(left) Buster the crabby cat and (right) Sarge the squirrel, snake, mouse, vole, shrew, everything killer.  Someone kept leaving vole butts for me to step on in the barn.  It was these guys.  I think they thought it was funny. 

goofy cats

Hugelkultur!  aka:  raised bed with an altitude.  A hugelkulture is stacked logs with dirt piled over the top.  All well and good until the chooks (chickens) find it.  I had flowers and melons growing on this until they found it.  This is positioned under a large tree to experiment with light...  I need to cut off one more branch and then there'll be enough light to grow melons and cukes on it.  I am also interested to see how it changes the drifting snow.  This technique is very very permaculture.  This kind of bed uses less soil and the logs break down slowly retaining moisture and giving off nitrogen.  Interesting, really.  Bob 185 makes it so very easy to stack logs and dump 5' buckets full of dirt in various places... 

I plan to make more...  When you have logs?  Use 'em!

Another view of the hugelkultur.  Typically, this should be completely covered and then branches and such are 'woven' against the soil to keep it in place.  Did I follow instructions?  No.  It'll be fine.  In the background is the orchard.  The foreground is a 'mini' hugelkulture with some logs inside and then just covered with dirt.  I was running out of time to assemble and for this season, I'll make it work.  After the growing season, I'll put more dirt and build up both of them.  It's an 'eye break' and a buffer zone from the road. 

I'm really fascinated by permaculture.  Why do we till down 10+inches and disturb the soil so deeply for our gardens?  I've gotten better and more yield from my raised beds I've ever thought possible.  Keyhole gardens (started in South Africa and layered with, essentially, trash and covered with dirt), hugelkulturs, etc. are a less labor-intensive way to garden, in my opinion.  Who wants to spend hours and hours when you can spend minutes weeding?  I have better things to do.  Like play with the equine.

WARNING:  GORE!  Tasha hates groundhogs.  HATES them.  Unfortunately, this was the neighbor's across the road.  Not that he cares, but it was across a busy road.  I'll keep her tied for a while...  She was across the road and had this baby groundhog dead before we could even yell STOP!

Heather and the pigs - American Guinea Hogs.  The sow from last year and this year's gilt.  I believe strongly in treating animals with respect.  These two won't likely be butchered anytime soon as they are valuable as breeding stock.  American Guinea Hogs (AGH) are very hand tame from the get go and on the American Livestock Conservancy list.  It takes just a day or two to start taming them and a week to get them this tame for the most part.  As piglets they tend to be a bit more flighty (or mine did) but they are lovely little pigs.  I have yet to butcher a AGH but hope to next year from my own stock.  I was going to keep the gilt, but sold her as breeding stock (or pending pick up anyway).  I like her long loin and decent hams.  They've a similar look to Asian Heirloom Hogs, but are meatier and more friendly.   

another part of the orchard - looking to the North and West.  I have very little fruit on this year.  We had a tough, cold winter here and then a late frost.  May 15 was our last frost this year!

left to right front row:  apple, apple, pear - behind:  apples, pecans, Saskatoons (immature), brambles (raspberries and blackberries) cherries and peaches.

The doeling, Emmaline, in the foreground.  She's very rough right now and I'm continuing to work with her...  She's also turning black.  If I would shave her down, she'd be black like her half-sister, Lilly Mae in the background.

Buster the crabby cat.  He hisses.  He hates everyone.  But every now and then?  He tolerates me petting him.  This?  This is unusual to say the least...  He came to me grossly overweight, matted, hissing and peculiar.  Now we're just down to hissing and peculiar.

Vince cut down most of the elderberries.  I've discovered I love smelling the flowers and still want to make elder-flower water sometime but really don't care for the berries much.  Since he cut them down, the red raspberries that grew underneath them that I didn't think I cared much for have grown exponentially since they were able to get light.  And berries and berries and berries!  I plan to freeze a lot, thaw them all out and juice them.  I'll save the seeds to put in scrubby soaps and make the fruit juice into leather in the food dehydrator.  Wonderful. 

A lovely spider that surprised us both. 

My pretty Starla.  She's so glossy right now.  I think I caught her mid-ear flip.  She's my mule.  I love her...  And Ed the Arab and Cookie Man the donkey... 

Well, I think I've about caught up to today.  My ricotta is almost boiled enough to make ricotta.  Maybe a cheesecake tomorrow or even lasagna for lunches.  I'm hoping everyone is having a wonderful summer!  I will start posting soaps soon...  But for now, more posts on things on and around the farm...  Have a good evening...

We're still dropping Eastern White pines out of the new meadow/pasture.  I've been telling anyone that'll listen to me that I need more SPACE for animals.  With almost 25 wooded acres, you need more than a drylot paddock for animals.  So my friend has been dropping the trees in the area I want.  It took me about 4 years to talk him into it.  These trees are about 60' tall and weren't thinned properly when they were small.  So they're "Q-tips" of trees.  Like lodge-pole pines, really.  Only just a little green branches & needles at the top since they had to grow so tall and fast.  On the good side, these are wonderful for raised bed borders and some are big enough for dimensional lumber off the saw mill my friend owns.  He's using an 8N Ford (his also) to push them over.  He also has a Bobcat that we're doing the same way.  He makes the undercut, I get on the equipment and push with it while he makes the final back cut.  Dangerous?  Um, YEAH.  Gorgeous meadow/pasture eventually?  Um, YEAH.  And we're leaving all the hard maples.  My dream is to have a small maple sugar camp for Agri-tourism in the few weeks of the Spring when sap is running.  Do I know what I'm doing?  Um, YEAH. 

some really, really BIG logs?  Um, YEAH.  Some of these are about 20" across at the butt.  Each log is about 60' tall.  A LOT of logs!  Great for building raised beds and such.  HORRIBLE for fence posts.  Eastern White pine is a soft wood and tends to rot when it touches the ground.  Yes, telephone poles are pine.  But they're treated.  This is raw pine. 

LOTS of logs!  I feel like I live in Alaska or Maine with all the pine logs in these piles.  This is only ONE pile.  There are 4 others.  Two of which are big logs that can go on the sawmill for dimensional lumber. 

This meadow/pasture will only be about two acres when we're done.  The hard maple trees are not in this picture, really, but are large enough to tap and will be very lovely when the pines are away from them and they've got air and space to grow.

Tasha came to me from a friend who bought her for her property.  Tasha was a puppy and ran the calves and sheep there and killed all the cats.  Then she went to my friend's daughter's house where she ran the Corgis to distraction.  After my beloved Jules was killed on the road, my friend gifted her to me.  I adore her.  LGD's are the strangest dogs I've ever worked with.  I'm used to dogs that are strong-willed and try to bite or dominate me.  This?  No.  They try to out-think you.  YOU say you want three cats?  THEY say, Ok, and then "remove" the cats when you aren't looking.  I love her.  As a LGD?  She works well.  But I want her socialized to me.  I think it'll take another 6 months or so before she decides she belongs ONLY to this property.  Currently she thinks all property on either side of the busy road belongs to her.  Yes, she's a brindle.  I love brindles.  Unfortunately, with her coloration she looks wolf or coyote-like.  So I put a bright orange collar on her.

The pines we're working on cutting down are over her shoulder to the left and behind her in this picture (below).  There are approximately 10+ more acres of mature pines, so don't worry.  We've left some...

Ok. ok.  BoJangles the Border Collie X likes to sit on round bales too.  She's on top of a tarp covering the round bales.  She taught Tasha how to jump up on them.  She's a clown. 

Ruby Jayne's getting too old to jump up on the bales. Yes, this was early early Spring 2014

This was the day, early this Spring, that Tasha decided to kill baby chicks.  We had to have a talk.  And I went and got a LIVE baby chick to let her know I was not amused and that this chick was to stay alive...  As you can see?  Tasha is not very impressed with my goofy instructions (the chick is between her front legs!).  We got 40 Americana chicks and then I split them with the neighbor.  Now the chicks are full grown and Tasha doesn't see them as hors d'oeuvre any longer...  although, to be fair, she didn't really EAT them as much as she just play-killed them.  Not today, Tasha.  Not today...

My friend, Heather, came out to help numerous times...  At one point this early Spring I was bottle feeding 7 babies.  The two Nubian babies had to be pulled from their dam as they were chewing (yes.) their momma's teats raw.  The ram-lamb (the black-headed animal) was an orphan from another friend's farm and then the two Oberhasli kids were orphaned as I had to euthanize their paralyzed momma.  Their triplet didn't survive.  Ruby is invaluable as she likes to clean babies - fore and aft.  Then another neighbor had a kid that had goat polio and wasn't going to survive.  So her sister came with her.  So.  A ram-lamb, two Oberhasli, two Nubians, and two Myotonics.  SEVEN.  We had to bottle in shifts as their sizes were very different.  A Lambar bucket wouldn't work very well...

EARLY Spring pruning...  This was a Granny Smith apple that was a Standard.  And overgrown into the pass-thru driveway to the barn.  So, I stubbed it.  Severely.  It'll be a problem now since it'll want to send out shoots everywhere (and it has).  Heather and I both worked on it.  She was a bit more delicate than I.  I went and got the Husqvarna chainsaw and STUBBED it.  It was about 25' tall or more with very small apples.  I took it to about 12' tall.  And just major branches.  It'll be a nightmare to tame, but I'll keep on it.

(I'm trying to get caught up to July, can you tell?)  I LOVE early Spring and fiddleheads...  This is a leatherleaf fern.  Here in Indiana we have several native ferns that endure year round.  This last winter was extremely brutal, but the ferns still send up their glorious fronds in these lovely fiddle-heads.  I love seeing them...

Anemones.  Purple, pink, mauve and "white"...  I love these little wildflowers...  They grow mainly on the bluff facing East/North...  Lovely things...

Then, disaster struck with Bug the tractor.  I went to start him and heard a clatter and bang and breaking metal.  I thought I threw a rod.  No.  What it was?  The ring gear and starter gear.  Oh, no problem?  NO.  PROBLEM.  JohnO told me to get the parts, he broke the tractor in two and fixed it!  I would have loved to turned wrenches to fully understand what goes where, but JohnO makes it look so simple.  I'm sure I'd never been able to do this by myself.  The tractor was in two pieces.  Bizarre.  The new ring gear has to be heated to 350F and dropped quickly onto the corresponding piece so it will mate tightly to the other part.  JohnO heated it in his oven.  Yeah.  The old ring gear had to be cut off.  I'm glad he has the knowledge and the understanding or this would have been a very costly repair.

I was very very sad to see I'd lost my entire hive last winter.  They starved and froze.  Or froze and starved.  Either way.  Devastating.  However, a local guy was selling package bees on Craigslist and I ordered a package.  Delivered from Georgia in one day.  This time I situated the hive behind the house where it is protected a bit more and further away from the field across the road.  I'd not worked with package bees for a few years so was a bit nervous, but these honeybees are very quiet and it went well.  I'm hopeful and the hive seems very robust. 

Please.  If you plant pines, thin them.  They shouldn't be like this.  Yes, it's pretty but they really shouldn't look like this...  Even if I thin them now, pines don't have latent buds down their trunk and they'll never branch out lower.  Ever.  *sigh*
(I have to go check the ricotta I'm cooking...  brb)

I had Nubian goats and Oberhasli goats.  My friend helped me get both, graciously and I'm eternally grateful.  Her comment?  It's just as easy to feed NICE animals as it is to feed sub-standard animals.  She's right, of course.  However, the Nubians were very needy and constantly bawling and wailing for attention.  Almost made me lose my mind (shush).  So, I had 13 at the beginning of the year.  Now?  I have three Oberhasli does and one VERY nice Oberhasli buck from Ober Boerd in Ohio.  PHENOMENAL animals he has.  PHENOMENAL.  His Obers are about 2 gallon of milk a day.  2 GALLON!!!  Off of 135# animals!  Wow and Wow.  The twin to the buck I bought went to the Phillpines (yes.) to upgrade the Oberhasli there.  I'm very excited about this buck and think he should do some nice things for my SMALL herd.  My does aren't registered currently but I had an ADGA member come out and she has written me a letter to get them registered as NOA (Native On Appearance).  With a registered buck?  I'm on my way, AGAIN.  And no, I don't tie my animals out regularly.  I had to tie her so I could get a picture!  This is the black 'expression' of an Oberhasli.  A black buck isn't registerable, but this doe is.  Sounds confusing?  Maybe.  But black is the recessive gene for Oberhasli.  This doe is a little rough looking but is shedding out nicely.  I'm looking forward to babies from her.   

Lilly Mae - out of Omo Mae by MayBelle.  Omo Mae is a 'normal' Oberhasli color and milks about 3 quarts a day.  Not great, not good, but keeps me in cheese (mozzarella and ricotta), table milk and milk for soap. 

Omo Mae & Lilly Mae (Mother and daughter)  Omo is very rough-coated too.  It was a tough winter in Indiana and we're still working through it!

How much soaping have I gotten done?  Well, none.  This time of year I don't do much soaping.  I think I've only made 5 batches this Spring.  I plan to take off an entire week in early August to make around 30 batches.  I've got some new scents and found a Bedtime Bath (chamomile and lavender) that I'm looking forward to.  Since I add eggs off the farm, the lather is so so silky and nice...  The house will smell wonderful. 
Back to the goats?  I should have babies in November/December at this rate as both of these does decided they wanted to be with the buck.  Emmaline (from Emma the doe that I had to euthanize) is way too young and has had a struggle to be healthy.  On my farm when they're removed from their momma for whatever reason, it's a little tough for them.  But she's doing ok and growing slowly.  I'll get some pics of her too.  And the buck.

No one believes me and so I'm just throwing this out there.  you DON'T NEED TO MILK EVERY 12 HOURS.  There.  I said it.  I don't.  With these Oberhasli, or any goat with a long, level lactation (meaning they start at a good level and don't taper off in volume of milk), you can milk once a day.  You won't get the optimum amount of milk, but hey.  I've been milking Omo Mae once a day for the last month or two and I'm consistently getting 2 quarts a milking.  Enough for drinking and cheese for me.  How much easier can it get than that?  Whatever you read in a book is a GUIDELINE.  YOUR farm/smallholding may vary.  Find your level.  It'll be ok.  What's the worst that can happen?  Your goat dries up?  Yeah.  That's it. 

Snakes on the farm.  I saw a GORGEOUS HUGE Black King Snake the other day.  Omo Mae and I almost stepped on her!  Yes, her.  When they're this big?  It's a her.  Gorgeous.  I tried to touch the snake, but she was having none of it.  I'm 5' tall and I figure this snake was about 5 1/2' long.  About as big as they can get.  There's a lot of years of mice and such in that snake.  I've had snakes in my garage for years and years.  I find their skins shed in there.  Must like the mice too...  I gave up being worried about it years ago...  

What's to worry about?  She went on her way and I went on mine.  We'll meet again, I'm sure...  And then there was THIS little one I found in the garage.  THAT is a sticker off of a cooler.  HOPELESSLY stuck.  I decided to douse it in olive oil to de-stick him/her.  It's a milk snake.  Poor baby.  It took a while to de-stick it.  No, it's not dead.  Yes, it's stuck UPSIDE DOWN.  Man, what a cruddy day it was having.  Cruddy.  I washed it off after de-sticking it and set it loose in a flower bed.  A very small snake. 

Poor little milk snake baby.  Am I edgy about snakes?  Sure.  Does that stop me from helping one in trouble that would have died for no good reason?  No.  Lovely thing, really...

and THEN there were these FIVE little stinkers.  Their momma had gotten killed on the road and a local farmer called me to let me know they were there.  I moved momma way back off the road (they were not pleased) and although I TRIED to figure a way to capture them without them spraying me?  I wasn't able to do it.  I'm afraid possums or fox ate them.  I have several fox living on my place.  It's the way of things.  They are lovely, but weren't very amenable to being picked up or handled...