Well. I find myself missing the above pictured critters, as well as the goats, oxen, yaks, and farm folk. I left the farm mid-August, in order to get home and take care of some pressing matters. I guess things were getting pretty routine by that point anyway, and it made me itch to get home and start doing something… finding some land, developing some freelance work, learning some newly-important life skills, working on some different farms. I’m not sure what I’ll have to blabber about on the blog now, but you should be warned that some of it will probably be 1000% more nerdy than before. We’ll see.

Right after I got home, Rachel and I zipped off to Maine to laze about for a week at her parents’ place. That certainly delayed my settling-in phase here in Rochester, but made for a great transition between two very different worlds. I still get up fairly early, but I am creeping later and later each day, and I stay up too late. I’ll have to work on that, as I enjoy getting up at six and having the quiet morning to myself. Also, it is odd to have too much free time and too little hard labor. I’ve contacted some local farms and hopefully will find a place I can visit and work at between my job and freelance and other pursuits… the garden just doesn’t cut it.

We happened to be in Maine on my birthday, and Rachel & her sister made me a yummy farm-themed cake. They managed to cover all the important animals from the farm, except the yaks. There was even a team of appropriately colored oxen, munching on the coconut and frosting “grass”. I managed to milk the birthday event for almost a full week… eating too much, drinking vast quantities of yummy beer, and lazing about reading books and taking naps. Whee!

But now it’s back to reality-land. First on the to-do list was to set up an office here at Rachel’s place, which I guess is now “our place”. Having done that I am now ready to dive into some freelance work, and have indeed already talked to the bike shop and started some materials for next year’s Tour de New York (the first, I suppose). Soon I will return to my prior job part-time as well, and also try to work in some internships, with any luck. So maybe there will soon be more variety here, instead of all these tiresome pictures of farm animals! Who knows!

I had visitors last weekend. Somehow only one of them managed to get photographed. Rachel drove to Rome, and hitched a ride the rest of the way with my parents, who were on their way to Vermont to meet up with other Volkswagen Bus weirdos. So they got in fairly early on Friday, and we put her to work rather quickly after the folks left. For some reason we were a little behind in the harvest. Oh yeah… because a goat had a broken leg and there were vet visits and such to worry about. So Rachel and I harvested together whilst everybody else was off at the vet. We bunched up kale, beets, carrots, and lots of herbs. Probably some other stuff I’ve forgotten about as well. (Oh yeah! Two kinds of cucumbers and three squashies.)

So, it was nice to see her, and even though we couldn’t manage to chit-chat while harvesting and counting bunches and such, it was a nice plump weekend of activities. Too much walking to town and back though… I was getting more tired on my days off than during the week.

We took a short ride to Shelburne Falls, and wandered around there like touristy folk. There is a bridge of flowers that we walked along, with Rachel telling me what they all were and me forgetting them promptly. It was quite lovely, and I managed to take zero pictures. We got a frozen hot chocolate at a cafe, and it was delicious and not at all like a chocolate milkshake thank you.

The parents came back Sunday evening, and we went out to dinner at a local bar, of which I didn’t get the impression of “fine eatery”… but it was really quite good. I made everybody eat some mussels. And the desserts were fantastic looking, so we were all fatty-fats and pigged out. Then we came back and drank some beer and played pitch.

And then, everybody left me on Monday. Poo. Then it was back to the same old. Wednesday was a little different though… we harvested all the garlic. Not sure how much, we never did end up counting bulbs. It was about fifty pounds of seed garlic though. So we pulled it all up, laid it out, filled up a cart, dragged it to the barn, bunched it up, and hung it on strings. It was kindof my first blister-causing activity. My hands are a mess, which made it hard to weed and trellis tomatoes today.

It smells rather delicious walking through the barn now… and of course I’m making some hilarious vampire jokes.

The wee Guinea Fowl are one week closer to ugliness. Look at that elongating neck! They’ve been moved inside with their surrogate mother. Now they reside in an old playpen, and thankfully still make only cute chick sounds. I anticipate they’ll be out and about before they learn how to be more obnoxious. I wonder, will they act somewhat more chickenish then the other Guineas? Will they all get along? Probably not… they’re known for finding at least one of their own to pick on and excommunicate. Heartless poultry. I think I shall eat one of you after all.

As you may be able to see, I discovered a guinea chick peeping around underneath the hen. Broody Hen (that’s what we’ve taken to calling her) quickly got used to everybody poking around underneath her to get a look, and now doesn’t even peck at you as you root around under her warm blobby broody body. The chicks are up and about today, pecking at some mash and getting wee baby drinks of water.

So that’s what passes for excitement around here. Entertainment, really. I realize I may have spoken poorly of the guineas in the past, but they’ve really grown on me this summer. They eat a lot of ticks, and don’t eat the vegetables in the garden. They run much faster and more elegantly than the fat chickens, have some level of personality (mostly “stupid”), and roam far and wide on the property, often stopping traffic in the road and exploring the neighbor’s yards. Plus, they can actually fly a little bit, yet choose to stick around and roost in our half-dead apple tree. How sweet. So in summary, I’m happy we’re growing up two more, and I hope they make it and I probably wont even try to slaughter them and bring them back to Rochester in freezer bags.

In other news, we’re catching up with our weeding, sortof. It was a long day in the tomato patch today, and my grab, twist, and pull muscles are tired. I reserved enough strength to do the evening milking, and now I get a rest. I suspect tomorrow will involve some weeding of the melon beds. And the winter squash. And the corn. And the pumpkins. Blah. It is rather hot and humid here, and today I considered becoming one of those people who complains about the weather (a retiree?)… but, anything under ninety and I refuse to change out of my work pants and into shorts… so no bellyaching. There was a nice breeze today, but apparently not at ground level. The trees whooshed and swooshed, yet there was stillness down in the weeds. Hot days make me wear sunscreen. Obviously that’s stupid, as the quantity of solar radiation apparently has no bearing on my application, just warmth. I guess it correlates pretty well. I’m rather tanned, but still feel I could get pinky after a long day in the sun.

I’m babbling. It is time to shut in the chickens and chicks, and then head to bed. Much visitor preparation is needed tomorrow, along with weeding and laundry and on and on.

I suppose a little bit has happened since our last chat. There have been a lot of harvests, a lot of markets, and a lot of weeding. Blech. We’ve finally moved on from just greens, with some beets and carrots and squash now showing up on our market tables. That feels nice. I’m not sick of salads, but will enjoy the added variety nonetheless.

We’ve also blown through all of our garlic scapes in the past few weeks. What a lovely product. Waste product is more like it, as we would cut them off even if nobody were willing to buy them. But people do, and as they should because it’s quite the nice delicate garlic taste right when everybody’s garlic braids are running out from the previous season. Soon we will start harvesting fresh garlic for the CSA, and then I’ll get to see how we harvest and dry the rest, and perhaps even try my hand at making some braids.

I had visitors, many weeks ago. My parents came out for a few days in their Vanagon… and they dragged Rachel along for the ride. In fact, they will be doing the very same thing next weekend on their way to Vermont for some crazy Volkswagen meet-up they seem to be attending yearly.

We went on a tour of the Berkshire Brewing Company while they were in town. It was quite the nice tour, with an ample amount of free tastings and an entertaining tour guide… rather in depth and fun.

I think the folks had a good time here at the farm. They brought plenty of beer and crackers and cheese and Rachel and I helped them consume it whilst playing Pitch around the wee table in their camper. Mom hopefully got enough pampering in, bringing fixings for dinner and breakfast and also some cookies and the like.

We also went out to a flea market, which was not quite a bust, but close. We showed up late due to poor directions, and it was a semi-cloudy-rainy day anyways, so people were packing up and heading home. I got a good camera tripod though, so that’s good. And afterwards there happened to be a good brewpub on the way home, so we stopped there for a late lunch. You can perhaps see a theme developing here.

This past weekend I went to the Northeastern Permaculture Convergence in Holyoke. I haven’t got the brain capacity right now to explain what permaculture is… perhaps someday. But it’s somewhat involved in designing agricultural systems, if you will. Anyways, it was an interesting weekend, and I’m still processing things in my head. I met Dave from Rochester there, who has a blog I’ve been reading for a while now. So that made it pretty worthwhile. We didn’t talk a ton, but he seemed great and will no doubt be a valuable resource upon my return. He has some connections within organizations I’m interested in, and also is tinkering with his own permaculture garden/yard which I hope to view someday.

I guess there were around 100 other people at the convergence. I didn’t talk to many of them. I’m antisocial, and suck at events such as this. But I did meet a lot of nice folks, and picked a few brains. Mainly I enjoyed touring some farms, gardens, and nurseries. Of course I didn’t write down the scores of cool plants I saw, but I feel like I’m not at that stage yet, and have the names of some books to obtain that should point out the highlights at least.

So, it feels good to be back at the farm. Things were a little weird when I got back, with the oxen getting out of their pasture once again, apparently a problem all weekend. That’s pretty frustrating. And there are many animals that need moving in the morning, which I don’t entirely look forward to. But. Being away made me appreciate many more things about this place, so I shall not complain.

It has been rather warm and moist here lately. I woke up today (Sunday, my “day off”) at around five, with the sun peeking in the hayloft doors (which are now permanently open to ventilate the goat butt barn scent). I’m not sure what compelled me to bound out of bed and take pictures. Perhaps my lack of doing so for the past two weeks. Or perhaps because the sun had a particular hazy, diffuse quality that I knew would be gone pretty quickly.

So off I went. It was my first t-shirt-only morning… plus muck boots, dress pants, suspenders, and my camera bag. I guess I got some ok shots.

Anyways, the point of all this was that it is rather pretty here, I’ve found. Yesterday after the market I took some detours on my bike ride back. Various dirt roads deep into dark dark woods smelling slightly acidic and decayed. Some were shortcuts between more civilized roads. Some went beyond my means of locomotion, with steep descents that I didn’t feel like tackling in the opposite direction.

There were lots of hills.

It was all quiet and beautiful, with woods and cows and barns and fields and streams and gardens and an old round brick schoolhouse and a beehive on somebody’s porch roof (bearproofing, I suppose) and hills and valleys and misty bits and clotheslines and nice views and nice smells. I will have to do more exploring, at more photogenic times of day and with my camera on board.

All this mist and haze is, unfortunately, because it is durn hot here. Only low nineties really, but it doesn’t feel nice. We went from steady rain and a flood warning Thursday night and Friday morning (when I got soaked through my “rain suit” while moving the sheep) to the nineties on Saturday, and through the next few days it seems. Last night was quite interesting, clear skies overhead and clouds with silent lightning off in the distance (I guess you may call it heat lightning, but it’s really just a normal storm you can’t hear due to distance or refraction of sound waves (says the internets), so let us just call it lightning, ok?).

In wildlife news, I saw a black bear a few nights ago, with two cubs close behind. They were basically at the tree line you can see in the pictures above… which is rather too close to where we have the boy sheep currently. They freaked out a bit. Doggie inspection revealed no bears in the woods shortly after I spotted them, so maybe they were just passing through for a dip in the stream (something that has crossed my mind recently).

Derek found the guinea hen’s nest, with something like twenty eggs piled up in there. A few were placed underneath the broody chicken hen in the coop, so we’ll see if anything hatches. I guess most people will remove the eggs and store them until the hen is ready to sit for a while… because they don’t start sitting until they’ve got them all out. I guess that makes sense. I’ve taken to liking the guineas, even though they’re obnoxiously loud. They don’t eat the crops and keep me from getting ticks. They can stay for now.

Last Friday was our first harvest day, in preparation for the Ashfield Farmer’s Market Saturday morning. It was pretty exciting to finally be able to snip some edible bits off of some of the plants we’ve been staring at for more than a month now. We mostly had salad mix and spinach from the beds in the greenhouse. I remember preparing some of those beds my first weekend here, back in April. It feels like everything is growing sooooo slooooowly, but I think I just have unrealistic expectations. It sure is nice though, to sit up in the barn loft and look at the fields, with rows upon rows of thin green lines (some red and purple)… I can’t wait until they’re all thick green lines.

We also pulled up some onions that had overwintered in the field across the road. Their existence wasn’t really intentional: it was a bed that had been lost to weeds last year and mowed down to nothing before winter. But they came back, and upon pulling them up they had some nice white bulbs attached. So we made up about 35 bunches of those, which involved cleaning off the gunky layers, snipping the roots, bunching them up, and washing them off in a bucket. A lot of labor, but worth it because nobody else had fresh onions at the market. Rounding out the selection was bunches of chives, a few bunches of tarragon, and that’s it. All of this was packed up and ready for the CSA members to pick up at the market. We don’t divvy things out into boxes and drop them off anywhere, instead our members get a canvas bag with a pretty Sangha Farm logo on it, and they just come to the market and fill it up. It certainly makes things easier on us, and I think is good for the customer, as they can pick and choose only the things they want (although there is something to be said for being forced to try the new fruits and vegetables you find in your CSA share).

In addition to our meager selection of produce, we had a ton of vegetable starts to bring to the market. The van was quite full, with multiple tiers of precariously stacked flats of delicate plants. Luckily the market is only about one mile away. We got there at seven and were just finishing setup by eight thirty when the market opens. As of right now us interns don’t really have to work the market, so after hanging around and helping out a little bit, I wandered off and sat under a tree to write letters. It was a beautiful day, and tons of people came out. The market is much smaller than Rochester’s main public market, and much more social. In the center of all the tents was a constant four hour meeting of neighbors and friends (and dogs). A man in a bowler hat and bow tie came and played cello for a bit. Another man brought two tiny donkeys and walked them around while being followed by eager donkey-petters (they were amazingly soft (the donkeys)).

After writing letters for a while, I wandered to the post office and the hardware store, and got back in time to see the ice cream truck pull up in front of the town green where the market is held. It’s an old converted school bus, out of which is served locally made organic ice cream. Of course I had to sample some, and indeed the butter pecan was quite delicious.

Ooh! I forgot about the cheese. We finally got our license to make and sell cheese. What an amazingly bureaucratic process that is. I’m sure I didn’t even really hear about half of it, but from what I did hear it’s no wonder there are very few small-time dairies around.

But, we made it through all the hoops, and Maribeth cranked out as much cheese as possible before the market. She had a sample tray all set up and received many complements and sold out of everything she made. That means there will be two more does joining us, and the two does with kids still nursing will be separated at night so we can steal the morning milk at least. More milk! Unfamiliar teats! Yikes!

We’ve been planting like mad for the past week, and all of this week. Onions onions onions leeks cabbage cabbage cabbage broccoli and other stuff I readily forget. We had a little frost scare a few nights ago, but it never materialized. The only vulnerable thing in the fields was the zucchini, so those got covered up for the night.

Most of the things we’re planting were started in the greenhouse last month. Radishes, beets, carrots, lettuce mixes, and a few other things are all that have been directly sown. The seeder is a mildly amusing little device that is filled with seed and run down the beds as its wheels churn and it digs a trench, meters out seed, fills the trench, and tamps it down. All of the rows I’ve done are far from straight. Nobody else does much better, actually. The only reason it matters is that it stinks when a hoe wont fit between the two rows due to somebody’s sloppy driving.

I had a visitor last weekend. Rachel came out from Rochester Thursday night via train. It was a rather nice visit, which we started out by hand-weeding a bed of mesclun mix. That took most of Friday actually. I milked Friday morning, just so my personal photographer could record the event and prove that I’m on a farm and learning things.

We’re finally settling into a semi-routine as far as moving all of the animals is concerned. We moved the chicken coop a few days ago, and for two or three days the hens weren’t really able to find their way back at night. So that was a chore… waiting until they were sleeping on a fence somewhere before grabbing them and putting them into the coop. That has finally stopped. The girl goats are being moved to new pasture every day… boy goats every few days. The sheep are finally out for almost a week at a time. The oxen are chewing on possibly five days of pasture per move, but are still being punks and getting out of their fence too often. Time to up the voltage.

Oh! I almost forgot… we got llamas last Sunday! Llamas have a funny looking name, and are funny looking creatures. Everything about them is weird and they scare me and they smell and I really really dislike them. Llamas sure do spit when agitated. And perhaps you think “Gee Brian. Getting spit on isn’t too terrible, is it?”… and I say yes. Yes it is, because this is llama spit and LLAMAS DON’T BRUSH THEIR TEETH, OK? It is a foul substance that you could only simulate by fermenting the essence of dog breath with a touch of vomit and moldy sock.

I’d have photos here of said llamas, but I really don’t feel like getting my camera all smelled up. Maybe I’ll risk it soon, just so you can see the freak show yourselves. Until then… I require slumber.

Back when I was a youngster, I was forced to spend many hours upon a tractor, mowing acres upon acres of foolish lawn, huffing exhaust and damaging my hearing all the while (thanks parents!). As I sat on my buttocks for extended periods of time, I would often set my mind to thinking upon different fantastical technologies one could use to trim grass with less pain and more ease. Most of what I came up with was nebulously defined at best, but it usually involved laser beams.

Yes indeed. Obviously laser beams would, at the push of a button (perhaps after turning a key or some other nuclear launch button safety device), shoot out over your lawn at the specified height, neatly snipping the tips of every blade in sight, perhaps even incinerating the trimmings (if you’re the bag-em-up type). I envisioned this system as one you would install once, with the beams and mirrors placed in all the right spots to get behind every tree and down into every contour of the lawn. Ever afterwards, your juvenile life would be free of toil and full of recreation and joy.

I am now reminded of this technology every time we move the animals and their portable electric fences. They each have their own munching styles, but in general the combination of energized fences and hungry hungry animals ensures a laser-like cut of grass… every single blade right up to the fence line. When I move fence I feel like I am setting up my childhood Lazer-Mow system, defining the boundaries and coordinates within which the grass shall be trimmed to my specifications. Up and down hills, over gullies, around trees and rocks. Nothing fazes the herbivorous lawnmowing machine.

Best of all, it’s also fertilizing the soil, reseeding the pasture, generating meat or milk or wool or oxen-power, the only noise is some cute bleating or the occasional moo, and it’s much less odiferous than a tractor. It feels like a much better use of technology, to gently guide nature with some solar powered fence chargers and a roll of fence, instead of trying to dominate it completely with hundreds of pounds of iron and gasoline and hours of someone’s precious time.

I seem to keep getting yelled at for my blog inaction. I guess my five readers are desperate for farm-based updates. This past weekend was a rainy and semi-lazy one. It actually started on Thursday with a rainy and cold day, which kept us inside for most everything but the chores. It felt like a weird day of waiting to work but not doing anything, and I got a little screwed up. It really wasn’t a day off in my brain, but I tried to make that mental transition, knowing that we’d have to make up time on Saturday or Sunday.

Friday was equally cold and rainy. We had a mob of children come visit the farm, which was… entertaining. I took some photos and then ran and hid in the barn. They appeared to enjoy seeing all of the animals and petting lambs and whatnot. If I recall my field-trip days though, they were probably just happy to be outside, roughhousing and doing nothing constructive.

Saturday and Sunday continued the trend of cold and rain. We moved animals on Sunday, just so we could say we got some durn work done for once. Oh, and also because the oxen kept getting out of their fence, due to the fact that they had eaten up all their pasture, and oh look, there’s green grass right over there!

Oh! So that’s a good story, I suppose. One of the goats was due to kid on Friday. So after the kids (human) all left and Derek and Maribeth left the farm to go do something, I go outside to check on the goat and make sure there’s no signs of labor yet. But there was a rather prominent sign, that being a baby goat on the ground, covered in goo. Yikes! So I ran inside to tell Adam (the other intern) and we went out and started pretending to know what we were doing. Meanwhile Gregory from up the hill pulls into the driveway, honking and carrying on. This is when we were notified that the oxen were out and heading towards the garden. (!)

So somehow it was decided that Adam would take care of the midwifery and I would go pretend to be a teamster and get the oxen back where they belong. I ran and got their leads and lickin’ stick and set off hoping for the best. I guess it’d be a better story if there was any difficulty, but it was really absurdly easy. I’m not sure if they’re like dogs, in that you have to sound dominant or wrassle them and win before they listen to you… but once I got their leads on (which is really the hardest part, but a bowl of grain helps keep them from running away) they seemed to accept fate and do as they were told. Luckily, I had just worked out a mnemonic to remember the commands… gee, haw, hip, woah are the basics. Gee means go right, and I remember that because it sounds like “get” in the redneck accent used to yell at Rachel’s dogs, and since you lead from the left it works out, spatially speaking. Haw is for going left, and it reminds me of southpaw, so that’s pretty easy. Hip is the opposite of woah, and if you don’t know woah then you’ve never had your mom pour milk for you.

Also, I found a Guinea egg over the weekend. Guinea Fowl are terrible poultry-like-objects that I’ve probably complained about before. They make lots of noise and seem even dumber than chickens. They hang out in the yak pen alot, and indeed that is where I found the farm’s first Guinea Fowl egg. It’s a bit squatter and smaller than your normal chicken egg, with a rougher shell. I failed to photograph it whilst frying, but it had a larger yolk than one would expect, with very little white. The yolk was very orange, almost reddish inside, no doubt from all the god-knows-what they’re eating out on the farm every day.

It tasted like any ol’ egg. I found two more yesterday, and ate those too.

Pasture means we don’t have to feed hay twice a day, making chores slightly quicker. For the past few weeks, chores have basically involved bringing hay to all the animals (goats, yaks, oxen, sheep) and making sure they have sufficient water. This happens around seven in the morning and five in the evening. I’ve been getting the hang of milking the goats as well, so I’m sure us interns will add that to our routine pretty soon. It’s still new enough to be a fun task, but already the cleanup portion of milking is a chore.

I’ve been lax in my photo-taking lately, thus this boring and unadorned post. I hope to rectify this soon with some panoramic shots I’m fiddling with. Some other day though, as it is now well past my farmer bedtime. The rain just picked up a bit, and that is my cue to fall asleep while listening to the gutters gurgle.