Farm- To-Do List: November 2017 (11-19-17)
Always with the fossil fuels, eh?
Our to-do list on the farm (updated every weekend) is a constant moving target. It can be comprised of small personal items, like curing a jowl and making wine; the everyday, check electric fencing; the ongoing, building new infrastructure. But, it is always a snapshot of both the production and the homestead aspects of our life on this farm.
Short-term: now-14 days
- Water greenhouse (today)
- Drain field water lines (today)
- Repair truck lighting harness (today)
- Replace gutter (today)
- Set-up plucker and scalder (today)
- Start new wines
- Check electric wire fencing
- Move/replant figs
- Get load of rock and spread in front of haybarn (Monday)
- Setup winter pastures/Move ram lambs (today)
- Retrieve and store electric posts (done)
- Clean house/apartment/barn gutters (today)
- Clean and paint black the old water heater/complete solar heater project
- Take jowl out of cure and hang under stairs/order beef bung for lamb culatello
Winter veggies.
Mid-term: 15-90 days
- Pick-up co-op hog minerals
- Winterize apartment/workshop
- Pot up vitex
- Seal well house with screen
- Call and get biomatter at Roane State/leaf mulch in Sweetwater
- Use up composted manure from last winter
- Retrieve hay tarp
- Move hives
- Use sawmill/retrieve cut firewood and logs from the woods
- Rework web-site/focus on lamb/pork/volunteers/honey
- Butcher two lambs/focus on production of charcuterie cuts
- Install smoker for well-house
- Work on drainage behind equipment shed/fill in dirt
- Improve WWOOF presence/complete video
- Begin work on new pig paddock/complete between Thanksgiving and Christmas
- Remove and install new kitchen cabinets
- Determine course for beef production
- Bush-hog back pastures
- Install new weanling hogs
- Yearling lambs to processor (January-February)
- Lamb season begins (January 1)
2018 spring garden manured and tarped.
Long-term: 3-12 months
- Fence in pasture behind Mark’s house for rams in off season
- Look for used commercial planer for sawmill
- Prepare for spring capture of wild swarms
- Improve pollinator options/buckwheat plantings for lower orchard/transplant vitex
- Hogs to market (March)
Follow
Never a shortage of things to accomplish on a diversified farm. As my good neighbor Alfred used to say, “Idle hands are the Devil’s playground” every time someone complained about their workload. And, he wasn’t joking as he said it.
Have heard this one about idle hands several times myself… and usually from a rural acquaintance. Maybe urban idleness is different (though I expect it is not… )
Nice looking broccoli floret Mr Miller.
May we follow on to the Roane State biomatter and the leaf mulch in Sweetwater?? Are these composting ingredients? Filling the pickup bed, or is a trailer required?
Hotrod, I still wonder what I did with all my free time when I lived in the city.
Clem,
The local community college has an agricultural event center, mainly equine. Each participant gets a bale of wood chips for their stall. All of that gets piled up and available for free. And the local town, of eclipse fame, shreds and mulches their leaves that are collected locally, also, available for free. So, yes, I’ll pick it up in the truck. My goal is to get in the habit of bringing it back to the farm for mulching, as often as I can. Yes, I could go and rake my own damn leaves. But, I’ll let my urban counterparts ((can Sweetwater be considered urban?) do the raking for me.
A sort of backhaul if you will… have to go to town anyway, pick up shredded leaves for the return trip. Have to love that. Do they have a loader or is it Brian Powered? [if BP, what sort of fuel efficiency are we talking about? 🙂 ]
As for Sweetwater being urban… I’d leave it to them. I’ve been in places where a small town would proudly wear ‘village’ while in other places they have some sort of big town envy and want to be a ‘city’ or some other designation as soon as they qualify. Sleepy little village; wide spot in the road; blink and you miss it – all terms for that place where you find more than a pair of houses… and all places I’d still call rural.
But if you have full cell service, WIFI, gas stations on opposite corners, more than one bar, more than one church, a grocery where you don’t have to turn sideways in the aisle to pass a fellow shopper, a cop on the beat… then the urban cred is starting to build. This would be a place I’d let the locals decide for themselves.
Almost forgot…if the sleepy little village is within 20-30 minutes of a major metro (so as to be a bedroom community) – then its still urban, even if they have only one bar.
Well, they may check off all but the good internet service. So, the jury is out. The mulch is loaded for you, so, as they say, a no brainer.