Tag Archives: Haflinger

A Farm Weekend

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Weekends on the farm: Attending a farm estate auction last weekend, picking up various tools and putting them back down, kicking the tires on a nice horse drawn buggy ($800), told by the estate operator “We can come down on anything you are interested in” and not really interested in anything enough to pay cash for, so we stood in the doorway to the barn and watched snow start to fall. An elderly man stood next to us as big heavy flakes drifted out of the sky. We talked about the weather for a few minutes.

After polite conversation he said cheerfully, “Since my wife died I can buy pretty much any damn thing I want.“ He went on to speak of the five tractors and bulldozer he had bought in just the last few months. “I could buy this whole estate if I just had room to put it.” Weather worsening, he then volunteered that he had to “go to the house” and we said the same.

This past Friday we both took some time off from work to attend a mule and draft horse equipment auction an hour and a half northeast. A cold rain fell in Mascot as the auctioneer ran through his high-speed pitch on the virtues of plows with broken handles and buggies with mismatched tires. A lot of items were selling for $5-10, a wagon sold for $75, with only about three bidders in the crowd of a couple hundred. We exercised restraint and headed toward home. That night we joined a group of other farmers to watch a documentary on creating an English forest garden. We ate our fill of BBQ and drank some deadly homemade Belgian ale (curse you Tim and Russ) before leaving with a beautiful mix of orange and purple carrots.

Saturday morning we were up before dawn doing the usual chores. Caleb and I cleaned out the barn, part of an annual spring cleaning. A few hours later,the barn now cleared of accumulated junk and the
truck bed full, I headed to the county landfill. From there, I ran up onto the Cumberland Plateau to bring home our horse wagon from a farm where it had been being used.

By the time I returned Cindy and our neighbor Sara had butchered and processed nine roosters, cleaned up the mess and were moving on to other endeavors. The rest of Saturday I spent setting up a new germination room for the garden, tilling the late winter garden. (Today the low hoop tunnels will be set up for early crops of kale, mustard, spinach and cabbage.) Cindy spent the late afternoon light working our Haflinger in harness. Coffee, final chores and then our neighbor Adrienne joined us for dinner.

This morning, back up before dawn with the usual chores–then the last couple of hours spent trying to load hogs for market. Loading hogs, as you may recall, requires the patience of Job. One is loaded and three more to go. We can outwait if not actually outwit these hogs.

And there you go, a standard weekend on the farm: work, community and pleasure.

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Reading this weekend: The Localization Reader: adapting to the coming downshift, edited by De Young and Princen and published by MIT. Well worth picking up.

A Fall Update

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That first real hint of the winter to come rolled in yesterday. We were in the middle of conducting a workshop for fifteen participants on how to raise a homestead hog when we all felt the temperature drop. Felt more keenly since all were dressed for a sunny sixty plus degree day. What we received instead was an overcast windy day with temps dropping into the mid-fifties.

Odd how our bodies adapt, soon a day with the temperature rising to 55 will remind us of the warmth to come in spring and summer. For now the change has us reaching for cups of hot tea and thinking of warm hearty foods.

Lambs: The lamb, injured by a dog, is recovering nicely. Her appetite is strong and she is very active with no trace of a limp. She is still confined in the hospital ward, aka the dog pen, and receives a shot of penicillin twice daily. No recurrence of maggots, thankfully. The old injured flesh has fallen away leaving large circle, perhaps 12 inches in diameter of new pink flesh. A smaller area of about four inches is still scabbed over. But consider where she started and you will agree she has come a long way.

The other lambs are healthy and close to 100 pounds each. A date with the processor has been set and they will make the fateful truck journey the week of Thanksgiving; A cruel irony for the lambs and for the customers plenty to be thankful. The injured lamb will remain and join the other ewe lambs as breeding stock.

Gardening: I love fall and winter gardening. The bugs are at a minimum, the weeds are sluggish and whatever you plant seems to thrive. A bonus is the absolute thrill and joy to walk out on a cool morning and harvest beautiful ten pound Hubbard squashes.

Hubbards

The squash patch has another fifty to harvest in the next four weeks as long as we can avoid a heavy frost. Perfect for stews, we love our winter squash!

The turnips and the collards are all up and thriving. The mustard greens were the first to reach a harvestable size this past week. Sweet potatoes are still holding out and will not be harvested until the leaves begin to die back.

Bees and horses: If the weather warms enough today we will complete our fall harvest of honey. We hope to be able to get forty pounds of rich dark honey, more than enough to see us through to next fall. Having your own honey in the cupboard is real food security. Like Tolkien’s character Beorn in The Hobbit, we feel capable of shape shifting and accomplishing mighty deeds with our honey surplus.

Last night after a nourishing stew of roast pork, greens and potatoes we had delivery of a new draft horse to the farm. A Haflinger named “Candy”, an eight year old mare, Amish trained for farm work. An absolute beauty in appearance and temperament, she offloaded easily and we secured her in the corral before turning into bed.

Well, the animals are signaling by bleats, whinnies, meows, crows, cackles, snorts and honks that our presence is requested outside. Everyone have a great week.