the easter tree

the easter bunny left booty for all in our egg basket this morning. even sissy the cat got a little mouse. funny how when there are no human children around, pets make excellent substitutes. especially around the holidays.


this is my poor attempt at an easter tree. when i was little, easter was a big deal for my polish catholic grandparents. my grandmother and i used to make pretty elaborate decorations for the easter tree. we would carefully crack all of the breakfast eggs for weeks ahead of time and save the halves. these we would dye and then put the cutest little feathery chicks in. i wonder where my grandmother got those, they had real feathery stuff all over them. the easter tree was usually a big, blooming forsythia branch. so, here is my version: a pussy willow tree decorated with blown out turkey eggs.

also, my seed order came! i will start some things indoors this week and begin direct sowing others in a couple more weeks. we are still in the 20s at night. april is always a deceiving month and you have to resist the urge to plant. i NEVER put plants out in the garden before mid-may. the tomato seedlings will spend a lot of time in the coldframe before i trust may enough to put them out.

more garden space

last year, i was really impressed that we even got a garden in. this year, we are already expanding by adding a few more plots.

there are two spots adjacent to the big garden that i want to cultivate--one for a pumpkin and squash patch and one for strawberries and raspberries.

sunday, instead of another day helping fox with the orchard clearing, i got to work on garden bed number one. it is a nice plot between the big garden and the turkey run (which is getting moved elsewhere this spring.)

the rocks that make the border to the left all came out of the big garden. so i continued the stone border trend as i pulled them out of the ground. there is no shortage of rocks here and although they make sinking post holes impossible (think one hole per 4 hours of work) they are handy for borders, fire pits, and grave sites. which brings me to my next point.

lady rose and my donkey gina were inseparable. they even shared a stall.

the young pear tree at the top of the new bed marks the grave of my old mare, Lady Rose. i had Rose since i was a little kid and i had her put down last april--a few weeks shy of her 35th birthday. she had been falling/lying down and then would not be able to get up without assistance. finally, the day came when i was not able to get her up and neither could the vet and i put together. so, we put her down right where she lay and my neighbors brought their backhoe around and buried her. i planted the pear tree for her because she was very fond of pears. she preferred them to apples. it is never easy to put such a large animal 'to sleep', but honestly she went so quietly and quickly. it makes me happy to know she had a good life and that i was able to care for her throughout her old age. and now she is part of the farm for good!

making room for the orchard--part one

we put in our order for fruit trees last week and they should arrive in early may. so, we have about four weekends to work on clearing a place to plant them.

we ordered 26 trees but two are cold hardy figs and will go up by the house. the remainder are apple, plum, pear, and sweet cherry. oh, and i did get two cold hardy apricots as well. can you tell i have aspirations for jam and preserve making?

last year we planted about a dozen dwarf fruit trees around the perimeter of the backyard (and three sour cherries in an area that the sheep helped clear). there are no trees around the house--no permanent landscaping whatsoever actually--so we thought we would use edible landscaping to spruce things up a bit. of course, it will be years before the trees grow tall and look pretty but i am content with the wait knowing it will be lovely to have fruit trees right in the backyard.

today was the first day we busted out our brand new chipper shredder and chainsaw. we made these large purchases as our christmas gifts and have been anxiously awaiting the time when we would put them to use.














so, here is the back field before we started.....















a couple hours into it......















and at quitting time....














the pictures don't really show it but you can now actually see the stone wall that borders our entire property. not bad for one day of work by two people (married people at that!).

creative financing

we just found out that the parcel and house that abuts (well, is right in the middle of our parcel) is going up for sale. sometime, long ago, a brother built his sister a house on his land and then the two deeds were split in subsequent generations.

we are just dying---wouldn't it be wonderful to get the whole parcel back together? wouldn't it be great to have use of the two outbuildings? wouldn't it be wonderful to now own water and power out near the fruit trees and sheep? wouldn't it be cool to rent the little house to someone interested in farming?

but then the reality of not having the finances hits. i am scrambling. there must be a way!

has anyone out there ever investigated a loan from a farm credit agency or the Farm Service Agency? i'm about to try...

from spring thaw to winter wonderland...

wow. i woke up this morning to this. clover seemed just as surprised wondering where all her sticks from yesterday went. the forecast is warm so it won't last. but it is beautiful.

back to work

this was the first official weekend that we went back to work on three dog farm. not that the daily chores aren't work, it is just that during the winter all the 'projects' come to a halt and then come to life again when everything thaws out.

so, the first thing on my list for spring projects was to get ready for freyja to lamb. first, we had to put a gate on the sheep shack so freyja and lamb can be separated from the boys if necessary and i have a handy catch pen for spring shearing, vaccinating, etc. (for instance, today i was finally able to catch snorri and get that halter off of him).

i set up their real water tub and filled it. i hope i am not cursing myself when i say no more carrying buckets of warm water 2x day. at this point, we should be safe from the tub freezing solid. the sheep did really well over the winter and i REALLY hope there is a lamb in there (freyja is pictured top looking pregnant (i think!) and below the trio: freyja, pattur (ram), and snorri (freyja's wethered twin).

i collect the little german (schleich) animal figures that they sell at our farmer's co-op. last week when i went to buy the sheep gate, i noticed they had little white lambs so i bought two to go with the ewe that sits on my kitchen window sill. i thought of it as well wishing for twin lambs. freyja is a twin and so is pattur, so the genetics are in my favor.

i also placed an order for some sheep supplies. i ordered a lamb feeding tube, milk replacer, a bolus of probiotic colostrum replacer, some nipples, and iodine for the umbilicus. i'm sure i will not need any of the lamb feeding supplies, but i know i'll feel better if i am prepared for the worst case scenario. i also ordered this book. i feel pretty confident about my knowledge of lambing but it sounds like a good book just the same. i attended a women's lambing week a few years back at the heifer project and i really learned a lot and had hands on experience assisting ewes, bottle feeding lambs, dipping navels, and tagging ears.

tonight we finalize our fruit tree and seed orders. time to start building the coldframes.

chicken pot pie

i am from pennsylvania originally, and that means i love me some chicken pot pie. i decided i need to find something (beyond chicken soup) to do with all of the cockerels that end up in my freezer from time to time.

the small farmer's journal

featured chicken recipes in the winter edition. this included two pot pie recipes so i gave it a try with some chicken breast from a local farm. next time i will it with one of our whole birds.

it required making a rue, which my polish grandmother had taught me to do when i was 11 to make her famous kapusti (sauerkraut) soup.

it came out pretty good, a little too salty this time, but pretty much like i remember it from pennsylvania dutch country.

dairy goats

i've been thinking a lot recently about goat dairying. there is a natural food store near where i go to school and they sell a lot of local (new england) and imported dairy products. i always try out anything new that comes from sheep or goats. last week, i bought some goat butter that was imported from canada. i was instantly attracted to the label--i love the detail of her name on her collar. it was really tasty and it made me think that i would definitely make goat butter with my goat's milk. i love butter and cook with it constantly, so this might be a good way to utilize milk that we don't drink fresh. of course there is cheese, but i have yet to take a cheesemaking class and want to do that before i dive in to that endeavor.

i have a nigerian dwarf goat named daisy (above) but i had zero luck getting her bred this winter. i was able to detect her heats easily enough, but unfortunately every time she came into heat was the worst possible day ever and i was not able to put her in the volvo and get her to the buck which is 1hr away.

i've been reading a lot about goat dairying and now i am beginning to consider getting a large breed dairy goat like the nubian shown above. i am going to finish my master's this summer and this should free up a lot of my time. perhaps i can find a proven doe with a kid on her side at the end of the summer--what a cool graduation present!

a good weekend

i had a good weekend.

fox came home from europe with lots of belated valentine's chocolate for me.

i wasn't sweating it b/c i had already gotten him a really cute bonsai tree.

but, mostly i was happy thinking about spring and all the plans for three dog farm. i have noticed recently that when i go up to feed the sheep at 5:30pm, there is still some daylight left.

so we are over the hump and spring is around the corner. time to start planning: build cold frames, order fruit trees, order seeds, and keep tabs on freyja who should be giving us an april lamb. i have also been thinking a lot about goat dairying which i will do a separate blog about later...

three dog clover

we decided to name our new puppy clover. she is growing so fast.












parsnip is also growing up as well. here she is in her winter coat! i have hopes of her being as tall as her mother which is about 12.2 hands. a great size for driving, but also large enough for me to be able to train her under saddle for kids. i am small enough to ride the ponies so if she is a sturdy 12.2, i may be able to get away with riding her.



my haflinger pony, louise, is only about 14 hands and she is plenty of horse for me. i have not ridden her all winter and as you can see, her mane and forelock need some attention.

three is a magic number

my dad had this cool metal sign made for our driveway. it features the original 'three' dogs from this photo.

it took awhile before i could even think about getting another puppy. but, i knew when i was ready we would adopt another coonhound like slick. in december, we heard of a litter of coonhound puppies that were born in a pennsylvania shelter. we decided to adopt one and fox just picked her up today. we are still working on a name. any suggestions?

up to date

so here is a succinct version of what transpired on three dog farm since last year...

in april, we got mail order chicks from Murray McMurray Hatchery:

it always freaks people out that the chicks come in the mail. but, it is really okay. right before a chick hatches, it sucks the entire yolk in through its umbilicus and then doesn't eat or drink for at least 48hrs after it hatches. so, they are packed as soon as they hatch and are shipped overnight. the red blob in the left side of the box is a small sponge soaked with a vaccination against a particular strain of salmonella that infects poultry. that's lolly's nose on the right.

a few turkey hens hatched poults and we raised them for thanksgiving. here are three of them at a month old:



fox excavated a ton of trash and metal (see pile in foreground) from the site of the demolished barn so that we could have a garden. this was the part of the property that was in the worst shape when we bought it and i never imagined we would have a garden there in our first year:



but we ended up having a rather large garden and with all the manure and topsoil we added back things really grew well:


we had a lot of large pumpkins which i ended up feeding to the chickens and they went crazy for them:

in may we added three nigerian dwarf goats to help eat all the weeds and brush:




in august, we got parsnip. she was four months old and newly weaned from her mama when we got her. more on her later...

in september, much sooner than i had ever dreamed possible, i got my starter flock of icelandic sheep:

a long hard silence

I know it has been a very long time but I am finally back. Shortly after my last post, which featured Slick, he passed away suddenly. He had hemangiosarcoma, a cancer that is known as the silent killer in dogs. And it was just that. At 11 years old, Slick had been in tip top health. He spent his last morning doing chores with me and laying in the sun. In the evening after dinner he came stumbling into my room and jumped up onto my lap and collapsed. I new instantly he was dying. I held him in the back seat of the car while fox drove us to Tufts. By the time we got there his abdomen was full of blood and the diagnosis was made pretty quickly. We decided to put him to sleep right then. He was a such good dog and had a good life up until then. We did not want to send him to surgery to stop the bleeding of a tumor that would only kill him a few weeks later. I'm so thankful that we were with him when he died.

I couldn't bare to blog about it or even look at the pictures on my last entry. So, this is why I fell of the blogging wagon. Once I was ready, life had just gotten so hectic that it was hard to get in the habit of posting again.

But fear not, Three Dog Farm has prospered in my time away and there are many many things to report. I will do my best to bring you all up to speed and to keep you apprised of my farming revolution.

So, this entry is for Slick Fox, coonhound extraordinaire.

free-range coonhound

My dog Slick joined the young roosters for breadcrumbs on the lawn. Neither party seemed too concerned.

daylight hours

The hens are really ramping up their egg production now that the days are longer. Today, there was a huge egg! Someone was working hard on this one for sure. Usually an egg this large has twin yolks.

















Here are the girls getting some sun. The white hen in the upper right corner is Big Mama and she is 5 years old! I will dedicate a blog entry to her soon. She is quite a chicken.




Also, the turkey hens have begun to lay! The center egg is from a maiden Red Bourben Hen. It is only the size of the chicken eggs it is flanked by because the hens are so young and this is their first lay.

But, soon enough the eggs will reach full size and be quite large. We end up eating the first month of eggs because fertility is very low. Once the eggs are a decent size and the turkeys are mating successfully, I will hatch some in an incubator. Some I will sell as fertile eggs to other folks who want to hatch their own. And then finally in late May I will let the hens go 'broody' and hatch their own clutch. Last year, my hen Gretta hatched a clutch of Red Bourben poults all by herself. She let Pearl, our semi-blind turkey, help her raise them.

This is my Red Bourben tom 'Erik the Red' trying to impress one of his ladies.

books, books, books

I was tagged by bugheart but sadly I don't have 5 people to tag. So, I will answer anyway because I do love and collect books.

My 5 favorite books:
I have so many favorites but here are five

1) Jane Eyre by Ms. Bronte
2) Wuthering Heights by the other Ms. Bronte
3) The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham
4) The Encylopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery(she even tells you how to deliver a baby in a pinch! a human baby! good stuff.)
5) Storey's Basic Country Skills

The last book I bought was on ebay:

The Social Destiny of Man by Charles Fourier

Last three books I read:

1) Storey's Guide to Raising Dairy Goats (yesterday on the train)
2) The Mushroom Cultivator by Stamets and Chilton
3) The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler (still reading)

Five books that have been meaningful to me:

1) Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
2) Freakonomics--especially the chapter on baby naming in the US
3) Stolen Harvest by Dr. Vandana Shiva (all of her books in fact)
4) Ten Acres Enough by Edmund Morris
5) Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by John Lee Anderson

Books I am dying to read:

1) Against the Grain by Richard Manning
2) Bait and Switch by Barbara Ehrenreich
3) The Backyard Orchardist by Stella Otto

never a dull moment...

On wednesday morning, fox came in from walking the dogs in the back field and said to get out the first aid stuff b/c Fort had cut himself. He seemed a little frantic, so I stepped out back to see the damage and nearly fainted. Fort had torn the entire front of his paw open! I saw tendons, bones, the whole deal. Luckily, I am super equipped for a variety of animal emergencies and was able to quickly assess the damage, flush it out, wrap it, and off we went to Tufts.

The good news was that none of the tendons had been lacerated and they were able to put everthing back together. The bad news was that Fort would have to go under anesthesia (a little scary for an old dog). But, all turned out well and Fort is home recovering as we speak. He is not amused by the collar he has to wear to prevent him from chewing at his stitches. In two weeks, I will remove the sutures and Fort will be back to normal. Here he is still groggy and not happy about his Elizabethan collar...













and here is his Frankenstein-looking paw! Poor Fort!!



In other news, the mushrooms did indeed flip open and they were incredible. We had them with some kale and garlic and they were literally the best mushrooms I've ever had! So, fox and I have officially put building a mushroom house on our list!

I received the wonderful, hand-made tea cosy from bugheart! It is my first official piece of donkey paraphernalia and it was bugheart's first tea cosy! I love it, truly, not only b/c it has a donkey on it but because it is made from recycled, felted wool sweaters AND it really works!! How I've gotten this far in my tea drinking life with out a tea cozy is beyond me!

Thanks bugheart! You rock!

creme brule

I need to branch out in my usage for all these eggs. So, for valentines day fox and I made creme brule. I love creme brule so if I can master it with my own eggs all the better. It is really funny how yellow everything is that I make with my eggs. Many commercial egg producers do not feed actual grains to their birds--or any plant materials for that matter. Commerical layer mash is mainly animal bi-products. When you feed chickens actual corn, soy, grass, tomatoes, squash, etc. some of the carotenes and other plant pigments come out in their yolks. I am talking bright orange yolks! Also, as eggs sit on the shelf they lose their color. Fresh eggs have brighter yolks in general.





And, the mushrooms keep coming. We ate a bunch for dinner last night and now we are going to let these big ones keep going. In a day or two they will invert like an umbrella in the wind, and this is supposed to be the most nutritious stage for eating. Stay tuned...

snowed in

What a storm! Eighteen inches and still falling. And freezing out there!!





Fox and I decided to stay in and make pasta. Lolly helped, too.