More Snow...
Fell on Pleasant Places this weekend. It started Friday afternoon--huge, wet flakes that covered quickly and hung on every twig. It was beautiful. I have not seen it snow like that in many years. We got about four inches before it turned into a wintry mix that night, into rain most of Saturday and then back to flurries yesterday around dusk.
We still have some snow around and it is colder today, but the sun just popped through. When I stand in it I can feel that it's intensity is gaining ground as the days grow longer. And there are other harbingers of spring. The chickens have begun to give us a few eggs every day and seem to be generally more active. Bulb foliage is peaking up through the snow and wet mulch in my flower beds and the birds are much more vocal and active as well. We are seeing more possums out and about--unfortunately we know this because of their unsuccessful attempts at road crossing. Soon we may see ( or smell) skunks, later peepers, finally hoot owls. That is the rhythm of the progressing season. But, in the meantime, tomorrow is only February 1. We will have more raw, cold weather. Even in the midst of spring, winter will attempt several last stands. Eventually, spring and warmth will win. I look forward to that season, but right now I plan to enjoy this one with a cup of hot coffee beside a fire.

Barn Cleaning

Yesterday was clear and much warmer than it has been. It is January but there was something spring-like in the day. I wanted to be outside, so after work I ditched the gym and decided I would get my excercise by cleaning out the barn and hen house.
It was about 3:00 and some of the sheltered hollow where the barn lies was already in shade. A few of the chickens had gone to roost already, but they came down when I filled the feeders and scattered the salad scraps I had for them.
Over the last couple of months, my chickens have largely abandoned the hen house in favor of the barn rafters. Maybe they feel safer there. I don't know. But what I do know is that it makes an awful mess on things below and needs to be stopped. I plotted how to achieve that while I went about my work.
First the barn. I raked up droppings under their favorite roosting spots and shoveled it out onto the pasture. That part was fairly easy. Then I decided I would tackle the hen house. Our hen house has a trap door in the back that allows me to shovel out the droppings underneath their roost. It has, however, a design flaw that necessitates the removing of a board in order to lift the door to a workable height. I propped my rake and shovel against the house and went in search for the right tool for the right job--a hammer.
The right tool was no where around the barn, however. I knew there was one at the house, but that was several hundred feet up a steep hill that I had no intention of climbing twice so I decided I would make do with whatever presented itself. That happened to be a large set of channel locks. As it turns out, you can remove nails with those, but I can't recommend it. Anyway, I removed the board, raised the hatch and shoveled out the dry droppings.
Next the inside of the coop had to be tackled. I raked it out and decided to put in fresh bedding.
We had two bags of pine shavings that had been in the barn for months unopened. Now I distinctly remember that before I could pick up said bales and move them around, but when I went to pick the first one up, it was really more than I could do so I went to fetch the wheelbarrow. Even getting the bale up on the wheelbarrow was a challenge. Either the shavings had gotten damp and heavy or I had lost a considerable amount of muscle over the last few months. I hope it was the first. I did manage to wrangle the bale onto the wheelbarrow and started dragging it toward the coop. Notice I said dragging. At first I thought the wheelbarrow tire was just low, but no, it was totally flat and coming off the rim. So, the wheelbarrow was better than nothing, but not much. It took both bales to rebed the coop so I had to repeat the process, but it was finally done. I lowered the hatch and beat the board back in place with the wrong tool, but the job was finished and fairly well too.
The chickens, seeing that the show was over, hopped up to their roosts in the rafters, continuing to shun the now newly cleaned hen house. Oh well.

Today started out dreary with a few more snow flurries. This evening is clear, and I do think it got above freezing today finally, but it is still cold. BUT something has changed...this week the days got long enough to trigger a few of our hardy hens to start laying. Egg laying is very day-length sensitive and though it still feels like winter to me, the hens would like everyone to know that the shortest days of winter are now over and spring can't be all that far behind. I am getting only 3-4 a day right now. At least two of the eggs everyday have been blue/green so that means some of the arcaunas are laying. In fact they may all be arcauna eggs as I have noticed that they seem to start earlier (but they also quit sooner). I had eggs for breakfast this morning. Can't tell you how much better they are than any store egg we have found. Yum.

"But when the fulness of time came, God sent forth His Son..." Galatians 4:4

Since Christmas I have been mulling over this phrase, "the fulness of time".   This verse is oft quoted in Christmas sermons and cards, so I guess it is no surprise that it was on my mind.  I was thinking about how God had His redemptive plan orchestrated from the beginning.  I can imagine the heavenly host anxiously awaiting the day of Christ's birth the way children wait for Christmas.  "How many more days is it?"  And then, finally, the time was perfect.   Jesus was "born of a woman, under the law" at the precise, preappointed time.  Not too early.  Not a moment too late.  Hmm.

The term "Fulness of time" is used only once, that I can find, in all of the Bible, but the word "fulness"  is used several.  It carries the connotation of completeness, doneness, ripeness.  As a baker of homemade bread, I think of it like this:  when I put my bread in the oven to bake, there is inevitably a precise moment when it is perfectly done.  A minute longer and it is too brown.  A few minutes shy and it is doughy inside.  That illustration helps me think about what "in the fulness of time" means.

Then as we moved on into the new year, naturally "time" was on my mind again.  Another year has passed. Another cycle completed.  We march into a new year headed for ...who knows?  Well, thankfully, God knows.  He has a plan for me that involves same perfect timing that orchestrated the birth of Jesus.  In the fulness of time He will send answers, meet my needs, provide direction. 

My problem is that I am not very patient.  I want to move forward according to my own timing.  God's sense of timing is so different that mine.   Sometimes it's downright scary in its "last minuteness".  Sometimes He totally and completely seems to ignore my real deadlines.  But here is what I need to remember.  He does everything at just the right moment.  In the fulness of time.  I am too quick to forget that.   In my self-centeredness I tend to think it is my agenda, my sense of timing that counts.   How wrong could I be?  I mean, sometimes I don't even bake my bread to the exact "fulness of time" perfection.  Do I really think I can orchestrate the miriad details of  my life?  Lord, save me from my arrogance and help me live 2010 resting in the fact that you are in control and that you will send what I need precisely when I need it.

Snow Tracking

The snow isn't very deep, but it is the powdery kind that sort of squeaks and crunches underfoot. When it snows, I like to look for animal tracks on my way down to the barn. Yesterday I saw that a deer, probably our old friend Doa or her children, had crossed our yard and hill pasture. I saw our dog Lance's tracks as well. His are distinct from other dogs' because they are bigger than most and because you can see where his bushy tail drags the snow a little. This morning I saw that a rabbit had hopped all the way up the road through the pasture. Now why would he do that? Of course there are also many bird tracks and around the barn, chicken tracks.

New Year's Resurrection

January is a time of new beginnings-- despite the fact that the growing cycle to which I am anchored begins not in January but in spring. As I write, the ground is frozen hard and snow covered, but to me the deep winter is an incubation period. A time to plan and dream, a time when growth is unseen, like a baby in the womb or a seed under ground, but no less real and important.

All that to say that I have decided to pick up this blog again and try, once more, to record the happenings and my reflections on Pleasant Places Farm.

A number of factors have kept me away from the blog. During the last couple of years I have needed to take a break from concentrating on the farm. My work at The Learning Center! and family concerns have claimed the bulk of my attention. My daughter's interest in horses, which we wanted to support, meant that our hillside pasture and bottomland were given over to their feeding and excercise needs for awhile. After the first push to fence and build outbuildings, my husband needed a well-deserved rest. It is very difficult to run a farm and work a full time job, though most farmers do it. It is even more difficult to build a farm from scratch in your "free time".

We saw that, with both of us employed off farm and our daughter a full time student, we needed to rethink or farming choices. The dairy goats went first, because as cute as they are and as delicious as the milk was, dairying is a full time endeavor--every day, twice a day. Way too confining for us. Now, with our daughter, about
( I think) to leave the nest, the horses have also moved on. We loved them too, but they are a very needy group on the whole, and we never seemed to be able to give them the hours of attention they deserved.

So in the winnowing out process some things have gone, but others have stayed. We have in the last couple of growing seasons constructed a small raised bed garden that has been very successful. We will continue to expand that as well as add more fruit trees and berries. The chickens have stayed and will stay, being easy care critters who earn their keep.

We are considering some additions to our farm. We have learned that to fit our growing system, our land and our lifestyle, whatever is added needs to be short term, easy care and in some way profitable. Not that they all have to turn a monetary gain, but they must make a positive contribution to the farm system. That means either they or their product can be sold at profit, they add valuable manure to the soil, they eat bugs, scare away predators, they till soil to prepare it for reseeding, they control weeds...you get the picture. No freeloaders. We are thinking of maybe getting some goats in the spring, meat goats this time, for weed control, carrying them to fall and then selling them or having them butchered. I am also considering more chickens and perhaps a couple of turkeys. The chickens would be for eggs and perhaps I may raise a few extra heritage breed pullets for sale. The turkeys would be for own consumption. And, in the back of my mind, there is the idea of a pig. We have so much waste from school that it might be a good idea to get one in Fall and feed it on food scraps until about February or March. Then to the freezer he goes.

So while the snow flies, I have more than enough to do planning the garden and making decisions about livestock.