Spring Break...
And the gardening season has started in earnest. Mother Nature is apologizing for that long, cold winter with one of those all-at-once, exuberant springs. It feels like if I blink I miss something blooming or leafing or out. Almost all the trees have tiny, bright green leaves now, and in the garden the lettuce and spinach has pretty much just jumped out of the ground this week. We even ate a little of it and some radishes and arugula this week. Tastes like spring. I am so convinced it is really and truly spring that I went ahead and put out the tomatoes and peppers and planted the corn and beans.
But I almost forgot the biggest news...the chicks arrived Monday. Twenty six little peeps. Layers in waiting. I picked them up at the Post Office Monday morning. They spent the first few days inside in a box, but today I put them out in the brooder in the garden. They seemed happy with the arrangement, though it is hard to regulate the temperature. On warm sunny days like today it can get too hot in there and I spent a lot of today trying out various propping and shading arrangements.

Ah, spring...we hope. After roaring in with snow and frigid temps we are finally seeing the softer side of March. Of course, early spring is nothing if not treacherous, promising so much one day and then retreating back into winter again.
But today felt like spring. Yes, it was cloudy and rainy, but it wasn't cold. A few days ago I planted squares of lettuce, spinach, chard and carrots in the raised beds. This afternoon I put in a few new strawberries (tristar, everbearing) and some Martha Washington asparagus. I have to say the asparagus crowns really didn't look alive and I will surprised if they sprout, but I have been surprised by dormant plants before. I bought the asparagus and strawberries in a box along with onion sets and two types of potatoes at Lowes. It was a good deal, if they make it. I also started some peppers and basil indoors today. I would have started tomatoes but could only find seed for so such common varieties that i will do just as well to buy the plants in another month or so.
While I planted I heard peepers and other frogs down at the spring. A good sign. The crocus are all blooming wonderfully, all colors now and the buds on the daffodils are fat and ready to burst open if the mild weather continues. As I worked and walked around this afternoon I got that familiar "so much to do" feeling that always hits me in the spring. I know I need to prioritize because there is simply no getting it all done.

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.

Enter His gates with thanksgiving,

And His courts with praise.

Give thanks to Him; Bless His name.

For the Lord is good;

His lovingkindness is everlasting,

And His faithfulness to all generations.

Psalm 11:4-5

I live in a community called "Ebenezer". It's a word from the Old Testament that means something like "thus far the Lord has helped me". I have always liked the name because it reminds me to look back and recall God's faithfulness not only to me but to previous generations of His people.  Because God's character is consistent, the fact that he has helped me "thus far"  is guarantee that He will continue to do so.  Today, on the day before Thanksgiving, I am considering how His everlasting faithfulness should elicit my thankfulness.

Time travel with me a minute back to the first Thanksgiving.  Funny grade school plays and beautiful artwork aside, the reality of that first Thanksgiving was somber.  The pilgrims arrived in Plymouth in September of 1620 after a 65 day voyage.  Many were already sick and weakened from the voyage.  They were too late to build adequate housing before facing the harsh New England winter.  If you were one of those fifty or so left standing at the end of your first year in the New Land,  then your thanksgiving, though no doubt sincere,  would have been mingled with tears.  You would have lost half of your companions to death, very likely you would have lost a spouse or a child. 

The harvest that first autumn had been exceptional.  They would have food the next winter and they had been blessed with friends (Sqauanto and his people) to help them.*  There was cause to celebrate and reasons to be thankful, but it was thankfulness in the midst of extreme hardship.  Winter was still going to be cold.  Their homeland and civilization was still across the ocean, the bodies of cherished loved ones were still going to lie in the crude cemetary.  In fact history does tell us that these brave Pilgrims continued to face hardship.  The harvests the next two years were much less bountiful. The second Thanksgiving Day, two years later, in fact, came on the heels of a drought-stricken spring and summer when little grew.

My observation is this: I think I tend to reserve my best gratitude to God for those times when I feel like I am  "out of the woods".   That shouldn't be.  I should take a lesson from the Pilgrims and be truly, heartily thankful for God's provision every step of the way.   I want to practice a thankfulness that trusts God's goodness  and faithfulness even in the midst of difficulties.  I also want to remember to be truly  thankful for the "basics" of life that I too often take for granted.  The pilgrims celebrated because they had food, shelter and friends.  I certainly am blessed with an abundance.

*The story of how God brought Squanto, an English speaking Native American, back to the piligrims at their greatest hour of need is a masterpiece of God's goodness and providence and well worth reading.  Click the link below and scroll down to "The Story of Squanto" for a quick synopsis from Chuck Colson.

http://www.colsoncenter.org/the-center/columns/colson-files

Saturday I sat on my front porch a little while and got the faintest touch of a suntan. That's not very remarkable unless you read the date of this posting and realize that last Saturday was November 7, and I don't live in Florida. We have had killing frost already, gardens have been put to bed, most leaves have fallen, and we're beginning to think about the holidays. Nevertheless, it turned beautifully warm and sunny Saturday so after a walk I took off my jacket, rolled up my pants' legs and cat napped in the sun on the front porch. Wonderful! And probably more so because it was such an unexpected treat.

We call those warm November days that sometimes, but not always, follow the first cold snap, Indian Summer. It's a reprieve from the cold and a second chance to get those things done outside that have been neglected: Cut back the raspberries, give the field one more mowing or stack in some more firewood, things we knew needed doing but, well, you know...

Indian Summer reminds me of one my favorite verses in the Bible, Jonah 3:1 : "And the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time" The short, quirky little book of Jonah is, to my mind, one of the funniest, saddest and most "real" stories in the Old Testament. It's the story of a man called by God to preach repentance to Nineveh, and he runs away--not because he doubts God will save them, but because he believes He will. (There's some history there between Jonah and those Ninevites) So anyway, Jonah runs into a boat which runs into storm, and finally he gets fed to a fish. Jonah prays while he is in the fish--who wouldn't-- and so the Lord has the fish upchuck Jonah on the beach (I am not making this up). And then comes my verse, and every time I read it I can almost hear God just let out a big sigh. "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time saying.." and He repeats His instructions. This time Jonah goes, he preaches, they repent, revival breaks out.

So what is it that I love about this verse exactly? Just this. Jonah blew it big time. Not some "small" little "I forgot" kind of offence. I mean deliberate, in your face, running the opposite way disobedience. He literally ran away from God, or he tried to. And rather than just washing His hands of Jonah and going to get another prophet to preach to Nineveh, God chases down Jonah so He can give him another chance to obey. That is so God! And Jonah, well, unfortunately, he is so ME sometimes.

Indian Summer. A second chance to do the things you should have done before. I'm so glad my God is a God of second chances.

For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.  For indeed, in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven...and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the  Lord...we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and at home with the Lord.  Therefore, also we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him.
2 Corinthians 5:1-9

Yesterday I went with my daughter to a cemetary just down the road from our home.  She was doing research for a project.  I went to keep her company, do some walking, and because, well, I kind of like cemetaries.  (My daughter says that's just creepy)   I appreciate the history so accessible in graveyards. With a little imagination it can be like reading a story in stone.  This man fought in Korea.  What would it have been like for a sheltered young man from these mountains to find himself  fighting a war on the other side of the world?  This family lost two little boys within a year of each other.  Diptheria? Influenza?   How did this mother survive such loss?  Did she lean on the Lord?  Did she grow bitter?    And how did this mountain boy here find himself serving in the Merchant Marines during WWII ?  Did he hear the call of the sea way up here in these hills?    Here is one where an elderly husband has preceded his wife. Her place beside him is empty still.  Is she lonely?  Ready to go on?  Does she come here to sit beside his grave?  I can only guess.
I look up and think about the fact that these same folks left other monuments to their lives as well.  Roads, creeks and farms in our valley still carry the same names etched here in the headstones.  And their descendants are still here too.  Legacy. 

My mind steps easily from speculation about their lives to introspection about my own.  I'm 46, an age that we very optimistically refer to as "midlife"   I have most likely already lived longer than I will continue live.  The invincibility of youth  is gone.  In the back of my mind I have a settled realization that it won't be so very long before I "join" this congregation on the hill.  The thought doesn't frighten or sadden me.  Not at all.  I know where I am going next, and I know it will be much better, much lovelier than even this beautiful high hill.

 No, my question is not at all about where I am going.  It's about what I will leave behind.  What will my legacy be?  I know what I want it to be.  When I die, I want to leave behind me people who know God more deeply and understand life better because they knew me.  I want to have loved unselfishly.  I want to have imparted wisdom.  I want to have served well.  I want to leave behind something much more than a headstone.   I want to leave a lifesong,  the legacy of a life lived to the glory of God.

What if I lived every day with that ambition in mind? 

Yeah, I do kind of like cemeteries.

When we first moved to our farm six years ago, one of my favorite things to do was to walk the property lines.  Though our acreage is not large, it is still more land than I have owned before.  As I walked up and down hills, crossed pasture and spring, I was exhilerated with the thought that it belonged to me.  I chose the name "Pleasant Places" for my farm.  Taken from Psalm 16:6, the name seemed to capture the gratitude I felt  at being allowed to live on and care for this piece of land.  "The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me."

Of course, those verses are really speaking of someone infintely more valuable than even the choicest piece of property.  Psalm 16:5 tells me that "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup."  If I can get excited about possessing a few acres of trees and rocks, how much more glorious to realize that I possess the Lord himself as my inheritance.  Everything I need lies within my own "property lines": His love, grace, forgiveness, hope, strength, direction, wisdom...everything.  My inheritance is sufficient because He is sufficient.

While, one day in one way or another, I will leave Pleasant Places Farm, I will never have to leave behind all that I possess in Jesus Christ.  That is my permament portion, my heritage. My inheritance is not dependent on lines on a map, not tied to earth or time.  Whether I live on a farm or in a mansion or in a box under a bridge, as a believer, I dwell in pleasant places because I dwell with Christ.

My home is Pleasant Places , literally at the moment, but figuratively no matter where the journey ends up taking me.  A little farther down in Psalm 16 David writes, "Thou wilt make known to me the path of life; In thy presence is fullness of joy; in Thy right hand are pleasures forever."   Pleasures forever.  What a promise!

I am not at all sure how I have completely skipped over most of the 2007 growing season and right on into the beginning of the 2008 season, but I have. I offer by way of excuse the devastating drought last summer and also some personal issues that required a lot of my attention and energy. The drought meant that the growing season was cut short even in my little square foot garden. We had lettuce in the spring but come the summer everything limped along rather miserably until I finally just gave up and went to the beach! Also it became necessary this past summer for us to disperse our herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats. They are greatly missed, but two do live right next door and come to visit...usually around feeding time. Abby the Arab X is still with us, but Ginger Pony, who turned out to be a BLM mustang, has completed her early training, under Elizabeth's skilled hand, and gone on to her next home with lots of kids and the attention. We do still have our flock of multi-colored heritage breed chickens which are providing plenty of free range eggs for us and our customers. Spring plans are to enlarge the square foot garden and build some better raised beds for it and of course there is the ever-constant cleaning of outbuildings, maintaining fences and the like. We do now at least have things on the farm to a point where no large projects loom and that is somewhat of a relief.

School's Out! As much as I do love my job feeding the students and staff at The Learning Center!, I will admit that the prospect of two months of summer vacation stretching out ahead of me has me feeling a bit euphoric. Maybe I will even do a better job of keeping my blog up to date.

Well, I did finally just give up on all attempts at gardening in the bottom land where the animals are. They win. They can have it. My tiny square foot garden shows much promise, though. Even with this little patch we are inundated with lettuce. Not a bad problem to have in my opinion. The gourmet type green beans and the squash are both coming along well and the potted tomatoes seem happy. And as my husband pointed out recently, even though this a much smaller garden, in the end we may actually get more out of it since we aren't "sharing" this one.

We have been eating the lettuce and despite the hot weather and little rain, it wasn't at all bitter. Of course, I am watering it (but since it is so compact, it takes much less water) and we also have it covered with a layer of Agrobon, which I think is really helping it. I stretch the cover out over the green beans to keep bugs off and they seem to like it too.

Plans are to extend the garden a bit this summer. I will also have to find a good place to replant some asparagus next spring since the goats destroyed that as well. But we live and learn. One thing I have come to realize is that a farm is never stagnant, never "finished". Circumstances change, the mix of animals changes or we just figure out a better way to do things. It is always a work in progress, but that may well be one of its attractions to me.

The next big event at Pleasant Places should be the arrival of the goat kids. Stay tuned...

Welcome to Pleasant Places Farm Agricultural Experiment Station

Warning: this post is really only appropriate for die-hard gardeners. Everyone else will be bored to tears.

I have long been fascinated with farming/gardening "systems". What you see in the photo is not really just a bunch of junk. It is my latest experiment...and it seems to be working for a change. The system in place here is not original to me. It's a combination of square foot gardening (Mel Bartholomew) and chicken "tractoring" (Andy Lee). For the uninitiated, the "tractor" is a bottomless, moveable chicken pen.

My tractor is actually my brooder. You will see the cord to the heat lamp going in and note that the sides are clear pvc roofing panels. This would prove way too warm for a grown hen, but with ventilation of the top on hot days, it makes a great brooder. Chicken tractors are usually a good bit larger, made to house layers or broilers. Our brooder/tractor is about four foot square and three foot deep. If I had to do it over again, it would be less deep as it is a little hard to reach over in there and hold up the lid at the same time.

This is our second batch of chicks this season. With the first batch, they were brooded over the bed that you now see draped with the agrobon row cover. They were bedded on straw over which they deposited their manure during the brooding weeks. After they were moved on to the barn, the tractor was moved over four feet, I put down about a two-inch layer of homemade compost over the straw/manure mat they'd created and sowed lettuce. Normally you should not sow vegetables into raw manure, but the finished compost is a buffer so that vegies don't contact the manure and the straw adds enough carbon to the manure's high nitrogen that plants shouldn't be burned. Also, it should break down quickly and provide food for the growing plants. It seems to be working. The lettuce, though I planted a bit late, has sprouted and is growing. It does require daily watering and I think maybe an improvement would be to install a soaker hose underdeath the straw/manure layer before the brooder tractor is even put on. (Of course, the hose wouldn't be turned on until the seeds were sown.) The 4x4 bed is covered with Agrobon for two reasons: We have a cat who would probably try to use the bed as a litter box and that side of our house is getting very hot on these sunny days and I was trying to provide a little shade and slow down moisture loss just a bit. I may have to switch to some shade cloth soon.

Soon we will move the second batch out of the brooder, and I will repeat the process with bed #2. I can continue to make more beds, which given the destruction being done to my regular garden (see previous post) might be wise, or I can leave it at two beds and put the brooder back on bed #1 next year. By that time, the old straw/manure mix will have broken down and I will put down another layer of bedding on top of it. In this manner, the soil will built layer by layer. At least that's the plan.

If we were keeping score, the animals would be winning. They have seriously damaged all previous gardening attempts and appear to be outsmarting us humans yet again. After having woodchucks eat the corn, a deer eat the asparagus and rabbits eat the green beans last year, we had decided that the garden area definitely would require a fence. Instead of building a new deer-proof fence, we decided that we would section off a part of the goat yard, which already has a goat-tested fence and grow the most vulnerable garden crops inside there.

Because we weren't sure it was going to work, we constructed our divider fence out of materials on hand: chicken wire, more metal fence posts, and whatever heavy objects we could find to anchor down the bottom--landscape timbers, heavy boards, blocks, sections of trees. Let me just confess that nothing says "hillbilly" quite like a cobbled together fence. It's a thang of beauty. But my feeling is that if I can grow a good garden...correction, I always GROW a good garden; what I want is to actually harvest and eat it, and if I can do that, I don't care that the fence looks like a Jeff Foxworthy joke. We can build a better fence later...if this indeed works.

So far the chickens found a way under it and scratched up all the early crops. We fixed that. Then for a few days I found an occasional juvenile goat in there. We fixed that. I think. Then I planted the main season stuff, and waited. Nothing. Three weeks. I have never had seeds take this long to come up before so I thought I'd been robbed again, but just as I was giving up hope, a few seedlings began to appear. Corn. Squash. Cutting Flowers. Ahh, at last. The beans were a loss. I think my seed was old, but encouraged to actually have something coming up, I replanted beans and weeded and watered.

And today Doa, the local deer, got in the garden. She didn't eat any of the plants. It was just that she could have , and she was showing me that she could. Well, anyhow, we'll see. I'm thankful for farmer's markets and even grocery stores. Something tells me I will be needing them this year.

On a happier note, it is May! The woods here are full of trillium, bellwort, and may apples. On my ramblings I see the occasional sweet betsy, toadshade and solomon's seal. The pastures have a pretty sprinkling of wood sorrel and indian strawberry. I saw my first indigo buntings of the season this week, those tiny little impossibly blue birds. They are very shy and flit into the feeders and out so quickly it always makes me wonder if I really saw it. And the hummers have returned in force. Unlike the buntings, they are very bold and very agressive. My husband says they have a Napoleon complex. Maybe, but they are mesmerizing and we sit on the porch and watch them every evening.

Tradition says we have one more "winter" to get through, blackberry. The berries are blooming now, but I don't think we'll have any very cold weather. Actually a little break from the heat would be nice, especially if we could get some rain in the bargain.

Part of living on farm is learning to accept the natural cycle of life and death. The life part is easy to embrace. It's little chicks hatching and lettuce sprouting up out of barely warmed earth. It's goat kids jumping and the mountains greening as we slide through another beautiful spring here at Pleasant Places.
But then there is death. And to live with the natural world with any kind of integrity, we must accept it as well. Yesterday, we had another hard lesson in this reality.
Molly, our dark bay rescue filly, came to us already bred, though we didn't know it until we had our vet check her. We knew it was a risky pregnancy. She was smallish, too young, and we didn't know what size horse she was bred to. Since we found out she was pregnant two months ago, we have tried to balance her feed to nourish her enough, but not enough to cause the foal to get too large. We tried to keep her off the fescue, which causes problems for pregnant mares. We bought expensive hay and supplements that other folks recommended. And despite our better judgement, we began to get excited about this foal.
Meanwhile, Molly won our hearts with her gentle willingness. She tried everything we asked her to do in her groundwork training. And every once in awhile, though she was still underweight everywhere but in her belly, we would catch a glimpse of her potential. And we chose to believe that one day she would be a beauty.
But it was not to be. Molly went into labor yesterday and could not expel the large foal. The Bible calls death the last enemy. Our vet and my daughter and I battled that enemy for hours trying everything possible to help her deliver, but in the end, sitting exhausted in the mud and manure and blood, we had to make the decision to put her down and end her pain. She was, as my vet said, "a valiant little horse" and she tried hard to give us that foal, just as she always tried to give us what we asked of her, but this time she just couldn't.

So this post is a tribute to Molly and her foal. Molly, we will miss you.

Happy Trails.

We just found out yesterday that Molly, one of the rescues, is due to foal in a couple of months. While this is somewhat exciting, it is really not a good thing. Molly is too young and small for a pregnancy to be safe for her, and we have no idea how big the stallion was. All we can do is care for her properly and hope for the best. You can see in the photo that she is still underweight. At this point, though, the vet says don't overfeed her because we want the foal to stay as small as possible. It is possible that Ginger was bred too, but if so, she is not as far along as Molly.

Happy New Year!

Can't believe it is already 2007.
We've had a very mild winter so far and so we have been able to keep working on the barn which is basically finished. And it's a good thing because we now have four horses living here. Abby, our daughter's horse, Rupert, boarded here by a friend from work, and two rescues, Molly and Ginger. Molly and Ginger came right after Thanksgiving. Both are very young and untrained, but they seem to be responding well to all the food and attention. Needless to say, with four horses and a lot of goats, we are tearing through the hay.

Things are beginning to slow down here at Pleasant Places. The vegetable garden is finished and has been mowed down. Most of this year's crop of goat kids have moved on to their new places of residence. Still, there are always the daily chores to do: feeding, watering, gathering eggs.
As the grass dies out, we will begin to supplement all our grazing animals with hay. It looks like our grass is going to hold out into November this year. We are happy about this as it means that our pastures are much improved. The first couple of years we lived on the place, the grass was all gone by late August and we had to begin supplementing with hay. That can get expensive.
As the cold weather approaches, the animals will also choose to spend more time in shelters, and that means more cleaning out of stalls and sheds. Work on the barn continues and we really need to get busy splitting the wood that has been cut, but in general, fall is a very pleasant time on the farm when there aren't so many pressing needs.