Fall Work

Every season brings a different list of tasks, and like most other farm jobs they are time sensitive.  Last week was a good one - weather was sunny, dry and warm and the field corn was down to a moisture content that was safe to crib so Andy went at it.  He was able to get the 5 acres of field corn picked and put in the crib in three days without having to deal with either mud or breakdowns.  One for the record books.  ;-)

Our machinery is antiquated but he's comfortable with how it all functions and given our scale of production it suits us just fine.  The metal gravity wagon collects the ears the picker spits into it, then to unload it the trap door at the bottom is rolled up and they flow out - hence 'gravity' box.  Occasionally you have to climb in and kick some cobs out of the upper corners but once a few loads have slid out they all flow much better.



The ears travel up the elevator and tumble into the crib where Andy has lifted out a roof section.  Kernels that come off the ears in transit fall through a grid in the floor of the elevator, collect on a big tarp and we bag them at the end of the day.  Because they are packed so solidly in the bag there is risk of molding.  The corn is dry enough to go in the crib and continue to cure, not dry enough to be contained in a bag.  
We had just ground some corn (last year's) for the sheep so we had no immediate use for this.  Rather than see it go to waste we called a neighbor who raises boa constrictors and he was happy to take it for his livestock needs - the rats he raises for the boas.  You never know who is raising what a few doors away. He showed us a pair of babies a few years ago - gorgeous ones like these.  
Anyway, the corn is picked, stashed and equipment for that put away.  Whew!
Our old apple trees have really outdone themselves this year.  The Pound Sweets are living up to the name.

Any drops with dings or bird pecks go to the rams.  Besides being very large this year the apples have no worms.  Not one.  I'm not complaining, but it's certainly remarkable.  The Wolf River is still laden with a lot of fruit.

Apples without blemishes have been collected in buckets and turned into yummy things for the winter.  I've lost track of how many containers of applesauce I've put in the freezer.  Last Sunday was a marathon of apple handling but I can't say what it was - a good bit of the work will reappear in Christmas baskets.  :-)

I've also been working in the wool shop.   I've been sold out of dyed Cotswold curls for a while and picked a fleece with good curl character and low VM and put some toward a colorway I'm working on and some I dyed solid colors for sale in my booth at the next fiber event - Christmas on the Farm in Phelps, NY.

The curls are nice for needle felting, tail spinning and general embellishment of fiber goods.  
So there was the first week of November.  Onward!

Frosty Morning

We've had some nice weather lately - bright sun all day and clear nights with an amazing show of stars.  I would hate to live somewhere with so much artificial light at night that you can't see stars.  As the earth cools each night the ground is covered with a very heavy frost by morning, making a pretty fuzz of ice crystals on everything.

 

Even mundane brown apple leaves look exotic for a brief time.

 

 

The dry weather has also finally allowed Andy to get serious about picking corn.  He's been chomping at the bit and the slow speed our antiquated equipment works at adds an element of uncertainty to the task - will the weather stay dry long enough to get it all done in one stretch of days or will it end up being periodically too wet and spread the picking over weeks?  The ground is pretty wet as it is and he got good and stuck the first day as evidenced by the mud on the tires.

 

 

Besides that, things have been going pretty well, although slowly by modern standards.  The fellow who rents acreage from us combined 80 acres of corn in less than a day.  Andy can manage 4 loads a day with diligent running (including time to unload and move the elevator from bin to bin as needed) and will need 12-14 days to get our 18 acres done, barring serious break downs.  (If anyone knows where we can obtain a New Idea 323 1-row corn picker to have for parts we'd love to know!!)  Fast or slow, it's money in the bank, so to speak, once it's in the crib since you can feed it or sell it as needed.  This crib, another like it and part of a third will be full by the time we're done.

 

 

In other news, I finished dyeing a batch of gray wool (parts from various Cotswold fleeces and Mr. Lincoln's fleece) and handed it off to Acorn Works at guild yesterday.  I was trying to replace Wine Country, but I decided to put more red into the dyebath.  The previous incarnation of WC was pretty but was more plum color than wine.  I love the way the wool came out this time.  There was some lighter gray and some darker and you can really see the difference.  The pale gray came out a pinker purple.

 

 

The dark gray came out more mulberry.  Some locks were nearly black to start with and they will tone it down even more when carded into the finished roving.  Can't wait to see it back!

 

 

Thanksgiving is looming approaching quickly - I guess I'd better stop playing with wool and break out some cleaning supplies to try making the house look like it's not being lived in by a colony of badgers.

 

 



 

 

 







Indian Summer

We are having a gorgeous, unusual streak of warm sunny weather.  Everyone is loving it.

The ram boys are queued up every morning to go out and poke around in the pasture.  They have hay available in the feeders at night to snack on. Even though the pasture is old and past its prime this time of year they still want to go out and do sheepy things.

C'mon, lady, hurry up with the gate already.

Mr. Bill photo-bombs the scene

This black lamb had dozed off while waiting.  Note the white spot on his side.  It's the only white mark he has.  His buddy was kind enough to sit and wait for him to wake up.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz...........

Then he woke up and ran to catch up.

Crap, I hate being last.

And everyone spread out for a nice day of grazing.

Living that good sheep life.

Andy has been able to get after picking the corn.  For ear corn to keep in the crib it should be 24% moisture or less.  The snow and cold we had slowed its progress but now we're good.

Trusty gravity box and elevator

Flowing out well with the help of an occasional poke to keep it moving.

Filling the center bay of the crib

The ears are not husking nearly as well as last year's variety.  It might be peculiar to that type or it might be due to weather and environment.  It's undesireable to have so much husk in the crib as it cuts down on air circulation and promotes mold growth, but there's nothing to be done but hope for the best.  We are much luckier than some people who have lost their corn crop to drought or flood.

Last year's corn on left - husked well.  This year's on right - not so much.

Wouldn't this make a cool jigsaw puzzle?

Holly got as far as the apple trees before collapsing in the sun.

Huh?  Wha..?  Could you not make so much noise?  I'm trying to rest, here.

Such a hard, doggie life.















It's Soooo Hot.......

........ that this is the temperature INside the house.

Because I'm cold if the temp is less than 68, I must. not. complain.  And I can take it, really.  But I feel sorry for everyone else who's suffering, like the sheep and the hubby.

So what fun farmy thing did we do today?  We sent a tractor trailer load of ear corn from our corn crib to PA.  At 7:30 this morning it looked like this.

Tractor powers elevator, elevator carries ears to trailer.

I offered to spell Andy with the shovel but he was kind of in the zone so I just brought water.  Andy is the shirtless one, the other guy in the crib is the truck driver and the guy in red is 'helping' the trucker.  I hope he's getting paid enough.

Wow.  That looks hard.  Maybe I'll just watch for a while, you know, to see how it's done.

By 10:30 they had emptied 3 bays of that crib and moved to another crib to finish the load with some older corn.  We don't want to sell all we have until we have enough from this year's crop for the sheep this winter.  If this drought continues we might not get any corn from what we planted.  When you can, you plan to have enough extra feed so that a crop failure won't be a total catastrophe. The weight scale down at the truck stop showed they had loaded just under 27 tons.

After lunch Andy headed to Penn Yan with corn to be made into grist for the sheep.  The lambs are still getting a creep ration especially since the pastures are withering.  You know it's bad when the weeds are dying.  Before heading out he got the boiler going ( ! ) so that I'd have hot water to wash wool.

It's so hot the cats have melted.

Ugh.  I'm boneless.  Help me.







Hang in there Calvin, it's got to cool off sometime soon.

Just Work

The other day we noticed a lot of smaller birds yelling and unhappy around the corn cribs.  Turns out this is why.

Click to biggify and look at the corner of the crib roof.

We have quite a lot of the northern harriers (marsh hawks) around and this enterprising individual discovered that there is a squirrel highway from the woods to the cribs.  Ee-Zee Pickins.  He was surprisingly tolerant of us working around the upper buildings.  We saw him for a couple of days and then either the slow, stupid squirrels had all been eaten or he just decided that sitting like a vulture was beneath him.  Now if we could just get a falcon to come pick off pigeons.

We had time to go through the whole flock and weigh everyone, check eye scores and deworm where necessary.

Dewormers, charts, calculator and digital scale head

Every sheep takes a turn getting into being put into the holding box Andy built to fit around the scale.  Stand on the scale, get weighed, get your conjunctiva looked at, get a dose of dewormer if necessary and go on your way.  Repeat in about 4 weeks.   We don't have a dedicated chute area so we have to erect panels and swing gates to make the smaller spaces we need.  We hate to chase sheep and they hate to be chased.  Adults set their brakes and protest being put in, and lambs leap out if you don't hover over them.  By the end of the session we were all tired of the process.

I'm in a box.  This can't be good.

There was an interested audience to the process - this nest of barnswallow babies.

Come closer.  We'll turn and poop on you.  Bwaa-ha-ha-ha!





 And enough time to do a little badly needed yard work.

Halp!

Whew!  Thank you!

And still plenty of work left for another day.