A Thanksgiving Thought

I am thankful for boots that do not have holes in them, or at least do not develop holes until after the pig pen is cleaned.

Breeding season is in full swing

Tuesday evening we turned the rams in with the ewes. I also tested out the one person operation of the chute. I sorted the ewes into three groups while Brian finished setting up the fence. It worked great! We put them in three groups because we want to keep the rams from breeding their own daughters. It is a bit more work to manage three groups, but it is an effective way to avoid too much inbreeding.

As expected, Thorne went right to work. By Wednesday evening he had already marked 9 ewes! Bruce had marked 3, and Suffy hadn't gotten any yet. But, by Thursday evening he had figured it out and marked his first ewe, a nice looking 2-year-old. As of today Thorne is still in the lead, but he's the most experienced, so that's not entirely unexpected. You would think Bruce would have this figured out by now, but some guys are slow learners...

Here's a shot of Suffy that shows his marking harness. When he mounts a ewe, the crayon rubs off on the wool on her rump. These are really neat inventions that let us keep track of when each ewe is marked and get a really good idea of each due date. We use a series of crayons, this year it will be red, green, purple. We change them every 17 days, which is the average cycle length in sheep, so that if a ewe doesn't settle on the first attempt it will be very obvious when she is marked during a later cycle because she will have a different colored mark.

I took some pictures of Bruce and Thorne too, but it was too late in the evening and they didn't turn out very well. I'll keep trying. That's one thing about breeding season, I get to spend a lot of time watching the sheep since we have to check for marks every day.

Tonight is the full moon, but the moon has been beautiful all week.

Last night was our first killing frost, with an overnight low of 27. We had experienced three nights that flirted with 32 degrees, but that wasn't enough to kill any of the flowers or the peppers. This frost is almost two weeks later than usual, and I have enjoyed the unexpected blessing. I figured we had to be due soon, so Thursday evening I brought in the remaining dahlia blooms, an end-of-season ritual I have come to enjoy. I enjoyed it even more than usual this year because I cut flowers in daylight and a tee-shirt instead of by headlamp wearing a coat and gloves! I added the cosmos to fill out the bouquet, and because I wasn't sure how the cold would affect them. Turns out they came through pretty well; a little peaked, but not dead. Now I have a bunch more work to do, lifting all of the dahlia and cana tubers and putting them in the basement for the winter.
A brief note on the eggs in the incubator. I candled them again this evening. I think they are progressing, but I don't really know what I'm looking at...all I saw was dark blobs that took up much of the egg. I will turn the automatic turner off and take it out late next week, and time will tell!

Another busy weekend

We had another whirlwind weekend. You know, the kind that leave you more tired at their ending than at their beginning? But we accomplished a lot, so it was a good kind of tired.

Saturday afternoon was spent over at the farm in New Hope. It was a prettier fall day than my last photo session and there were more leaves still on the trees over there, so here are some more fall scenes.

I worked on installing gates at the front and back of the chute and hanging a rope from front to back. Now the front gate can be opened from any point along the chute, and one person can work the sheep.

This handy stop gate at the back of the chute keeps sheep from backing out or turning around and sprinting out. Genius!

The front gate is guillotine style and easily dropped to stop a speeding sheep.

Once I finished modifying the chute, I spent a while just enjoying the afternoon and taking pictures while Brian finished planting wheat.

Leroy keeping watch over his flock.

The whole time I was in the field with them, Leroy kept the sheep herded up in a tight group. Once I left the field, they all spread out again.

It was one of those blue bird sky days; not a cloud in sight.

Don't look too closely and try not to think about how much hay is rotting in the field. Some day we're going to get these bales moved home and under a tarp. Still, it makes a pretty picture.

Brian planted a few acres of rye earlier in the week, and here he is planting a few more acres of wheat. The rye will serve as a cover crop and will be used as green manure in the spring. The wheat will most likely be harvested as grain and sold for feed. The wheat was supposed to be planted following corn, but the corn is still standing in the field because we had rain that slowed progress in the harvest. Now everyone is up and running again, but the custom harvester has a lot to do, had some breakdowns, and hasn't made it to us yet. At last check, we were down to about 16% moisture, and we're hoping the corn will be picked later this week. Since it is too late to plant wheat and Brian won't be here to do it anyway, that field will get a rest until spring, when it will probably rotate into soybeans.

Fall scenery

Fall is my favorite time of year. The leaves aren't in peak color this year, but it is still beautiful. I took these shots last week late one afternoon. The forecast was calling for rain and I was afraid if I didn't get some pictures all the leaves would be down. Right here at the house that fear materialized, so even if the sky is cloudy, I'm glad I captured a few shots of the trees here around the house and the barn.

Gourds - we planted a mixture and had many more of the large fruited types than we have had in previous years.

Looking out across our back fence.

The pasture behind the barn, shady in the summer, but beautiful in the fall!

Looking east, the view from our front porch.

The new Suffolk ram, who still does not have a name. For now on my barn sheets he is "suffy," but that is temporary. He kept coming up close to see if I was going to feed him, so I had to take his picture from afar.

Fall means the lambs are getting closer to market weight. We drew blood samples last weekend and sent them off for dna tests that will decide which ewe lambs stay on as replacements and which ones will be marketed. We only keep breeding stock that are resistant to scrapie.

Later this week the ewe and ram lambs will be separated, and we'll put the ewes in breeding groups.

Smokin'

Brian has wanted a smoker for a long time. A few years ago we got a cheap electric model that didn't work out at all, primarily because there was no way to regulate the temperature. We have a friend who built an awesome smokehouse, so for a while there was talk of us building something too. But that never happened.

Instead we invested in a larger, thermostatically controlled smoker. It requires very little human attention during the smoking process and uses a surprisingly small amount of wood. We tested it out over the last week by smoking some paprika and jalapeno peppers and a whole chicken. So far it's all good. Next big smoked project will be bacon! Mmm...bacon.

Jalapenos before smoking

Paprika supremes after smoking

Another new experience

We do a lot of experimentation here. So when Jackson attacked a hen last week and we discovered that she had been broody and was building a nest, we decided to try incubating the 18 eggs she left behind. Knowing she had been laying eggs outside the nest boxes, I looked around and discovered another secret trove of 10 eggs. Neither of us has any experience what so ever at incubating and hatching eggs, so we are excited to give this a try. Two eggs were cracked, so we discarded them and set 26 in the incubator.

Today is day 8 of the 21-day incubation period. This morning I candled the eggs to see if any were fertile. I only found one that did not seem to have a developing embryo inside. That leaves 25 to incubate for another week, when I will candle them again and see which ones are progressing. I found that a small (but bright) LED flashlight cradled in my fist worked pretty well as a low cost candling device.

Eggs in the incubator.



Progress in taming the bank

Considering how much time I spend on it, it is amazing this is the first time this has made the blog, but I have a long term project that has been going on since we moved here in 2004. This project is the reclamation of a flower bed that stretches approximately 100 feet along the side of a bank. It has become The Bank, and I have spent countless hours slowly getting it into shape.

This is a picture of the bank in September of 2004 during our first visit to this property.

We moved here in December of 2004, so my first observations of The Bank were in the spring of 2005. There was a stretch of various irises that pretty much ran the length of this area. There were also gorgeous daffodils, many of them double daffs with fascinating blooms.

The bank in the summer of 2005. Yucca surrounded by grass and crown vetch. Fabulous.

Later in the summer a string of gladiolus revealed itself, again, running the length of the planted area. In between there was also some larger material, a mimosa tree, two trees that appear to be apples, but still haven't fruited to this day, and a crepe myrtle shrub. The majority of this area was completely overgrown in sod. I'm not sure if it ever was anything other than sod, but by the time I first saw it, it was mainly grass. Oh, and the one end had been planted in crown vetch.

Ah, crown vetch. A wonderful plant introduced by Penn State scientists (how's that for irony!) as a bank stabilizer originally used along new highways. It works great as a bank stabilizing plant because it forms a massive network of roots. When it blooms it is actually quite pretty, but it is not the look I wanted for The Bank. So began my war against crown vetch, which I am still fighting. With so many positive features to its credit and because I didn't want to mow over that slope, I decided to turn the whole bank into a flower bed.

In case you haven't figured this out by now, I often bite off more than any sane person would think a person could chew. But I really love digging in the dirt and have had a lot of fun on this project.

Which brings me to the real subject of today's post: the pathway. I like rocks, and back at our first house we built this great little corner garden with a rock pathway and steps that I just loved. There we lived right along a creek and had an endless supply of rocks. Here, not so much. But, the previous owners brought some river rocks in to make some beds around trees in the yard. These beds needed reworked because the trees have grown and it was just time. So a couple of years ago I decided that 'one day' I was going to pillage rocks from around the trees and make a pathway on the bank. Brian and some buddies took a weekend fishing trip to West Virginia in September. So I decided that was a good time to start my path because I wouldn't be pulled away to do something else. In the first day I cleared the path and laid about half of the rocks. Over the last two weeks I have finished laying rocks, and I am so pleased with the result! A nice path that will help foil the crown vetch, allow me to access more of the bed for weeding and planting, and most importantly, allow me to walk through the flowers to take photos and just generally enjoy the sights and smells.

Looking up the bank from the edge closest to the house at the end of day one.

Looking down the path at the end of day one; lots of progress, but a ways to go yet!

It just so happened that this sedum was in beautiful bloom that day.

The entrance to the completed path at the top edge of the bank bed.

A little longer perspective of the completed path. Sorry for the straw mess - work in progress. I mulched the day after I finished the path, and I haven't made it back out there with a broom to clean up my mess. (The straw is a new anti-vetch strategy...we'll see. I weeded and planted tulips in the area beside the bench, then covered it with straw. This area has very little current vetch pressure. On the lower side of the path, where the vetch is much worse, I sprayed it and will cover it with newspaper and straw in a few days.)

Back to the path...this is the highest point, and it features a mosaic stepping stone I made several years ago at a girls' weekend with my college girlfriends.

Looking up the path.

It sure feels good to complete a project I've worked so hard on!

Oh, the rest of the bank? Well, here are a few pictures of what it looked like this year.

Early spring. Ah, it looks so clean and weed free!

Early spring from the other end. The area around the bench was newly added to the bed last fall (yeah, I made it bigger, it was too hard to mow that little narrow piece of grass behind the old bed).

Spring in full bloom during May.

The end close to the pasture.

The end close to the orchard. The mimosa and the crepe myrtle both had some frost damage this year and had to be trimmed.

Most of my flower pictures posted over the summer were taken at various spots along the bank, but I obviously did not capture the full length during each season. There's a new goal for next year.

World Dairy Expo

Just a couple of days after the wedding, I jetted off (well, okay puddle-jumpered off) to Wisconsin for World Dairy Expo. This was only the second time I have been to the big show, and it is pretty amazing. It is a huge event that includes a dairy cattle show, several competitions from cattle judging to the forage superbowl, a trade show, educational seminars, virtual farm tours, and much more. Every aspect of the industry is represented, and it is hard to walk around without bumping into people you know, which makes getting through the trade show in one day tricky to say the least...I didn't quite get to everything in my one free day (I was there for a board meeting for National Dairy Shrine). If you are interested in dairy cows, Expo is something you should have on your bucket list. To get a taste, check out their web site www.worlddairyexpo.com. You can even watch video clips of the cattle shows.

It wouldn't do to completely skip over Dairy Shrine after mentioning it, so in case you aren't familiar with it, the National Dairy Shrine was formed in 1949 and works to preserve the history of the industry, recognize outstanding individuals who have served the industry, inspire future leaders, and provide scholarships to encourage students to pursue dairy degrees. I benefited from these scholarships as a student, so I stay involved now to help give that opportunity to others. For more information on Dairy Shrine go to www.dairyshrine.org. And if you're interested in joining, let me know!

While the trade show is pretty impressive in size and the companies go all out with their booths, I didn't take any pictures there because, well, to me one trade show is pretty much like the next. I did see some neat demonstrations, including a new colostrum pasteurizer that really simplifies the process.

The show ring is really spectacular. Each year there's a different theme, complete with detailed sets and props. This year there was a castle complete with working drawbridge. I wouldn't be a bona fide dairy kid if I went to Expo and didn't watch any of the show, so I took in a few classes of Brown Swiss cows Thursday morning. I did not make it to the barns, which was unfortunate, but there's always next year...

Although I enjoyed Expo, I have had enough travel now to last me for a while. It is good to be home, and a week and a half later, I am finally getting caught up from being away too much!

Wedding!

The biggest news for September is that my little sister got married! It was a beautiful day and a nice weekend at home. I had good intentions of taking photos, but I always seemed to be doing something else. Most of these are Brian's shots.

The bride getting her hair done by Betsy, who is the best hairdresser ever! She did Char's hair, plus Andrea's, mine, mom's, and Aunt Sharon's, and she even made us sticky buns.

The Mowrey family: (front) Eric, Craig, Eliza, Robin, Coleen, Brian; (back) Duaine, Karen, Char, Matt.

Exchanging vows.

Char and Matt with all of their nieces and nephews: Eric, Eliza, Ryan, Cecelia, and Nora.

Mom and Dad.

Char with the groomsmen: Brian, Dave, Craig, and Joe.

Char dancing with Dad. The reception hall was beautiful, and I am so thankful that Sarah and her crew have all the lights and tulle done. That is a huge job, and we didn't have to worry about it!

Toasting the happy couple.

Congratulations Char and Matt, we love you!!