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11/10/2007: "Moving into Winter"

Again, my apologies for the long delays in between posts. Right now I'm lucky to get one day a week to walk around the farm, let alone participate in any of the fun activities. I did manage to send Nate out with the camera to take some pictures and I will faithfully try to provide some captions to the photos!


Duckies have been enjoying spending the last few months in the orchard. In the mornings and evenings they have several minutes of free range foraging all over the orchard. They splash through any puddles they can find and sift through the loose mud and muck. Any rotting fruit that attracted insects is now a rich buffet. They've learned very well how to pen themselves up at night. Nate opens one of the panels, and all of the duckies rush out into the orchard. They sift and hunt and quack. Nate usually goes down to milk at that point. When he returns to the orchard after milking the ducks have waddled themselves down to their night pen. All they need is a refill on water and food and someone to latch them in! The duckies are not laying eggs right now, which is a big gap in my diet. We suspect they aren't laying because we haven't turned a light on for them. We went to plug in their florescent light and found that because of the electrical problems that occurred during solar set up we do not have power out to the barn. The solstice is only six weeks away now, at which time egg production should dramatically increase. So maybe we will just wait and try to figure out a more natural system for next winter, or perhaps fix the power to the barn.


Nate's been separating the cow from the calf during the day and milking in the evening. Rainbow is getting fat, and since the winter grass is starting to turn lush and nutrient dense, Nate is considering weaning her soon. She's a sassy little calf, but very affectionate. We're planning on having Aura bred again at the spring equinox so that she will calf this time next year. But for now, we're enjoying our fresh milk, kefir, and a rolly-polly little calf.


The leaves have come off the ash and the oak, but there still is no water in the creek. We've seen ducks starting to come back in to the neighbor's corn patch. The beets are getting big in the garden and the kale has turned sweet after our first frost. The grass is bright green as the leaves fade to the color of the sky. It's winter time!


We had an interesting duck experience. Carol Deppe gave us four new female ducks from her flock. Nate tried to integrate them into the flock which turned into a task! We lost three in the brush on their first day out. Nate them put them into one of the extra night pens for a few days until they started to understand the "out in the morning, in at night" routine. Then he let the four new ducks out with the regular flock. Like magic, we had cohesive flock. Almost. One duck refused to let the drakes mate with her, and for a duck, that's like refusing to eat! One drake in particular, T.O.D. (the other drake), decided that he was going to ostracize her. This poor duckie was chased from the flock whenever she tried to get close. She was always the last in at night, and often was found by herself on the far side of the pen in the morning. It was very sad. It got to the point that we decided we had better find her a new home. Two days later, we found her dead. Could it be that duckies need to be part of a flock? Could she have died of loneliness?


So our flock is down to 11 duckies. And they seem to be a very cohesive and happy group.


Piglet has graduated to being called "Pig." He is getting larger, and weighs about as much as I do now. Still, that's far below what we would like. We think part of his underweight is that we hesitate to feed him anything that we would not eat ourselves. We do not feed him extra white bread from the market, and we try to stay clear of commercial pig feed. Pig gets the finest squash delivered twice a day, as well as whatever kitchen scraps we have. And boy does he love the squash. Nate thinks that if we should raise another pig that we should have a more complete dairy in works. The pig needs more protein than the farm provides right now, and skim milk would be a great source of protein. But we don't have a lot of skim milk floating around at the moment! Nate's considering slaughtering Pig when the squash feed runs out, regardless of his size.


But he's a nice critter and an easy keeper. A few days ago, he managed to lift the door of his pigpen off the hinges. I came home to find Pig rooting in the north yard! He hadn't found the winter veggie garden a hundred feet away, but he sure made a mess in the immediate area. However, it was close to dinnertime, and he was ready and waiting. Nate came out of the house with his squash, called Pig, and ran for the pigpen. Pig ran after Nate, tail curling and uncurling, squealing in piggish delight.

I'm about to enter the finals marathon, which seems remarkable to me. I hope to add some very detailed posts over the winter break, as well as teach Nate how to post!