Month: March 2016

Talk About Vicious Rain Last Night!

The lower field was flooded like a lake for the first time since we put in drainage ditches. The water came across the street from the fields and the ditches. Swollen drain ditches, flooded river bank and massive rains are good enough cause for all this standing water. Just since 6am the water has receded back across the street which is good news for traveling our road.

My little crew of hard working farm hands have dug nice deep drainage ditches alongside every planted row of vegetable seed. The seed beds are not flooded and hopefully the seeds stayed in place to sprout.

The first planting of potatoes are sprouting good and steady now. These will be an estimated earliest harvest date of: FIRST WEEK OF MAY
I will keep you all posted with more developments on these organic Red Pontiac early potatoes.

Recently planted seeds:
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Spinach
Kale
Cabbage
Daikon
Radish
Brussels sprouts
Mustard
Mixed greens
Lettuce

Greenhouse starts:
Parsley
Cantaloupe
Honeydew

Baby Valentine Update

Our sweet little Valentines Day present is doing well. She seems to be putting on some weight, although she is remarkably smaller compared to my Saanan nanny goat babies.
I tend to be overly alarmed with every detail when it comes to babies but she is still doing well.

We are building a new “play pen” for nannies with babies. Hopefully it will be ready for them to venture into soon. I can’t wait for the typical baby goat playful acrobatics! I hope I can catch her in the act on video for you all!

Small critter and gate training time!

I’ve enticed 2 of my more adventurous male kittens into the main pen with the dogs, on 2 separate occasions. I wiggle a string on the end of a stick just cleverly enough the kittens can’t help themselves. They come pouncing through the open gate, enchanted by the squiggly prey.

On day 1 I stood 2 feet from the open gate, playing with the kittens and watching the pups reaction closely. Each time any pup became too curious to ignore the playful kittens I gave them a firm and sharp “NO”. Occasionally, I stomp my boot closely by them for added effect. Most times the verbal is all any of the pups required for direction.

The older pups of course learned quite quickly. Each of the boys needed only 1 verbal. The girl preferred to watch the others and learn from their scolding. The younger pups took several repeats before they would lose interest in the kittens and return to puppy play instead.

On day 2 I stood about 8′ away from the gate open 2′ wide and with the same playful kitten temptation. The older pups did not approach the kittens, but instead noticed them for a brief moment, then quickly returned to safe puppy play with other puppies. The younger pups required much more follow up from me. This was to be expected. None of them were interested in the open gate.

I always train my pups to only play with each other or other dogs, but not any other sort of animal. It’s too dangerous for the other animals, to allow these large breeds to play with your domestic or farm animals. I also train them NOT to jump on humans.

Briefly open gates should not be a worrisome issue with properly trained LGD’s. With the gate open about 2′ wide, I watched carefully for any curious pups and gave a good verbal direction for that too. They were much more interested in the kittens then the open gate, I will say.

This would be due to the fact that I’ve been doing repeated gate training with them twice per day at each feeding time for weeks now.

Fresh Wheat Flour

We are grinding fresh wheat flour to order now!
You have 4 options for non-GMO, not bleached, no chemicals added, not heated wheat:

1) Buy whole wheat berries for grinding fresh at home, cracking for cracked wheat cereal, cooking whole, or sprouting. $.50 a pound.

2) Order some fresh ground whole wheat flour. Ground for you when you order and kept frozen until pick up (must be same week. Limited freezer space) $1.00 pound.

3) Order some FS (fine sifted=commercial white flour substitute) wheat flour. Ground and sifted for you when you order and kept frozen until pick up (must be same week. Limited freezer space) $1.50 pound.

4) Bring us your own whole wheat berries to grind up for you. You sift= $.50 pound. We sift WW= $1.00 pound. We sift FS= $1.50 pound.

Ground by hand powered crank. Grinder is cast iron burr type which will not heat up during grinding. Electric grinder blades can heat up during grinding, which could cause rancidity.

Happy Baking!!