Farmer vs. Weather

How calming and balming the effect of the air

It’s alarming how charming it is to be a-farming

– “Now I’m A Farmer” by The Who

Rain.  Can rain be balming? I guess it is soothing and restorative to the grass and plants, so apparently it can be balming.  Not to the people on the farm this week, though.  We have fences to put up and things to do that just can’t be accomplished in any kind of pleasant way in the rain and with soggy soil.

I would love for the air to be calming and balming.

Peas & Pork

Last night for dinner, the family sat down to a yummy feast featuring our own heritage breed Gloucestershire Old Spots meat, which has more fat than modern industrial hybrid pig breeds (which are bred to be very lean) the meat was able to be baked longer and to a greater degree of doneness and was still moist and flavorful, owing to the natural fat content of the meat. It was a tenderloin roast, and it was WONDERFUL – flavorful, moist, not too textured or stringy — just perfect.

• On the peas front, I have been somewhat negligent in the garden lately. What seems like an awfully long time ago, we were still getting frosts, and I was spending a n awful lot of time each day covering and uncovering my peas in the large garden. This was after I planted some peas that I had found that I had forgotten to plant two years ago – so I planted them with much closer spacing than is recommended, as I assumed that half of the peas that I planted would be “duds”. They weren’t. I have a hugely long double row of peas coming up, and now I will have to spend more time putting up a fence for them to climb.

• What we should be spending time fencing is new pastures for the young chickens and turkeys — not peas, but alas…

• Gringot the milking Jersey is proving to be a wonderful addition to the farm. She and her four, horned, just under two year old (and pregnant) herdmates look beautiful in the pasture with the Belted Galloways. Someday soon, which is the plan, the Jerseys will be moving to the barn across the road, where the milking facility is easier to house the five of them at a time.

• The baby turkeys and ducks are still hatching out every week from the cabinet incubator, and I am still amazed that they grow so fast!

• The Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs are pregnant. One of them is probably a month and a half along (which leaves her two months to go) and the other one is probably a month behind her. I will try to snap some pics to show the little tummy that is developing on the pig who is further along.