| April,
2005. The snow is gone. The yard is full of
daffodils and crocuses. The grass is green and growing fast.
After what seemed like weeks of rain and snow, we’ve
been over 60°F for a week (Sunday was 74°F). My wife
and I spent much of the last week in bed with a horrible respiratory
virus. The birds were singing, the kids begging to go outside,
but we could barely stand up for more than 10 minutes at a
time.
In a couple of bursts of energy we managed to get the cows
and layers out on the pasture with the electric fence. Sunday
afternoon as I was lying on the couch dreaming of all the
work yet to be done outside, I heard a cow bellow. It sounded
awfully close so I opened my eyes, and there was Daffodil,
looking in the living room window. Thankfully, our three cows
are very mellow and all I had to do was open the fence and
walk behind them to get them back in.
The state of the fence was another matter altogether...One
of the cows had gone through it and into the woods, dragging
the top wire with her. The wire was now only attached to one
of 10 posts along that side; the rest twisted and knotted
wrapped around trees and bushes and all tangled like an overstretched
spring through a brush pile which hadn’t been cleared
away yet. So our “pasture fed” cow got a few pounds
of grain while I picked up the insulators that had been yanked
from the post and were strewn all over the place, untangled,
reattached and re-tensioned the wire, and tried to figure
out why the electric fence had not kept the cows in. With
the fence all in place, I went to check the voltage (there
was none). Check the charger and–aha!–I discovered
that it had come unplugged. In my haste to get something done
during the short bursts of energy, I had I forgot the cardinal
rule of setting up electric fence—always check your
voltage.
Out in the greenhouse we’ve been harvesting and eating
scallions, kale, pac choi, tatsoi, hon tsai tai (purple pac
choi which is harvested like broccoli raab), and my favorite
edible weed, lambsquarters. We’ve also started a second
batch of these tasty greens to be transplanted outside and
harvested for the market. Most of the seeds seem to be germinating
well despite the apparent unreliability of the germination
box, which I was so proud of last year. I wonder if the winter
damaged the thermostats in the heating cable, because it doesn’t
hold the temperature overnight as well as it had. I think
that a larger chamber with multiple zones would be preferable
in the long run, so I’ll bump that up a couple of notches
on the priority list.
The warmer weather and longer days have had the anticipated
impact on the hens: We are inundated with eggs. While at the
moment we have many more than we are able to sell, the local
health food store has become a very reliable customer, and
we look forward to the opening of the farmers' market and
Holcomb Farm CSA’s season, when we will again be selling
out every week. In the meantime, we continue to force the
surplus on family and friends and share with the local soup
kitchen. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we will have
some pigs, and they can share in the bounty as well.
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