Week Six

The coyotes killed four of the lambs last week. We had just put them out to pasture near the pond a few days earlier. Two of the triplets are gone, Salt (Pepper's sibling), and one of the little twins. Nothing was left except two stomachs. Coyotes kill only what they need to eat, and we didn't even see a carcass. We looked for footprints around the farm, but it was hard to tell which were coyote prints and which belonged to the golden retriver who visited our farm the day before the coyotes came down. I wonder what the rest of the sheep are thinking now. Do they miss the lambs? Do they remember the coyotes? I suppose the coyote cubs are not hungry now.

We put the Tunis in the barn so we could control what she eats. Just hay now, and no grass or grain. Since she has only one lamb now, and she is still producing milk for three, there's a danger that she could get mastitis, an infection of the udder that comes as a result of the udder being too full. If she eats less, she'll make less milk. We're also giving penicillin to another lamb who got a puncture wound, presumably as he was running away from the coyotes.

Soon we'll be borrowing a llama from Cricket Creek Farm, a dairy farm down the road. Apparently llamas have an innate hatred of canines and are therefore a great candidate to guard the sheep. Now we just have to figure out how to transport the llama over here.

A week ago I got to drive the tractor. For a little over an hour. We all took turns turning the compost pile. For some of us (not me), it was a boring task - scooping and dumping, over and over. For others (me), it was over too soon. Operating hydraulics and a clutch and moving the earth all at the same time was pretty exciting. I got slightly panicky when a CSA memeber came over with his two-year-old son to watch (Don and the tractor safety guy drilled into our heads that kids and tractors don't mix), but they kept a safe distance, and I even had the presence of mind to wave.

The first cucurbits are in the ground now - some summer squash and cucumbers. You have to handle them like eggs when they are being transplanted - hold them by the leaves and touch them absolutely as little as possible. I'm not sure why the touching is so bad for them, but whatever the reason, they don't like it. Too much handling and they just droop.

The tomatoes are taking off in the pit greenhouse. They are in pots, establishing a good root system and growing taller. They had two half-days of good strong heat this week, so they're pretty happy at the moment. The fennel however has not yet been transplanted and is getting a bit leggy looking for sun. The lettuce has at least tripled in size since we transplanted the first seedlings. The first basil went in the ground on Wednesday. And, on Thursday, the entire farm was virtually weed-free. We hoed all the planted beds, and stalebedded the beds that we will use in the near future. Stalebedding is a preventative way to deal with weeds: weed the beds once a week for about a month, first with a five-tiner to get out the big weeds, and then with a hoe to uproot the small ones. After three or four rounds of this, most of the weed seeds have come to the surface of the ground already, so the new plants won't have much competition.

My dear friend Sarah visited from Boston this weekend. She was immediately put to work at 6:15am on Saturday, seeding in the greenhouse, then putting woodchips on the patways in the flower garden and weeding a few herb beds. All the close contact with soil was a big hit. I had a great time giving her a tour of the farm, quizzing her on which plants were growing out in the field and showing her the infamous pigs. She loved them. She even petted them and gave them names. Maybe all the positive attention will inspire me to reconnect with that part of me that once thought pigs were cute enough to collect.