Blink

Autumn has always been my favorite season;  the transition to cooler weather, crisp mornings, and depth of color awe me.  This year, the weather throughout September was perfect, and the color spectacular.   Then, the first week of October, we finally had a string of cold, windy, rainy days... in the blink of an eye, the foliage disappeared.

It is still beautiful, just different.

Spectacular Harvest

October already, and we are experiencing what I would call "Peak Foliage"  September was beautiful and warm, and the color this year has been the best in years.  Our sheep are plump, and one of the three pigs is already in our freezer.

The garden was bountiful this year, which should help our grocery bill.  Loralee has managed to put up quite a bit of vegetables, the list looks something like this:

- 3 bushels of potatoes.
- 1 bushel of onions
- 25 quarts of corn
- 20 quarts of green beans, frozen
- 6 quarts 'dilly beans'
- 6 quarts canned beets
- 10 quarts frozen beets
- 5 quarts frozen carrots
- 12 quarts tomato sauce

... As well as many, many quarts of frozen fruit.  I know I've missed quite a bit, as she's made jellies, salsa (3 kinds), and more.  We will eat well this winter!

August Dog Days

Here at the farm, it's still been hot.  The patures have not been recovering well, and although we are not quite in drought conditions we are adding more for the lambs.  Parasites are also a problem this year.  We have used Suregard, but have moved on to more potent stuff to keep the bugs at bay.  Despite the hot, humid days, August is bringing cooler nights that give the ground a heavy dew each morning.  I captured this spiderweb outside the barn on Sunday:

High Summer

It has been an incredibly dry, hot July.  Franky, its beautiful although we need more rain.. Here are a few photos I recently took...

3 year old Patrick,  eating watermellon

Hay Season

This past week and weekend, which coincided with both Father's Day as well as our six-year anniversary provided a string of amazingly perfect weather for haying.  Our farming neighbor, Brian Lacoss, cut the field on Wednesday and let the hay dry in the field for two full days, tedding it twice.  Friday afternoon he baled, and our other neighbors the Ferguses and us put up 700 bales between the two of us.   Our hayloft is about 1/4 full, with just over 200 bales. That should give us more than enough to winter over four sheep as we build our flock.


Northlook Farm, looking towards Willoughby Gap June 16 2012.



Lambs!

We have decided to grow a flock of East Fresians, a type of sheep known as good good milkers that are excellent for meat as well.  We picked up 8 lambs and 2 bred ewes... Well, we were pretty excited to have twins born to one of the Ewes over the weekend!

They sure are cute.

Handsome fellow

Loralee surprised me with a new member of the household the other day. A rooster that a friend of hers had to give up. Apparently he came from the county fair last year, but did not get along with her other rooster. He is now busy keeping the eight hens in line. We are not sure of the breed, he is most likely some sort of cross. We've name him Napoleon, ass he certainly acts like a little emperor.

Short sugaring season

temperatures over this week and last have been unseasonably warm... er, hot. we hit the 70's over the weekend, during a time of year when we're typically dealing with a 12" snowpack and still paying for plowing.

For us, this has meant a very brief surgaring season. With only 30 taps, we don't make much syrup in a good year, but this year only managed about 5 quarts. We plan to keep the buckets up a few more days and see if the nights get cold again, but are pretty much resigned to being finished. Here are a few more shots of our mini-arch and the family working together sugaring...

Sugaring season

Its sugaring season at Northlook Farm. Grampy Tester came down from Barton this Saturday, and we hung our modest collection of 30 sap buckets. We don't have any big goals, just enough to keep ourselves in syrup for the year. Last year, we produced 3 gallons, and still have just shy of one left. With warm temperatures predicted over the next two weeks (too warm, daytime highs close to 50, and not freezing at night), we have limited expectations, but I would be happy with at least two gallons.

The first year we boiled, we did it in the house on the stove: Not reccomended! The following year, Grampy gave us is old 'mini-evaprator', a 2'x3' pan on a barrel wood stove, chich we set up in the former chicken coop. While greatly improving our output, it is agonizingly slow to boil down 40 gallons of sap to make the 1 gallon of liquid gold: I generally try to plan a full day event out of it, but with both Loralee and I working outside the home now, timing will be tough. Suffice to say, we have the next few weekends planned for us. As the years progress, my sugaring plans become more ambitious. I could probably max out at 100-150 taps with the sugar maples we have, but that may be enough to support a 2' x 6' pan, which would boil faster and more efficiently. Time will tell: We have more ideas than money!

Winter finally came

Winter finally showed up here in the Northeast Kingdom. We recieved about 5" of snow, more than any other storm all year. It transformed the farm into a winter wonderland:

In other events, Patrick Turns 3 on the 28th of February, we celebrated his birthday over the weekend. He had asked for a banjo, but we gave him a guitar... he spent the afternoon strumming it:

Sheep!

Now that we have the Barn, Loralee and I decided to dive headlong into raising animals last year. We've had the chickens for four years now, and have raised pigs two years in a row... what next?

We settled on Sheep. Lor picked out a small flock of a half-dozen in the spring of '11, and we raised them throughout the summer and Fall... Tomothy and Patrick loved the experience. THese six are now in the freezer, but we are looking forward to starting our own permanent flock in the spring.