“This is a book about farm animals,
And what happens during one year on a farm.
The year is divided into twelve months,
The months are divided into weeks,
The weeks into days,
The days into minutes,
And on a farm something is happening every minute.”
That’s how one of my favorite children’s books, The Year at Maple Hill Farm, by Alice and Martin Provensen, begins. I love this quote because it is so true!
Even in the “off-season,” there is something happening every minute on the farm!
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been making our crop plans, ordering thousands of dollars worth of vegetable seeds, researching new drop-points, paying payroll taxes, catching up with bookkeeping (couldn’t have done it so quickly this year without Amanda Mills!), posting on social media (thank you Beth!), putting together our transplant order for Sharp’s Nursery, ordering & paying for chicks, scheduling when to take chickens to the butcher this coming year, buying our delivery van (thanks to the NASDA Northeast Business Builder Grant), working with a designer from AP Corp to design the van wrap, and applying for several very competitive grants that would bring our farm to the next level!
And, on top of all that, we took an 11 day trip to Disney World! (Thanks Mom and Dad, for taking us! It was so much fun!) Of course, we are super grateful to Symeon (Beth’s son), for the excellent job he did taking care of the sheep, chickens, and cat, while also washing eggs and keeping the egg fridge stocked the whole time we were gone! And to my parents, for watching Beowulf, our English Shepherd dog–we knew he would be too sad all alone here to even bother eating! So instead, he had fun with their dog too!
Today is another great example of something happening every minute on a farm. With the winter storm coming, we cleared space on the front and back porches so we could move our firewood to a place it would not be buried in 3 feet of snow! While we primarily heat our house with wood (except for when we are away in winter), an impending storm like this gives us one more reason to be grateful we made the choice to build our house with a VERY efficient masonry-heater that heats the house without any electricity! Besides that, Stephen came home from work early to set-up an area on the front porch of the barn for the sheep, moved the sheep, insulated the movable chicken coop with a wall of straw bales, put tractors and mowers under roofs, and filled up on diesel so we are prepared to use the tractor to move snow! Plus, we had to catch up on washing eggs!
To be honest, things aren’t always quite as busy as they were today! But they often are, and I thought you would enjoy hearing the things we are doing to insure you can get local farm-raised food year-round!
We still have some more things to do to get ready for the storm. Tomorrow we plan to:
- Make a better space for the tractor with a bucket under the barn roof so it is easier to access for snow removal
- Fill the bathtubs so we have water to flush toilets with if we lose electricity!
- Stack more wood under the porch roofs
- Get garlic stems down from the barn rafters where we have been saving them since the summer. They make great fire starter! This spring we will add the ashes to the compost pile!
- Maybe even till the new garden bed under the high tunnel roof so that I can plant our first veggies there beginning February 16th!
What can you do to help?
First of all, please pray for the animals during these super low temperatures! And for Stephen and Raphael as they bring them hot water over the next week!
Second, consider joining the CSA this year. Supporting us now, while we have seed bills, is a big help! But the main reason to join now is to ensure your family gets access to the best veggies around!
Third, you can get your hands on a copy of The Year at Maple Hill Farm and enjoy it!
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