When winter stops you cold...

I was just about to start this post, and I noticed that my previous post was about being unprepared for winter.  Interesting.  Since that first storm, we've lost power 3 more times, and amassed about a foot of snow -- then it was almost 60 degrees today (and we lost power...hmm...).

The latest storm came to us on the day before Thanksgiving. I'm sure you heard about it on the news or were a part of it if you live on the east coast. It wasn't anything out of the norm except that it happened before December...barely.  Anyway, I'm not here to write about a storm, but rather the effect of having said storm and what it does to our life.

Since we've lived here on the farm for the past 2 years, I have really come to enjoy the winters.  I think that many farmers feel this way -- it's a time to reflect on the past growing season, take stock of what worked and what didn't work, and start planning for next year.

That being said -- we had many more things on our "before winter" to do list.  We make a lot of lists in this house, and if we get to everything on the list before the predetermined deadline, then it's a lucky day.

Anyway, the storm arrived the day before Thanksgiving, and we lost power at about 6 pm.  We are fortunate enough to have a wood stove for heating our house and for cooking (though we have a gas range, so we could cook without the wood stove), a composting toilet, and a generator.  Usually, when we lose power, we only use the generator for a couple hours at night to let the water pump more water up from the well, and to use lights for reading or whatever (though we have definitely embraced candlelight).

We LOVE our Waterford-Stanley! In the winter, we cook almost exclusively on and in this stove, and it keeps our house so warm!  It is Dec. 1, and we haven't turned our heat on yet.

It was already our plan to try to cook the entire Thanksgiving meal in the wood stove, but without a back-up, the challenge was even more fun.  We learned with this power outage that none of the outlets in our kitchen is connected to the generator. Excellent. When making the pumpkin pie using our long pie pumpkins, I thought about moving the stand mixer into the living room to blend the squash smoother, but I figured people could handle some chunks -- and they could. Dinner was a success, and everything cooked swimmingly in Stanley. I think we'll do it again next year, power or no power.

It was really the day after Thanksgiving that struck me as wonderful.  I've been making a conscious effort to change my thoughts and my perspective trying to shift it toward the positive, and Friday morning was the perfect opportunity.  After cooking all day the day before, I was tired, and I was looking forward to a lazy day by the wood stove.  The dogs, however, we unfazed by me being tired or by the fact that there was a foot of heavy snow on the ground.  Anna was working, so I couldn't even pawn the dog walk off on her.  So, we went for a snowshoe.

It was glorious.

At first, I was grumbling about being cold and tired, but then I decided to stop and really look at where I was.  This is what I saw.

Clearly, the dogs did not need a shift in perspective to enjoy this walk.

I mean, really? I live here?!?!  How fortunate am I that I get to walk out my front door to this? The vast majority of people have to drive to get somewhere like this.  I spent the rest of the walk marveling at the beauty of the snow on the trees with the sunlight all around.

When I got home, I made some tea and cozied up next to the window for some quality reading time. One of the perks of farming is the off-season.

Wake up. Coffee. Dog walk. Yoga. Read. Dog walk. Read. Bed. Repeat.

Can't complain about that to-do list.








......also we cut firewood at some point...there's that.

Gratuitous dog and snow photos...

Baxter's favorite toy -- Chuck.  He flips it around, does back flips to catch it, pounds it into the snow, and then roots it out with his nose. Best. Day. Ever.

Really, he loves the snow, we promise.  Oliver's answer to this predicament....more rolling in the snow!!!!  As soon as the snow hits the ground, he starts rolling.  He usually doesn't make it 100 yds up the driveway without rolling. Adorable.

The view from our deck. Can't complain about that.

We were so unprepared...

As many of you know, Maine was the beneficiary of a pretty big snow storm on Sunday, Nov. 2.  We had been out of town, and we were actually driving home during the storm.  Anna completely missed the turn off Rt. 1 because the blinking light wasn't blinking.  We made it home, though we were far from prepared for this storm.

Ways this storm kicked our asses:

We had no power.

Our French doors had blown open, there was snow in the house, and it was 30 degrees inside our house.

The barn isn't done.

The fence for the chickens in the barnyard isn't done -- and they need to be moved up there before the winter really sets in.

The chickens are still in the field, and their fence was buried in the snow (not very effective).

We haven't planted our garlic or the rest of our bulbs -- hopefully the snow will melt today, and we can plant it tomorrow before the next cold snap, rain/snow mix this weekend.

Firewood isn't stacked inside.

Wind blew the door off the high tunnel.

High tunnel still has tomatoes in it -- we need to plant greens in there.

Road hasn't been graded -- at least we have piles of gravel ready for this.

Big trees fell down all over


Ways we were prepared for this storm and winter in general:

Fruit orchard has been winterized.

New duck pond has been dug and filled and fenced in.

Well, that's better than nothing...


What have we been doing all summer?!?!  More on that later...

When bees ruled the world

They kind of do rule the world, but that's a different post for a different day.  Here's the saga of how our bees hijacked our productivity for 3 days....

It started as just a typical Wednesday, I went to teach yoga, and Anna went to work at the clinic.  After meeting Anna for lunch, I headed home. As I was walking up the front steps, I could hear the lovely, familiar hum of bees, and I immediately started looking for the flowers that they were so obviously enjoying.  I saw many many flowers around our front steps, but no bees.  That's when I looked up to the left....shit.  I immediately knew that one of our hives had swarmed, and they decided that our house was a great place to live. Of course this happens when Anna's at the clinic.

Bees swarm when there isn't enough food, or if they population gets too big for the current home.  They make a new queen, and half the hive leaves with the old queen when the new one is about to hatch. Bees are pretty amazing.

This is where the bees were heading in and out of our house.  Bad picture, but you get the idea.

Four ladies hanging out on our kitchen window.  There were probably 20+ bees on the window, but only 4 stood still enough for this photo.  The bees were all gathering around windows in our house.  

Because the bees were new residents of our house (less than 4 hrs), if we made the environment undesirable, there was a chance they would leave on their own.  I chose Deadmau5 -- I enjoyed it, hopefully the bees did not.

The music was pretty loud in the house, so when Anna got home from work, I was ready with a gin and tonic and front row seats to the bee exodus.  Anna's talking to her beekeeping mentor about what we can do if/when they don't leave on their own.  

This is how Baxter feels about the whole ordeal despite being stung at least 3 times while trying to catch bees in his mouth -- he deserved it.

This is how Olive felt about the whole ordeal.  She's so sensitive.  Maybe she got stung?  Maybe it was just the bees swarming that freaked her out.  She was in pancake mode hiding by her bed.

If we were going to try to catch these bees, we needed to put some hives together.  So, we put all the frames together, but Anna had left the box down by one of our other hives.  When she walked down there to get it, this is what she saw....

This picture isn't sideways -- that's one of our tiny apple trees being totally bent over by a huge swarm of bees.  

It was pretty amazing. When bees are swarming like this, they're less likely to be aggressive so I felt fine getting really close without wearing any protection.  Bees sting to protect their hive, and since they're looking for a new home, they have nothing to protect.

It was awfully nice of them to swarm so low to the ground so we could easily catch them!

Here's Anna putting them in our hive:

See all those bee butts up in the air?  They are looking for their queen.  They stick their butts up in the air to try to smell the pheromone of the queen -- they have a scent gland on their abdomen.  Pretty cool!

Here, you can clearly see the bees all marching in one direction toward their queen -- and into our hive!

Here they are....marching towards their queen and into our hive. :)

After collecting this swarm, we went back to check on the bees having a dance party in our house.  No change.  We decided to go get some dinner and make a plan for the morning.  When we got home -- the bees were still rocking out --- and still in our house, but they had tucked themselves in for the night so we decided to do the same.

The next morning, we devised a plan by which we would tear down the sheetrock in our house and extract the bees.  Anna's mentor let us borrow his bee-vac -- a special vacuum that you can use to suck them all into a cage without killing them so you can keep the swarm.

Listening for the swarm -- we can definitely hear bees in there.

We made a plan for where we were going to start demolishing our house, and we set up the surgery table.  All possible tools at the ready.

We drilled a hole, then started cutting away.  Yikes!

Turns out, we have a lot of insulation up there....not anymore...

When we finally got all the insulation out, this is what we saw.  Some bees, but not enough to be the colony we were looking for.  Crap.  Useless hole in our ceiling #1.  We could see that all the bees were headed in one direction -- up.  This isn't too shocking since bees like to go up.  So....we followed.

We went up to the highest point they'd be able to reach.  When we looked through the hole....nothing. No bees. WTF. Useless hole in our ceiling #2.

This is what most of our house looked like yesterday afternoon -- at least we had a tarp downstairs.

At this point, we were feeling pretty defeated by the bees so we decided to get out of the dusty house and regroup on the deck by putting some frames together for our eventual capture of the swarm in the house.  While we were working, I noticed that the swarm we had put in the hive the day before had a lot of bees on the outside of the hive.  Bees often do this to cool down, so we figured that was probably what was happening, but since it was a new hive, we wanted to walk down there to check.  When we got down to the hives, this is what we saw in the tree above the hive.

Are you freaking kidding me?!?!  

This is what the hive looked like, and when we peaked in the cover, they were all still in there.  So, could this be a 3rd swarm?!?!

We donned our bee gear again, and headed down to catch this one.  This one was a bit higher in a tree, so we climbed up, cut the branch down,  and carefully lowered the branch over the hive.  Once there, Anna shook the bees into the box.

New bees in our hive.

So, since we were catching all these swarms, we were rapidly running out of boxes and frames.  After 2 trips to the bee supply store, we had enough to catch all three swarms.  This, however, meant putting more frames together.  So, we parked ourselves on the deck to get back to hammering.  While there, Anna glanced over to the lawn to see what Baxter was so interested in.  Lo and behold...it was our tortoise.  Over a month ago, one of our tortoises escaped our outdoor enclosure, and we've been searching for her since.  Yesterday, she just strolled out into the middle of the lawn.

This is seriously the craziest day on record.

After all that, we decided to call it a day and pick up again in the morning.  When we woke up on Friday, it was pretty cool, so there was limited bee activity from our house swarm.  We decided to wait until the day warmed up to make sure they were still in there and to see where they were coming from.  As the day got warmer and warmer....no bees. So, it turns out they left on their own accord.  We like to think it was the Deadmau5 and the hammering, drilling, cutting, etc. that drove them away.  At least then our efforts weren't for naught.

We're guessing that the second swarm we found on the cherry tree was the swarm from our house and they just left when we were demolishing our house.  Admittedly, we weren't paying too close attention to the bee traffic outside the house.  We are happy they're gone from our house, and we hope they like their new home.

Today, we put the house back in order -- except for those blasted holes in the ceiling...

A delicate little flower

This is a blog about the newest member of our duck flock. Her name is Flower -- because she's a delicate little flower.

As you all know by now, Anna is a veterinarian.  Flower was bought by a family as an Easter present to their kids (that's a topic for another post) and was brought to the clinic where Anna works to be euthanized because she had a twisted neck.  Twisted neck can happen with improper diet, vitamin deficiency, toxicity, or more serious diseases.  When Anna found out about Flower, she knew she had to bring her to our farm.  If she could show us that she's capable of eating and living a normal life, there's no reason for her to be euthanized.

Here's what Flower looked like on day 1 with us.  She's probably about 2 weeks old in this photo. We were hopeful that increasing her vitamins would help her to straighten her neck out -- that and telling her regularly to "put your head on straight!"  She came with that teddy, and after we put it on the ground, she snuggled it nightly….adorable.

After a few days of having Flower at our house, Anna got some bad news.  When the previous owners got her, her neck was already like this.  She was only a couple days old at that point, and all the other ducklings with her were fine.  This made us pretty nervous that increasing her vitamins and bettering her diet wouldn't be enough.  We started preparing ourselves for having a very special needs duck, and if she proved to be unable to live a happy, healthy life, we were preparing ourselves for the tough decision to go ahead with the euthanasia.

So, we worked out a daily vitamin/greens routine which she enjoyed thoroughly.  Ducklings LOVE fresh greens -- I often feel like there should be some sort of signage a local ponds telling people to stop throwing bread and start throwing salad. We gave her water with some vitamins A, E, and B, and we added nutritional yeast to her food for more vitamin B -- B is a big one for duckling development and the main ingredient that commercial chick starter food (for chickens) is lacking.

Flower taking a break from greens and vitamins….still crooked. :\

Mmmmm….greeeeeeeens!

You can see that her neck is getting a little less crooked, but it still isn't quite right, and she still has some pretty severe episodes.  We started taking her outside with us if we were working in the garden or somewhere where she'd be protected from the dogs and we could keep an eye on her.  Outside, she was really good.  Her neck was pretty normal most of the time…unless she got stressed out. If we walked too far away from her, she would get really stressed, start freaking out, get twisted upside down, start stumbling backwards…it wasn't good.

Here's a video of Flower doing well in the garden with Anna in her early days.  You can see that her head is looking better but is definitely a little crooked still.

Filmed that same day -- one of her not so good moments. Anna stopped filming once she really started freaking out, but you get the idea.

At this point, she'd been with us for about a week and a half, and we were beginning to wonder if she was going to get better.  She was showing improvement, but she still wasn't as good as we would have liked.  Within a few days, however, she started getting better and better, and her episodes of upside-downness were getting fewer and fewer.  Given that she's a duck, we knew that if she was going to be fully integrated with our flock, she would need to be able to swim.  We decided to put her in the bath tub to check out her swimming abilities.  It wasn't pretty the first few times.  She freaked out, turned her head upside down and swam in backwards circles.  Upside down head in the water = no breathing.  Not good.  We really wanted to see if she could swim, so we kept at it.  We'd put her in the tub with enough water for her to stand so she didn't have to swim if she didn't want to.  Eventually, she got more and more comfortable in the water, and one day she just did it!  She started swimming happy laps around the tub splashing, bathing, and being a generally happy duck.

Since then, she's just gotten better and better.  I don't remember the last time she had an upside down neck moment.

Eventually, she got too big and the splashing got to be too much for the counter, so vitamin time got moved to the sink.  Her neck is MUCH better here!

Napping with the farm manager while we were doing some planting.

She's now been with us about 3 weeks, and we've been starting to give her a lot of unsupervised outside time.  We have a poultry seclusion pen -- we use it for new birds, sick birds, etc.  She's been spending almost every day that the weather's nice out there -- she doesn't quite have enough big girl feathers to spend rainy days outside yet.  Downy feathers + rain = waterlogged, chilly, unhappy duckling.  We've also been giving her supervised time with the entire flock -- adult ducks and teenager chickens.  They're definitely interested in her, but they haven't been too overly aggressive.  At first, she was pretty wary of going in the pond with the big girls, but she found a somewhat secluded corner of the pond and started swimming and dabbling at the greens we tossed in.  Within a few days, she took the big plunge into the middle of the pond and started swimming with her new friends.

Today, she's having her first unsupervised time with the flock -- though, admittedly, we keep looking out the window at her.  Some of the chickens are paying her a bit more attention than we'd like, but she's holding her own.  Naturally, we had to photo/video document the occasion.

Looking good!  Strutting her stuff in the yard.

Checking out the camera. Yep, it's adorable.

Look at that happy duckling.  Give her a few more weeks (and some more feathers!), and she's going to be with the full flock all the time.

Oh, I forgot to mention one more ridiculously adorable thing that happened as we were raising her. Any time she was out and about with us...

Yeah, that never gets old.  We're really looking forward to watching her grow into an adult duck.  Based on her voice, it appears that she is, indeed, a female.  We think she's a Pekin duck, so we'll have another decent layer in our flock.

We're really glad we adopted her, and we're even more glad she recovered so quickly and easily.  All she needed was proper nutrition. What a lucky duck! I couldn't help myself.

Your life will descend into chaos.

One thing they don't tell you about farming/homesteading -- your life will descend into total chaos.  It is completely unavoidable, at least at this stage of the game, and this Type-A, left-brained, organizer finds it hard to handle sometimes.

Here are a few examples:

1. The garage is a mess, we'll clean/organize it once we move the chicken tractor out. Chicken tractor moved out. The garage is a mess, we'll clean/organize it once the rain barrels are all put together and moved out. Garage is still a mess and housing the rain barrels.

2. Rain barrels need to be put together so we can harvest the rain to water our crops.  But, wait, if we don't plant our crops now it's going to be too late. But, wait, it's raining, and the barrels are overflowing with no over flow spout. But wait….the seeds!

3. The ground is frozen, but we need to start seedlings. No problem, do it in the basement and get soil/water all over the floor. It's ok that there's soil/water on the floor because it is already covered with wood scraps. It's ok that the floor is covered with wood scraps because we're raising 20 baby birds in the basement and there are pine shavings all over the place too….and it smells like poultry poop.

4. New special needs duckling needs a home?  No problem, we have a guest bedroom for that.  What? Guests are coming?  No problem, clean out the shavings and cover up the poultry smell (thanks, incense), and move the baby into your bedroom. Again, with the pine shavings.

5. Piles and piles of cardboard and newspaper for sheet mulching (again, with the disastrous garage) are  just lying around -- but this is useful stuff, people!  We can't recycle it in any way other than putting it on the ground.  As soon as we harvest truck load after truck load of seaweed from our river, then we'll do the sheet mulching.  But wait, we need to sheet mulch to plant the seedlings in our expanded beds. But wait, we need to plant the seedlings really soon!

6. High tunnel construction -- this is an entire blog post or two in itself.  Let's get it done in the fall so we can use the tunnel all winter and have early spring crops.  What?  The ground froze?  Crap.  So, the high tunnel stands incomplete like someone flipping me the bird every time I look at it.  But now it's spring, and we can finish construction so we can plant our seedlings in the tunnel!  It's raining?  Crap.  Well, at least the rain barrels are….crap.

You get the idea.  I'm not complaining -- I'm merely pointing out our reality.  Rest assured, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I didn't even begin to touch on the things that need to be done in our house -- screens on the windows, vacuuming/mopping up the mess made by 3 dogs during mud season/spring shedding, actually cleaning something instead of just wiping it down, and I don't know, actually dusting for once in our lives.

And we don't even have kids!

I should end this post by saying that I do love our life, and I feel extremely fortunate to be able to live this way.  Sometimes, I just can't handle the piles of crap and disorganization.  I know it will get better over time as we figure things out and develop efficient/organized systems, but for now, I'm just going to do my best to breathe through it. :)

Also -- I'm making a concerted effort to post more.  So, there may be some posts sans pictures, but I'll do my best to put them as frequently as possible.

Winter projects

Throughout the summer, there were many times when I said, "I am actually looking forward to winter when I can do all these things I want to do but can't because we're in the throws of the growing season."  Talk about not living in the now, but that's another topic…

So, I started writing down all the projects I hoped to get to during the winter (as well as all the books I wanted to read), and what has resulted from that is our giant winter projects list.  Some things are easy (make a wood box), some things are not so easy (business master plan), but I'm hoping we can make a significant dent in the list if not finish it. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing it is now January, so we better get cracking! Nothing like a massive to-do list to kick off your year, right? :)

Here is the list in it's entirety:

• Office organization -- we have a little room that doubles as our 'theater' and office (we are without a TV, so we watch movies on our computer), and it has been the catch-all for the 'I don't know what to do with this' stuff since we moved.  I'm going to organize those things and build some shelving to help organize the place a little more.
• Fire poker -- Anna's dad has this amazing fire poker, and I was going to try to make one.  Turns out, they're manufactured right in here in New England. Considering my metal-working skills are about nil, we're going with purchasing this one.
• Under-counter shelving/cabinet -- our kitchen has no cabinet uppers (I actually really like this about it), which means limited storage.  We have a breakfast bar that we don't intend to use as such, so I'm going to build some sort of cabinet to put under the bar that will serve as a liquor cabinet/glassware storage.
• Over stove shelving/plate rack -- again, limited storage in the kitchen.  We are going to install some shelving and a plate rack (think vertical plate storage) to free up some of our cabinet space.  This will be an 'upper' of sorts, but open shelving.  We're not building this one, but the plate rack does require us to finally make a decision on plates since they're size dependent.
• Wood cover -- we don't have a dedicated wood shed, so we want to make/get a cover for our wood that is stacked outside.  This can be as simple as leftover metal roofing that we put on top of the pile.
• Book shelf bonanza -- we have amassed a number of books over the years, but we don't have a lot of book shelves here.  I'm going to build a bunch.
• Sourdough perfection -- we have a sourdough started that is a few hundred years old.  We haven't quite mastered the art of gluten free sourdough, but we're working on it.
• Organize/clean 45s -- we were lucky to get my dad's turntable and record collection, which includes a fair number of 45s.  They aren't in any order (except for the ones in boxes -- and those have a card catalog -- glad my dad's so organized!), and they could use a cleaning.  I'm hoping to develop a system for them so we know what's where.
• Drying screens -- we need to be able to successfully dry some of our crops -- herbs, beans, etc.  Last year, we just sort of hung them around or laid them out on the deck.  They really need air from all sides, and we lost a number of beans because of this.  I'm going to make some framed screens and a shelving unit to hold them.
• Composting toilet -- we'd like to be able to start making humanure -- yep, humanure.  This involves composting our waste.  It is perfectly safe, we just need to get the system in place.
• Develop a master plan -- this is a biggie, and it will probably be ever evolving.  We need to put down in writing our plan for this farm.  To whom are we going to sell our products?  On what things do we want to put most of our energy?  Where are we going to sell -- farmers' markets, CSAs, wholesale, farm stand, all of the above? Like I said -- this is a biggie.
• Finish caulking -- we had an energy audit a while back, and I'm slowly making my way through sealing a lot of the cracks in our house.  It's a tedious, slow process, but it makes us warmer and more efficient. :)
• Smoking room woodbox -- now that the smoking room looks so beautiful, we need a place to store wood by the fireplace.  I made a super sweet woodbox for our tiny stove upstairs, and I'd like to make one for the smoking room fireplace.  
• Maple syrup plan -- we tapped about 8 trees last year, and we want to really expand our maple syrup production. We need to make a plan for sap collection, storage, and where the heck we're going to put our sugar shack!
• Black trumpet dogs -- this is more of a research project.  We have lots of black trumpets on our property, and we'd like to teach our dogs to find them for us.  I mean, they have truffle dogs, why not trumpet dogs?  I'm confident we can do this.
• Chicken tractor/bachelor pad -- our male ducks are beating the crap out of each other.  This is due to the fact that we have too many males and not enough females.  Since we're vegetarians, we're not too keen on killing our males.  So -- we're building a bachelor pad for them.  It is basically already completed, we just need to order the roofing and put it on.  It is mobile, and we'll be able to rotate the ducks/chickens around the garden when we want.
• Root cellar plan -- obviously, we can't put in a root cellar until the ground thaws, but we WILL have one next year. We must!  So, we need to figure out where it's going to go, and what it's going to look like.
• Yoga room -- we have a temporary yoga space right now, but I'd love to make our permanent yoga room plan a reality.  Some of this is out of our control, but once the opportunity presents itself, we're on it!
• Squash storage -- we're growing a TON of winter squash this year as it is something we're hoping to sell sooner than later.  Squash doesn't go well in the root cellar because it is too humid in there.  Right now, we have boxes of squash under our bed (actually a pretty common storage method), but we'd like a more organized setup.  I'm going to build some shelving specifically for storing winter squash on the other side of our bedroom -- it's a really long room, and it's cold, which is good for squash storage.
• Firewood -- we have an entirely separate list for places in the woods that we want to cut firewood, but I'll spare you the boring details.  Suffice to say, we want to put up enough wood for next year and the year after.  The winter part of this is just felling the trees, we can buck and split it in the spring/summer/fall sun. :)

Maybe we'll revisit this list in the spring -- I'm going to say that the winter projects list deadline is the day we plant seeds.  At that point, it is most definitely no longer winter….we hope!

Why we do what we do

This is actually a post that I've been meaning to write for a long time, but I just kept putting it off or couldn't find the right way to express my thoughts.  Since we moved here and started this life, the most common questions I get are, "You just finished your PhD, and you're farming? Why on earth would you do that?  Don't you want to use your degree? What about research, won't you miss it?"  I could go on.  Anna gets these questions as well, so it goes both ways.

The short answer is -- yes, I just spent 10 years (yes, 10 years!) in graduate school, and now I'm farming. We couldn't be happier with our decision.  One of the things we find to be the hardest about this decision is explaining it to other people, and for me, feeling like I have to justify our choice.

The short of it is this -- we wanted a slower paced life, a simpler life, a life where we could provide for ourselves as opposed to going to work all day to make money to pay people to do the things we couldn't do for ourselves because we were at work.  We fully recognize that we are totally fortunate to be able to let go of our full time jobs in order to make this life for ourselves. We are working towards being able to make enough income from our farm to stop relying on savings.

Our goal for the first year was to get some infrastructure in place -- build a chicken coop, make a garden, get some beehives, install a greenhouse, etc.  We've gotten a lot accomplished this year, but we still have so many basic infrastructure things on our horizon -- finishing the greenhouse (that is an entire blog post itself -- maybe more than one), building a root cellar, establishing a business plan (this is a biggie -- we have no business experience)….the list goes on.  

Gratuitous picture of Oliver being adorable.

As far as using our degrees, missing research, etc. -- I really don't feel like my time in graduate school was for not.  There are a lot of basic biological principles that we apply to our lives here daily.  Having Anna's vet degree comes in handy at least once a day.  She's acutely aware of things that I wouldn't even notice -- a puffy eye on a chicken, the way an animal's gait changes when they're in pain, etc.  We have some pretty big plans to expand our animals here in the next couple years (stand by for more info), and I know that her skills will be invaluable when that time comes.  And as far as research is concerned -- there are, indeed, agricultural journals, and I have a couple friends who have published in them regarding some experimental techniques, etc.  We aren't looking to do that in the near future, but I'm certain it will be something we do in time. Additionally, all the time we both spent in school instilled a great desire to always be learning.  While I believe that one can always be learning no matter what your profession, I feel this is especially true in what we've decided to do.  Neither of us grew up farming -- Anna has always had a garden, but so much of this is new to us.  The learning curve is steep…and sometimes unforgiving. The amount we've learned in the past year is mind boggling, and I know we have more to learn yet…and always.

…and gratuitous Olive to break up the long flow of text with her cuteness.

Going back to the why of it all -- I really love living more in tune with nature and the seasons. It just seems the more natural way to be. In the summer, we're full of energy and life -- things are growing, the days are long and warm, and we are just more energized.  In the winter, things have settled -- the growing has stopped (or at least slowed), the days are short, dark, and cold, and we find ourselves wanting more sleep and less chaos. You can easily see these trends in nature -- both plants and animals are more active in the summer and spend a lot of that time preparing for winter when things are slower and less abundant. Obviously, not all plants/animals fit into this mold, but you get the idea (the biologist in me required that caveat).

This aspect of our decision was a big one for me.  I truly believe that this cyclical pattern to life is essential instead of the go-go-go to which we've all become so accustomed. Clearly, you don't have to change your entire life to do this, but for us, it was the right thing.  We wanted a life that was more centered on living.  Ironically, or maybe not, it is just this thing that has been the hardest for me lately.  I have become totally unable to happily have a slower winter.  It's like I have ants in my pants.  We have quite the winter projects list, and yet, I feel like I'm not doing anything….and it is driving me CRAZY!

This is something I've really been working on since moving up here -- learning how to chill out.  I blame my 10 years of graduate school for this one. Even after we've spent the day doing a ton of stuff around here, I often have the feeling that I didn't do any 'work' that day.  It is hard for me to grasp that what we used to do on the weekends is now what we do all the time….and on a grander scale.

One of the things that a lot of people who ask us the 'why' question think is that we're not doing anything with ourselves, that we've basically stopped working just because we haven't followed the traditional paths after graduate school. I find, for me, that even I'm struggling with the valuation of the work that we're doing here, so I have to understand when other people think we've lost it.  In my heart, I know we're doing a lot of work, and we're doing good work. I'm still working on getting my mind to agree, and that's ok.

So, in short (or not so short), this is why we do what we do.  And with that….

…gratuitous Baxter, looking adorable as always.

New name, same farm...and the fair

When we started this blog, we were trying to decide what to call our farm.  We often refer to our dogs as 'salty dogs' after they go swimming in our salty river (all the time!) so we settled on the Salty Dog Farm.  I set out to start the blog and found that there was another Salty Dog Farm....and they were in Maine!  I noticed that they hadn't posted anything in a while, and so we decided to stick with the name anyway.  I did know that just because they weren't blogging didn't mean they weren't still farming -- I just figured our paths wouldn't cross.

Well -- this weekend was the Maine Organic Farm and Garden Association Common Ground Country Fair.  This event is HUGE -- about 20,000 people visit each day, and it lasts for 3 days.

When we were looking through the program ahead of time to figure out what talks to go see, we noticed....Salty Dog Farm.  They were at the farmer's market at the fair.  So, we're changing our tune.

We are now Reachwood Farm.  Really, it should have been this way from the start.  The land we're living on is called Reachwood Forest so it seems fitting we should be Reachwood Farm.  We are new to the farming thing, and we don't want to ruffle any feathers along the way.

With regard to the fair -- whoa.  It was so nice to visit the fair with a new focus on things.  We talked to experienced beekeepers, root cellar builders, farmers, and many more folks that have information to pass along and share.  I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I'm really looking forward to winter.  We have one season under our belts, we have learned a TON, and we have so many plans that we want to research and flesh out over the winter.  We've already started our winter projects list, and it is way more than we can possibly do in the winter, but at least we won't get bored. :)