June 18th -June 25th

Shorty and Rosa stay inside during the heat of the day.

Farm School summer programming starts on Monday, so we spent most of this week meeting, planning, and getting things ready to host kids again. A wonderful group of summer staff arrived on the farm and needed orientation, training and a chance to settle in, and we had to make sure that the schedule, facilities and plans are in place to welcome kids into the work of the farm for the summer. The farm is going full speed now here at the end of June, and there is plenty of work to get done for everyone who joins us. The veggie fields are flourishing, the animals are looking great out there eating all of that fresh spring growth, and the barn swallows are zipping around everything catching bugs to feed their fledgelings. The barn swallows, I think my favorite part of the season, will try to raise two groups of chicks in a summer, and they are almost done with the first set here at the end of June. We experienced a super dry stretch from the middle of May through until just about a week ago, and I am pretty certain that the insect populations that the swallows depend on were negatively affected by the lack of moisture. I am wondering if the tight cycle of hatching and fledging that the birds follow has been impacted or delayed by the dry weather and reduced insect numbers, but they do seem to be having a great time now that the rain has returned and the insect populations are exploding. The adult birds catch insects in the air and feed them to their fledged chicks in mid-air as they are learning to fly and figure out life outside of the nest, and this practice is one of the most amazing things that I have ever witnessed at the farm.

Recent rain has gotten the beef pastures looking good.

After the dry weather that dominated our spring, and the little bit of rain that came last week, we have now entered a really unique weather pattern that I have not seen around here in years. Our ten-day forecast looks to be an almost identical repeat of the same thing every day for ten days at least, with intense humidity, high temperatures on either side of eighty and night time lows in the middle sixties, and thunderstorms every afternoon. It seems that a series of large storms will pass over us spinning warm humid air up from the south, and that upper level air will stay cool enough that the two air masses will rub up on each other enough to churn up storms every afternoon once things get warmed up. It has been quite a while since I have seen ten consecutive days with the same weather forecast, and I wonder how we’ll all hold up under such repetitive and humid conditions. I am happy to get the rain though, and eager to see our pastures drink their fill and get growing again. 

Penguin and her 2023 heifer calf Patricia, resting in the calving pen.

Our dairy cow Penguin delivered a calf on Monday morning, and after two good days of mothering and milking, she has run into all kinds of trouble. At the time of this writing, I expect that she will be euthanized today or tomorrow after several visits from the veterinarians over the past week. The general diagnosis is that her liver is failing her and that this failure is leading to a bunch of metabolic and physical difficulties. She has been down since Wednesday, and has not eaten over that stretch, though we have pumped food into her stomach. Similar to the demise of Phoenix last spring, Penguin’s liver seems to have been unable to handle the stresses of calving and freshening, and she has had both Milk Fever and Ketosis, and seems to have lost the ability to get up. Penguin was born in 2016, so she is about seven years old by now, and has been a great cow for us over that stretch. She was really difficult to breed in her youth, and she used to join the beef herd every fall to spend some time with their bull, then come back to us in the dairy to rejoin the milking lineup. I think that she is the herd boss right now, having replaced Phoenix, so I guess the girls will be looking for a new leader again. Her calf, named Patricia after her grandmother Patty, is doing great, staying by her mother, and drinking three bottles of milk per day. I am optimistic that we’ll be able to get Rio to adopt Patricia when the time comes, and she has raised two calves at the same time often before. This has certainly been a difficult stretch for our cow herds, and I have buried several animals over the past couple of months. Rio ran into plenty of difficulty after her calving, and it was only through some pretty intensive intervention by the veterinarian that she pulled through. Livestock farming can break your heart if you let it, and the connections that we develop with these wonderful animals, so rewarding as we partner with them through so much, can cut deep when things go bad at the end. We do the best we can by all of the animals that we raise, and strive to keep them comfortable leading quality lives until their last day. 

Another older dairy cow, Eclipse, is due to deliver her 2023 calf at the end of next week, and we are all hoping that she can navigate a smoother and more successful passage through this process. She is a year younger that Penguin, and comes from a different genetic line, so I am hopeful things will go better. 

June 11th – June 18th

A 2022 Jersey steer from the dairy herd, now looking regal with the beef herd.

There were no visiting students on the farm this week, and things were pretty quiet with a lot of farmers taking a little time off before summer programming gets going. The work of the farm had to continue though, and the pastures and veggie fields demanded as much attention as ever. We did get a bit of rain this week, with a couple little storms passing over the farm and dropping less than a quarter inch of rain each. Then Saturday, starting in the morning, we finally got the deep soaking rain that we’ve been waiting for, and just over an inch of rain fell through the day. This extended steady precipitation was just what the doctor ordered for our parched soil, and I am hopeful that our irrigation system can now get a rest for a while and our pastures will see a jump in growth. The pastures have sustained some growth through the dry weather that has dominated our region over the past few weeks, and a walk through our hay fields shows some moderate regrowth after cutting about a month ago, but things had slowed down from where we’d like them to be in the middle of June, and the landscape was dry and browning. 

The boy goats got a new feeder this week.

Our dairy herd finished their first grazing rotation this week and they have started in on their second trip around the pastures. We did manage to clip almost every paddock in their rotation after they grazed it the first time this spring, and most areas are looking pretty nice for our second rotation. Some of the later paddocks in drier areas of the farm are looking pretty thin and faded, but I hope that this latest rain might give them the moisture that they need to green up and to get a little fuller. I don’t think that we’ll clip the pastures after this second rotation, hoping that the cows will consume and trample enough to keep things under control. Our clipping after the initial grazing helps to knock down the taller stemmier plant species that we do not what to thrive in our grazing acreage, and ideally this only takes one clipping per year. The Milkweed has popped up in pretty dramatic fashion now after our clipping however, and while we really try to leave this plant in place for the Monarch butterflies, we will keep an eye on it and try to make sure it doesn’t get too pervasive. The dry conditions always make me think twice about clipping pastures, since I worry that in drought conditions, we’ll be desperate for every blade of grass and will regret having cut any, so I’m really glad that it finally rained. 

Our 2023 beef calves are both beautiful little heifer, growing already.

The last potentially bred cow in our beef herd went into labor on Saturday morning this week, and after six hours without any progress, I called in the vet. I noticed what looked like a calf’s tail hanging out of the cow’s back end, and I was concerned that the calf was in a breech position in the birth canal. Dr. Ledoux came out to the beef barn around 5pm Saturday, and since we had been able to get the cow closed up into a pen inside the barn, we were able to halter her up, turn on a light, and to have a pretty nice place to address her condition. With a lot of pushing and pulling, Dr. Ledoux was able to get a hold of the calf’s two rear legs, get some pulling chains on them, and to pull the calf out. Unfortunately, the big beautiful bull calf was already dead, but the mother cow seems to have come through the ordeal in relatively good shape. She is a four year old cow, big and strong and healthy, and I expect that one of the calves already born will find her udder and benefit from all of the good milk that I think she is going to make. I always debate what the most humane course of action to follow is when an animal delivers a dead baby, wondering if immediate removal or letting her figure out that the baby is not viable, is better. Both seem heartbreaking to me, and watching our mother cow lick and lick on her dead baby was really sad. The bond that mother animals form with their newborns is usually super strong, and we have fought cows, sheep and goats who would not leave the spot where they think their deceased baby ought to be, even after we’ve removed it. Though it isn’t pleasant, we left the dead calf with his mother this time, and our hope is that she will realize that he is not viable, give up on him in due time, and be willing to walk out of the barn and to rejoin the herd. She is getting all kinds of hormonal signals to care for her calf, and it will take time and strength to get past all of that. This latest birth means that we should be finished with calving for the year, unless I am mistaken, with just two heifer calves added to the herd. 

We have been restoring both end walls of the dairy-barn hay loft.

The irrigation system has kept our veggie fields pretty happy this spring, and the dry weather really helps limit the proliferation of both pests and disease on the plants. Extended wet periods breed bacteria and fungus that can hurt our veggies, so they are all looking really nice at this point in a dry season. The lack of rain did put a pretty good hurt on this year’s strawberry crop, and that season seems to be about at its end here in the middle of June. Those berries, so dependent on filling up with water to take on a good size, did not have the moisture to develop in great numbers this year. The deer also did some real damage to the strawberry plants last year, and we just don’t have the number of plants that we’d like to have in condition to produce. We have set up a strong deer fence this year, but the struggle continues against these super athletic and determined locals. 

The dairy-barn roof is getting solar panels, so we’ve been shoring up the end walls.

The sheep and goats keep moving all over the farm, browsing on the leafy plants along the stone walls and in those tough to reach corners where we don’t want to go. The goats are down along the road at the bottom of the farm, trying to keep the growth back from the high tensile fence at the bottom of the dairy pastures, and the sheep are out under the oak trees that hold the swing in the Old Sheep Pasture. Both groups need strong fences and shade, so we are somewhat limited in where we can put them, but I think that I have a couple more spots that they can go before we have to restart their rotation and return to areas that they have already been to earlier this spring. I have been entertaining thoughts of combining these two groups, since they are under the same management system, but I really wonder what the big feisty doe goats would do if those lambs were in the same pen with them. We’ll see how it all goes, and I’ll be sure to let you know about it.

June 4th – June 11th

Cow #10 delivered this little heifer calf this week. That’s her first calf, and they seem to be doing well together.

The weather stayed cool and cloudy this week, but we didn’t get any real measurable rainfall, and the farm continued dry and dusty. The cloudy conditions were mixed with the incredible smoke that has blanketed New England this week, and it was often quite difficult to tell what the weather really was doing since visibility was so limited. The Farm School sits up on a ridge above Athol and Orange, and we usually have pretty nice views across the valley. At the peak of the smoky conditions Tuesday and Wednesday, it was nearly impossible to see town down below us, the Adams Slaughterhouse on the ridge opposite was completely obstructed by the smoke. Working outside was pretty unpleasant during the middle of the week, and my throat was feeling rough by the ends of most days this week. Conditions seemed to be improving towards the end of the week, and hopefully we’ll be back to clearer air next week.  A bit of rain falling through the smoke might have done some good to clean things up, but we’ll have to keep waiting for some real rain to fall around here. Some hay producers have taken a first cutting off their hay fields already, and some are waiting for more moisture to thicken growth up a bit, and our hay-loft is still empty at this point. Work started in the hay-loft of the dairy barn this week to shore up the end walls a bit in preparation for the installation of a solar array on the roof, and that work has done a lot to straighten those sagging walls up nicely. It looks like this will also be our opportunity to repair and restore the doors on the north end wall of the building that have been coming apart gradually over the past few years. I will try to include some images of that work once it has progressed a bit next week.

Our smaller (older) Deere tractor is waiting for a part to resume proper functioning, and we have it opened up a bit for access.

A second calf was born in the beef herd this week, this one to a first time mother cow who is slowly warming up to her new responsibilities. The new pair had a tough first couple of hours while the mother was uncertain about what exactly was going on, and what her new calf needed, but we finally saw some successful nursing and they seem to be doing well here a couple of days after birth. I did have to carry this new heifer calf to the herd’s new paddock on Friday, since the road crossing was a bit too much for her to navigate after less than 24hrs on the ground, but her mother seems to be paying attention and is doing plenty of rough cleaning and tending, and I am optimistic that they’ll continue to improve. We have one more potentially bred cow in the herd, and I am hopeful we can get one more healthy addition to the group in the coming days or weeks. The rented bull usually arrives on the scene some time in August, and it would be really nice to have all the cows well finished with calving by then, cycling again, and ready to re-breed and start the cycle over again. We love to have the cows bred as close together as is possible, and at the start of the breeding season, so that the following calving season can be quickly resolved and it can all start again. I am not inclined to be managing calving with the bull around, so we really want to be done with that before we move on to the next stage.

The beef herd moved into Secret Pasture Saturday evening and went straight to work on the Bittersweet hedgerows. Who needs goats…

I built a small fenced yard on the side of the new brooder at the dairy farm, and our growing pullets are now able to go outside if they choose to. I also put together a quick set of roosts for inside the pullet’s house, so now they have a place to go up and sit for the night. They had been trying to roost on every weird little spot they could find, since they don’t really like sleeping on the ground, so the roosts make them much more comfortable. I think that with the addition of the small yard, those birds can spend another month or so in the brooder before we have to find them some larger and more exciting accommodations. Once they are all fully feathered and large enough where they cannot just squeeze through the spaces in their poultry electric netting fence, we can move them into one of the egg-mobiles, set them up somewhere close to the barnyard inside an electric fence, and let them start scratching and pecking their way through anything they can find. These girls should start laying eggs some time this fall, so between now and then we just have to keep them entertained, well fed, and safe. 

The farm has been a hive of busy preparation this week as we work to get ready for our annual Big Pig Gig fundraiser at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. We’ll host our community of donors for a celebration, dinner, auction and music to raise funds to support the ongoing work of TFS. We try to bring some of the farm into Cambridge, so we’ve been working this week to gather some of those stand-out materials that give the farm landscape its character, and to pack them up for the trip into town. We would love your support!

May 29th – June 4th

Nothing better than spotted pigs.

Our eleven summer piglets arrived on the farm Wednesday, and they have moved into the piglet yard in the barnyard near the greenhouse. They’ll stay in that yard for a few weeks, learning to use the automatic water system and learning to respect the electric fence. Taylor is still working on the pig’s large forest fence out in the woods, and once that is ready, and once we are confident that the pigs are big enough and trained up, they’ll head out there for the summer. As usual, we’ll put their feeder and water system up on a wooden deck and that will be the center of their upkeep and care. We’ll use the deck to catch the pigs in the fall and send them up an attached chute to the trailer at loading time. These piglets came from the same supplier as our last few batches, and I am looking forward to seeing them grow up big and beautiful in our system. 

This new heifer is already paying attention and really fast.

We also saw our first 2023 calf in the beef herd this week, and the little heifer is out with the herd following her mother around and looking just about perfect. These calves reach full speed and strength about thirty-six to forty-eight hours after birth, and I wasn’t able to tag this calf within that window. Now she’s much too fast and agile for me to catch her out in the field, so we’ll have to wait until her fall vaccination to get our hands on her. I usually have the chance to grab a calf in the hours just after birth and quickly tag and band them, if needed, before they really get their legs under themselves, but this one snuck by me. I am really pleased that we got a heifer this year as we work to rebuild our herd after some heavy culling the last few years. We had a very old herd after many years of strong and healthy production, and we had to turn over quite a few animals that seemed to have reached the end of their productive lives. We have two breeding cows in the herd now, and two more that would be first calf heifers if they calve this summer, so it would be nice to get some solid heifers this year to give ourselves a stronger core group to grow around. This beautiful heifer is a good start.

This has been the strongest year for Dandelions that I have ever seen.

This was a really hot dry week here on the farm, though a cold front did finally come through our area Friday evening with a bit of rain along with it. Only two tenths of an inch of rain fell, but we are happy to have any rain that we can get after so many weeks of dry weather. I think that we broke high temperature records on Thursday and Friday, with our thermometer reading up above ninety degrees both afternoons, but things changed Friday evening and we are down in the fifties and sixties now. The heat and lack of rain has accelerated the growing season, and there were strawberries harvested this week on the farm, about two weeks ahead of our usual timing. Our pastures are still growing, though slowly, and those forage plants are trying to produce viable seed as quickly as they can in these challenging conditions. There looks to be a chance of rain most days next week, and we could be in good shape if we could get a solid stretch of rainy weather to re-soak our soil. 

A little ‘tall grass grazing’ in the Barn pasture at the dairy.

We finished our first grazing rotation with the dairy herd this week, and we were able to clip the pastures behind them throughout the rotation. I am eager to see how adopting this practice will affect our pastures and grazing through the rest of the season, though extended drought might compromise this experiment a bit. We are facing significant pressure from bed-straw and invasive rose in our pastures, so clipping everything back after grazing might help knock those back and give our native grasses and legumes a leg up on the next round of growth. I would love to have the capacity to clip behind the beef herd as well, but their larger and more spread out pastures and paddocks would make that level of management a full time endeavor. I usually get the chance to clip those beef pastures once each at some point in the grazing season, but not usually all in sequence as we were able to do with the dairy pastures this time around. 

Basil and tomatoes; almost all the ingredients for a perfect summer sandwich.

The doe goats and this year’s kids continued their tour of the dairy farm stonewalls and hedgerows this week, and they cleared brushy growth from the walls between the Poll-barn and Sawmill pastures, between the Sawmill and NorthWest pastures, and now they are up between the Poll-barn pasture and the upper fields. They do not seem to find invasive Bittersweet palatable, and they are leaving it behind, undermining the success of this project a great deal. The Bittersweet is a really aggressive viney plant reaching out of every field edge trying to climb and strangle everything that it can reach, and we undertook this goat project in large part to fight this invasive creeper. The goats seem more inclined to eat the Bittersweet in the fall, so we have to endure a lot of growth in the spring and summer before we start pushing back against this particular plant later in the season. The lambs are eager to eat Bittersweet, but they are still too small to go out into the more distant corners of the farm. They are now cleaning up the wall between our compost yard and Flat Field East, and they are in near constant conversation with every farmer within sight complaining about something or other.