December 10th – December 17th

No snow plowing yet

This was a nice, dry, sunny week here on the farm, and after last weekend’s deluge, dry weather was a really nice change. About three inches of rain fell on the farm Sunday and Monday of last week, and with the growing season fully over, there is not much absorption going on out there. Our livestock yards were fully saturated, and the rivers and streams in our area are now running very full. With more than two inches of rain again forecasted to fall Sunday and Monday of this week, I will certainly be keeping an eye on the Millers River, Tully Brook, and the other bodies of water around the farm. I was pretty satisfied with how the farm came through the wet weather last week, but I was really pleased that we went through a nice dry week between these two rain events so that things could recover before the next soaking. There does not appear to be any snow or any real cold weather in the ten-day forecast, so it looks like we won’t be getting any classic New England winter weather any time soon. This rainy winter weather has got me dreaming again about renovating our dairy cow’s winter housing and feeding setup, and I spent some time this week measuring and drawing and imagining some work on the back of the barn that might really improve things. 

Winter greens under cover in the hoop-house

Grace and I rode down to Deerfield on Thursday to pick up sixty-five bales of straw, and we have loaded that material into the corner of the beef herd’s winter barn for use in bedding their loafing area and the dairy cow’s free-stalls. Bales from our usual supplier cost $10 each this winter, and even more at retail, so these bales, at $7 each, felt like a great deal. They were also made on the farm in Deerfield, and seem to be of really high quality, so I am excited that we connected this supplier. We like to use straw as bedding because the stiff tubes of the straw plant stem hold up under use and sustain a certain loft, spring, and permeability in a way that hay does not. Hay tends to form a solid wet mat when used for bedding, while straw stays a bit more open and airy. The straw we picked up this week has nice strong stems, even better than our usual product which often appears to have been over-processed and chopped, and I think that we are going to have some nice bedding and some nice compost afterwards. Though our region used to produce quite a bit of straw in years past, we seem to have had access only to imported Canadian straw for a while now, and I am also really happy to have found some made right here in Massachusetts. 

The dairy cows have enjoyed dry weather this week.

After Dr. Ledoux and Taylor gave Eclipse and Rio hormone injections last week to help advance their breeding cycles, both cows came into heat on Monday and Bradley had a chance to try breeding both. Iris also cycled into heat this week and a breeding attempt was made, so the middle of September next year could be a busy time in our calving pen. We won’t know if any of these cows are pregnant for a few weeks, but we would like to finish up this round of breeding soon and have all those ladies on their way to next year’s production cycle. We’ve found that dairy cows can get into real trouble if they don’t breed back in a timely manner, and that an extended dry period can lead to dangerous weight gain that can complicate the next freshening. We certainly try to give every cow at least two months of rest between her last milking and delivering her next calf, and we try to use those months to improve her body condition as much as we can, but we would like to avoid an extended dry period. We are not facing the same financial pressure that most dairies are under to keep the cows making milk as many days in a year as is possible, but we attempt to sustain similar timing for the well being of the cow. The importance of this timing was a hard lesson for me to learn, and I always imagined that a cow would benefit from a lengthy dry period where she wasn’t making milk and could rest. However, experience has shown us that these cows, genetically selected to make calves and a lot of milk, can get into real trouble if they aren’t producing. We also moved Pancake and Risey down to their pen in the beef barn this week, and they will be released to join that herd soon. Pancake is a 2022 heifer that we don’t plan to keep in the milking herd, and Risey is Rio’s 2023 bull calf that we are all ready to have out of the milking barn. Both will spend the next year or more in the beef herd before processing. Penguin’s 2022 heifer calf Patricia has started her training to be a real milk cow, and she is trying to figure out how to use Pancake’s stall in the barn when the herd comes in for grain and milking. 

The chicken gather in the morning to warm up.

Our Chicken Coop students made lunch for everyone on Monday, and we all really enjoyed the pizza and other delicious snacks they prepared. My favorite, of course, was the amazing S’mores pizza with marshmallows and chocolate melted on top, and I ate that one for my main course rather than for dessert. There was also a ‘Big-Mac’ pizza with a farm attempt at McDonald’s special sauce, and some truly remarkable cheesy potato fries perfectly designed for significant over-eating. This was a wonderful chance to get together here at the end of our programming season and to celebrate with the Coopers as they head off for their winter break. 

December 3rd – December 9th

Jersey cows are often described as the most curious breed of cow.

On Friday we had the veterinarian out to take a look at cow #44 in our beef herd who had a badly cracked front left hoof (see entry Nov 12th- 19th). We bedded the beef winter barn with some fresh straw, pushed the cow inside the barn, and closed the gate behind her. Dr. Ledoux gave her a quick shot of sedative and she was laid right out. We scraped and rinsed the crack in her hoof, and found that it had started, as is usually the case, from an absence inside the hoof that had forced an exit. These swelling fluid filled places develop from some kind of foreign object or their accompanying infection, and they’ll grow and press and cause quite a bit of discomfort until they force their way to bursting out. They can take any kind of meandering path as they force their way to discharge, following the path of least resistance, even if that’s not the shortest route. In this case, the absence looked to have forced its way up along the inside of the front hoof wall, though it appears to have finally burst out of the bottom of the cow’s hoof. The damage done just behind the hoof wall by the swelling of the absence led to the long split in the hoof and a large exit hole at the leading edge of her hoof. We cut everything back as much as we could, packed the cleaned up opening and crack with antibiotic paste, and wrapped it all up. It looked like the cow was mending pretty well by herself even before our treatment, but with wet muddy winter conditions in store for the next few months, we decided to help things along a bit while we could. #44 will wear her wrap until it falls off, and we’ll keep a close eye on her hoof and her gait as she navigates the beef herd’s winter housing. 

This year’s winter piglets are settling into their yard.

Four winter piglets arrived on the farm this week, and they have successfully moved into our piglet yard just east of the greenhouse and next to the chicken’s winter house. These little pigs came from our usual supplier in Barre, and I have high hopes that they will grow up big and healthy like the others we’ve purchased over the past few years. It is great to have a quality piglet supplier that we can rely on to sell us healthy thriving animals, and we’ll do our best to keep these little pigs comfortable and well fed. They’ll get any extra milk coming out of the dairy, and they have an automatic feeder that they can eat from at any time. They have a nice little log house with a deep nest of hay and straw inside, and they’ll snuggle together in there through the winter and stay pretty warm and toasty. One piglet is a bit smaller than the other three, but I expect that they’ll all even out pretty nicely in the end and we’ll do our best to keep the little one well fed if it looks like she is losing out around the feeder. 

Spinach under row cover in a Flat Field hoop-house.

The veggie team began their annual review of this past year’s vegetable production data, looking to glean valuable information about how each crop performed here on our land and in our growing systems. These insights will inform decisions about variety selections for next year, rotation choices about where to plant crops within the pattern that we use to fight pest pressure and address soil fertility, and new techniques to experiment with to support better performance. This analysis is really the magic moment in the year of vegetable work where the farmers do their best to gather as much information as they can, learn everything that they can from it, and use that learning to inform choices for the coming year. This annual exercise should lead to gradual improvement in our work, our understanding of the work, the land we work with, and the products that come out of it. 

The veggie equipment shed is ready to shelter our gear.

Our new vegetable equipment storage shed was finished up this week, and with more than 2.5 inches of rain forecasted to fall on the farm Sunday and Monday, the work was finished up just in time. We can stash all kinds of vegetable farming equipment undercover now, and it will be nice to know that the BCS is happy and dry when we’re watching the rain pour down. This rainy forecast certainly does not bode well for our cow winter yards and housing, but we’ll do our best to keep everyone dry and comfortable until the sun comes back out. The forecast is calling for temperatures to drop fast after the storm passes, and it is this cycle of heavy rain followed by winter cold that has really got me thinking more about developing a better winter housing setup for our dairy herd. The beef herd has a pretty good setup over at their winter barn, and they are a bit more hearty than our little Jerseys, but the milker’s winter environment is not great and I would really love to improve it. We have a few more dairy cows to breed before we’re done for the year, and we’re trying to focus on getting everyone bred and ready for 2024 before we get too late in the season. A cow bred here in the middle of December would deliver a calf in September of next year, and we’re happy to have calves as late as November, so we have a bit longer to try breeding before we’ll give up until summer. 

November 26th – December 3rd

The kale and chard endure.

We got the beef herd’s dry hay feeder up on a couple of old railroad ties this fall to lift it out of the mud and muck that inevitably develops around it over the course of the winter hay feeding season. The cows spend quite a bit of their time standing around the feeder eating, and the waste hay and manure that ends up surrounding it makes for messy conditions. Though the runners on the bottom of the feeder are made of treated lumber, they have been degrading, and I was able to sneak some treated beams into the yard and to get the whole contraption up on top of those in an effort to keep it all a bit drier. This lifted the sides of the feeder by about ten inches, and we found that the cows could no longer reach all the way into the center of the feeder to access all of the hay. I removed the 2×4 rail that had been installed around the sides about a foot up from the lip of the feeder to keep the calves from climbing inside, and that gave the cows full access to all of the hay inside. However, as expected with the rail removed, the calves started climbing into the feeder, and that led to the hay inside getting soiled. This week, I put the 2×4 rail back onto the feeder, this time about three feet up from the lip, with the idea that the cows will be able to get at the hay by putting their heads between the lip and the rail, but that the rail will still keep the calves from jumping up and in. Like so many things we do farming, we’ll see how it goes and adapt accordingly. 

This will next fall’s pile to be spread on the dairy pastures.

We spread the large composted manure pile from behind the dairy barn on the Bunkhouse and Pole Barn pastures this week, and moved the younger piles together to form next fall’s windrow of composting manure. We cleared the small pile just outside the back of the the barn where kids dump our daily barn cleanup collection so that that area could get a little renovation and fix up, and a drainage line and a bunch of stone fill was added in an effort to establish a dry and level place to safely manage the manure pile. That small pile, and last year’s collection, were mixed and laid out together in a long windrow, and that will cook together until next fall’s manure spreading season. All of this work marks the end of the compost work for the year, and that yard should be able to sit pretty dormant through the cold weather while the worms and microbes do their work inside the warm piles. We will start a new pile just outside the back door of the dairy as we remove the bedding and manure produced by the daily work of the milking operation, and that pile should grow and grow for most of next year until we’ve reached capacity and have to move into the next big windrow. 

Hoop-house work is now the focus of our veggie crew.

Veggie work has shifted almost fully into the hoop-houses and greenhouse, though there was a bit of blackberry pruning this week too, and even a little bit of root vegetable harvest to finish up. Parsnips and sweet potatoes came out of the ground this week, and potatoes were washed and bagged for storage. The veggie team spent part of the week fixing up the hoop-houses and green-houses to make sure that they’re ready to endure the rough winter weather that’s sure to come, and holes in the plastic were patched, wiggle wire was snapped down, and wooden parts were replaced. Storage crops also need pretty regular management to keep them in good shape for the months to come, and anything that looks like it might be going bad has to be culled out. The veggie team sorted cabbage this week, and wrapped individual cabbages in newspaper to help them endure. 

The new veggie equipment storage shed is taking shape.

Work on the small vegetable equipment storage shed advanced well this week, and that building is really starting to take shape. The gravel pad has now been filled with a small structure, and there are hoops up in the air and the whole thing is already covered with a plastic sheeting roof. The back wall is framed, but work still remains on a door and siding. The ten day forecast looks like there is some pretty nasty weather headed our way next week, so it will be great to have that covered area to shelter the BCS tiller and other supplies that we would like to keep dry. Most of our other farm equipment has been parked in good out of the way places by now, and I was able to get our various water wagons stashed for the winter, tops on and valves open so they can hopefully endure whatever conditions this winter brings.