Weather forecasters in our area were worked into a state of real excitement by the potential for a real old-timey Nor’Easter moving up the coast early Tuesday, and we had forecasts ranging from fifteen inches of snow to one inch of snow, and everything in between. All of that uncertainty made me doubt that we’d see much snow around here, and we ended up not really getting any snow at all. I was excited about seeing another round of solid winter weather, but missing out on a big snowfall certainly makes getting school groups up to the farm easier. The ten day forecast looks to include some pretty nice sugaring weather in the coming week, but I think that we are going to hold off on tapping until the week after next. Next week is February vacation week here in Massachusetts, so we do not have any visiting school groups scheduled to be on the farm over that stretch. We’ll tap trees and fire up the evaporator with kids the following week, and hopefully we’ll have a good stretch of appropriate weather and a strong sap run. The forestry team cut, split and stacked quite a bit of soft-wood sugaring wood this week, and it is beginning to look like we’ll have the fuel needed to keep the arch hot and the sap boiling when the time comes. The forestry team was also out in the woods with the horses this week, and they moved a few cordwood logs to their log landing. These are busy days in forestry as we prep for sugaring while still deep in the midst of wood-stove season.
Brad and Grace spent the first part of this week using our larger tractor to remove the accumulated bedding in the handy-steers area beneath the horse-barn, and piling it all down at the bottom of the barn pasture. That nice mix of manure and straw will compost down there through the spring and summer, and should be ready to be spread on our grazing acreage this coming fall. There isn’t a ton of head-room in the steers bedded space, and their horns get awfully close to the rafters by late winter when the bedding material has piled up down there. We have been accustomed to bedding that area with straw, but Grace is going to try using wood shavings for the next few weeks to see if this change might allow us to keep the bedding a bit shallower and give us more time before we have to dig everything out again. I think that the steers sank about two feet lower after their area was dug out, and we had to make some renovations to their feeder to give them easier access to the hay inside. We also added a few vertical beams to the leading edge of the hay feeder to limit the amount that the steers can swing their heads in that space, and hopefully filling the hay feeder will feel a bit easier at chore time. Those handy-steers were out on the farm a bit this week, though they did not get out into the forest for any log moving work. They benefit from a regular routine and regular work, so just getting in the yoke and walking around under command is enough to keep them focussed and attentive.
Pre-spring seeding in the hoop-houses continued this week, with all kinds of early season crops getting a head-start on the growing season. Greens, peas, turnips, radishes and scallions were all started, and a birch sapling pea trellis was started in the smaller hoop-house. This week also saw the conclusion of apple tree pruning for the year, and work has now begun on the peach trees. The stakes are pretty high doing this work on those long lived apple trees, but the peaches, which only survive 5-10 years here in New England, seem like a bit less of a commitment. We don’t have too many peach trees, so I expect that they will all be pruned up and ready for some spring buds and flowering in the next week or two. Crop plans for the coming growing season are getting finished up, and packages of seeds have started showing up in the mailbox, so the true start of seeding season must be right around the corner.
The Farm School Manual 