Category Archives: Night time

Barns, Chickens, Eggs, Farm, Health, Horses, Lambing, Night time, Seasons, Shetland Sheep, Vermont Sheep and Goat Association

Monday Night Minus Football

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We watched the Superbowl last evening.  I’m not an ace where football strategy is concerned, but I enjoyed the game.  I’m still wondering what I thought of the halftime show…

And here we are, the Monday-night-after.   Our Paint gelding, ‘Ruger Jac’, didn’t want to throw his weight around amongst the girls when it was time for dinner  this evening- a sure sign he wasn’t feeling well.  He had to be convinced to take his rations and convinced to come into the barn.  The girls tired of waiting for him, so they motored past to get to the hay.

I called in my reinforcements to help me complete the chores.  Jim & Char came out to help finish filling water buckets and then Char and I observed and inspected Ruger’s locomotion.  The ground is so darn hard and frozen everywhere that it’s tough to get a read on his gait and what exactly is going on.  There are ice-filled depressions in the footing around the barn and in the pasture so that moving evenly over the terrain is tricky.  We are sure he is in discomfort because of his tentative behavior and so we filled a stall full of shavings for him, loaded him up with rations and treated him with a dose of Bute as an anti-inflammatory for the night.

In the morning we’ll spend more time trying to assess what’s up, calling the vet if necessary.

I hope he’s right as rain tomorrow -it breaks my heart when my kids and my animals don’t feel well.

Ruger Jac's typical clownish behavior with SJ

Ruger Jac’s typical clownish behavior with SJ

Char had a pile of homework to attend to so Jim helped me with sheep-wrassling and we de-wormed the flock before I move them into new pasture in a couple of days.  This is our attempt to keep the flocks parasite-load down and to rotate pastures, allowing the freezing winter temps to kill any shed worms.  This is a way to minimize grazing in infested pastures.

I was able to do some exams on the ewes, too, to see who was approximately how far along and I think that the race is on between Ruva & Maggie for who will lamb first.  Fat bellies on those girls!  I’m so excited for lambs!

Last, but not least, I had Jim assist me with the dark-of-night covert chicken-wrangling.  We ferried fat hens from one coop to the other so as to empty the smaller coop, readying it for a new purpose.  Then, from the large coop, we retrieved the Faverolle Rooster, ‘Almonzo’, and his girls to the Love Shack.  We’ve got an order for Faverolle chicks to fill this spring and in order to ensure that the eggs we hatch out are purebred, it was time to sequester the micro-flock to their own quarters.

I’m not showing favoritism to the Faverolles, it’s just that there is this special request.  However, they are a delightfully tempered, beautiful and hardy breed so it will be fun to have more of them this year.

Join me in praying that they’re not all roosters when they hatch…

Our Faverolle Flock, last summer at 2 days old

Our Faverolle Flock, last summer at 2 days old

dreams, Farm, Gardens, Morning, Neighbors, Night time, Pies, Recipes, Saturday, Trees

From Tree to Table

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I played my phone messages when I got home last night:

“Tammy, this is your neighbor Paul.  Could you give us a call?  We’re having a sort of peach crisis.”

So at 10 p.m., Paul delivered a bushel basket of peaches, harvested from one extremely prolific tree in their backyard.  Apparently my delivery was the last of about 5 that he’d made. Up  to their eyeballs in produce, with wife Shelley just getting home to recover from carpal tunnel surgery, Paul claimed that he wasn’t handling the peach-load very gracefully on his own.

One man’s trash, another woman’s treasure, right?

Paul & Shelley had no idea how much I would cherish the delivery. I’ve got this little pie-operation going and I’d run completely out of peaches in particular.  Before listening to the phone messages, I’d been scheming over my choice of ingredients for a dozen pies to prepare for this morning’s market.  A beau-coup box of plums were in the kitchen, awaiting pitting, but the word on the street, (or, at the market), was that plum pies were less desirable and peach pies were the bomb.

I ate one perfectly ripe, fuzzy, juicy and bursting fruit before bed and dreamed of summer.

Good Neighbor Peaches

Pretty plums, my favorite, awaiting preparation.

I plunge them into boiling water, then ice-cold water to easily slip the skins.

Fresh slices for the pies.

An army of peach pies,

one peekaboo-plum pie,

and this morning’s delivery is in the books!

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Eine Kleine Bee Swarm

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First off, weighing heavily on my mind and heart this weekend is the fact that I haven’t seen my white peacock, “Figaro”, for two days.

Where are you, Figaro?  Please come home soon.

Such a Sunday.  This morning we attended a concert given by youth at a summer music camp in the Carriage Barn of the historic Park McCullough House in North Bennington.  My two daughters are violinists and one was there as a camper, the other as an assistant staff member.  So lovely to see them playing side by side in the sea of young faces.  ”Eine Kleine Nacht Music” and “Allegro -from Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G” were featured by their ensembles and I thought they were perfectly performed.  I always say that I have to pull them off the ceiling after orchestra nights, and this week’s practicing and performance yielded no exception.

Dear Julietta, a friend of the family’s, arrived for an afternoon of assistance on the farm.  She is an extremely hard-working young woman and interns in Rupert, Vermont at “Merck Forest” which focuses on sustainable agriculture and living.  She loves to come to our place and visit while weeding, tending the animals, working in the kitchen or just about anything.  She makes amazing biscotti, by the way, and today brought a recipe which featured her own homemade candied orange peel.  I ate almost all of it.

Following a lunch of scrambled eggs with chives and cheddar, we weeded the vegetable garden.  Julietta weeds like a fiend. I’d love to employ her every day and reveal the true Eden that is beneath the jungle-growth around here!  Let us just say that a dent was made.

While I ran a very brief errand, my bees swarmed.  Yes, they up and swarmed.  And flew away.

I arrived home and the fam announced that my bees had just gone. Over. There.  Over.  Those.  Trees.  Over.  Those.  Woods….gone.

Where are you honeybees?  Please come home soon.

It was one particular swarm, not all of my bees, thankfully.  I had just been saying to Julietta before I drove off that we would tend the bees after the garden work because I was afraid they were outgrowing their boxes.  My son had called it the day before, saying “Mom, I think the bees are going to swarm.”

“Swarm in July, let ‘em fly” is what the farmers say.

So they flew.

By the way, this implies that if you catch the swarm and are able to rear them, then they’re not likely to develop and put up enough stores before winter to keep them through.  So maybe even if I had caught the swarm, I’d not have any more of a success story.  Just trying to comfort myself.

Julietta and I donned bee suits and dove into the other hives, adding honey supers to the industrious, removing old feeders from some that had drained their stores, and adding brood boxes to others that were growing so well.  We spent over an hour fussing over the honeybees and in our fussing found some honey-rich comb that had been attached to one of the hive tops.

Lastly, we scraped the wax comb and honey onto some platters and picked them over, removing the honey-drunk bees, so that we could harvest a bit for ourselves.  We spent at least an hour painstakingly removing each little gal, trying to spare their lives as we did so.  We collected three quart jars of comb and honey and came inside for the evening to dip salted popcorn into the dregs on the platter for a snack with a cup of tea.

And that, my friends, is the way to top off a full and glorious weekend.  August is around the corner and my youngest turns 17 on Monday.  Good friends from out-of-town are dropping by on Tuesday, 50 pies will have to be made and delivered Thursday through Saturday,  A friend that is hosting a round-table discussion on localvores at a nearby t.v. station has invited me as a guest on Wednesday and another wonderful photo-journalist friend is coming to follow my daughters and I around the farm on Thursday as she works on what is called “Farm Woman.”

I am grateful for my husband and son’s hard work in putting up new fencing (attempt Number 8 this summer) to keep the goats in their new pasture, for fat chicks and turkey poults becoming fatter and for layer hen and peafowl eggs in the incubator developing.  I’m thrilled that the Faverolle chicks were introduced to the 3 week old hatched out hens and they’re fast friends in the little coop.  I’m satisfied that deliveries of pies and zucchini chocolate cakes were made and the last of the eggs was used up in a Gingersnap recipe this afternoon.  And I’m feeling very fortunate for an outing yesterday to the Historical Society to take in a pretty fantastic writer’s workshop, presented by a local friend, inspiring me for SOMEday…when I may write more formally…

So many blessings, so many blessings.

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Sunset Lyrical

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"There is nothing more musical than a sunset."-Claude Debussy

Tonight I rode off into the sunset.

It’s true.  Char and I realized we had a golden opportunity to saddle up this late afternoon and enjoy a little January thaw ride.  We groomed and round-penned Izzy & Ruger Jac, then tacked up and took off.  By the time we got to the other side of our driveway, Good God gave us a glorious sunset.  As we turned into the big field, the colors of what I think of as apricot preserves started to transform into rose pink shades.   Deep Larkspur and Delphinium purple-y blues prepared to fill the rest of the sky at twilight.

It was exquisite.  A gift.

But we had to return, naturally, so at a certain point we picked our way back east.  The rest of the barnyard was happy to see us return in time to serve dinner, and our ponies that served us so well were given a special treat.

“Music is a mysterious mathematical process whose elements are part of Infinity. … There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little — the book of Nature.”

- Claude Debussy, as quoted in The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (1996) by Don Michael Randel

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Pizzelles, Pipes and Pond Skating

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Night Skating

Yesterday morning, my daughters and I spent the morning visiting a local art teacher’s historic home.  Mrs. Link is a patron of Wing and a Prayer Farm’s eggs and chicken and I’d bartered a tour of her home after she’d ordered a Christmas roaster this fall.  She lives in a renovated mill between two creeks in our town and between the history of the mill/forge and her parent’s book binding shop that flourished for many years in the space, alongside her artist studio and many beautiful works, I knew that the girls would be as awed as I with a visit.  Not only did Kathy tour us through the amazing stone mill, but she pulled out the tooled and embossed tomes that her parents restored during the Gerhardt Gustav Gerhlach’s publishing days.  We capped the visit with a lesson in Pizzelle-making in her kitchen, just for fun.  We left feeling charmed and delighted with a plate of warm, sugary-snowflake cookies and inspired hearts.

I had a full afternoon of chores and errands but the warmth of the season continued with spontaneous visits along the way.

Then, last evening, Jody came in from the chores asking where we turn the water off to the barn.  Alarms went off in my head.

Fortunately Jim was right here and ran downstairs to turn the main water to the barn off, as I wouldn’t remember it in a timely fashion to save my life.  I have a mental block against things like that.  We had a burst pipe in our house before, many years ago, and had I known which valve to switch, there’d have been much less damage.  My tendency to question myself means that I can be overwhelmed with decision-making in an emergency situation.

An assessment revealed that the PVC pipe to the washroom is where the break occurred and it had leaked all above the sheep stalls, the tack room, and the washroom.  The goatsies were spared, thankfully, as they would’ve been so stressed, frightened and cold had they been assaulted for who knows how long. The sheep were out grazing, and I was happy Jody was out there on the early side of the evening.  Jim was able to remove the light fixture in the tack room, which was full of water, and today we have barn-swathing duties all.

Our merry band was not discouraged from our evening plans of ice skating, though, and after dinner we trooped our way to the pond.  Earlier Jim had started a fire in the skate shed wood stove and all of the skates were warm and supple for the first glide of the season.  The lights were on, the surface was nicely glazed, and the air was none too cold for our under-the-stars party.  Except that a cloud covered evening was more like it and that actually was in our favor keeping the temps quite mild.

Sarah Jane & Char’s friends who both play hockey were here to pass the puck with Jim & Jody.  I tried my hand at it for a while and got my bearings in record time.  It’d been two years since I’d been on the ice and my speed skates were like old friends.  SJ & Char were practicing their figures, the dogs hung out respectfully on the sidelines, and there was much jollity.  The ice is not so very thick as we’ve had a mild December but it is clear and the view into the darkened pond was enchanting.  Mostly the surface was clear, but an occasional scruff of bark or leaf tripped me and my long blades up enough to prevent me from confidently building my speed.  It was a good night just to get the rust off our blades and change the scenery up.

I awoke this morning from a disturbing nightmare about a tsunami engulfing me and my cats in my home.  I’ve had my international friends on my mind of late and it would seem that the combination of barn-drama and the weather disasters of Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Thailand over the last couple of years had planted some unconscious seeds of worry.  The weather is considerably milder today, with rain on the roof as I type, and it will be a less glamorous day than yesterday with stalls and a tack room requiring an investment of labor.  Our New Year’s Eve plans are always low-key so preparation for festivities is minimal to none.

Interesting that the mild December temperatures would prevent us from getting on the ice before the end of the month, and ironic that when we could, it was the night that a frozen pipe burst in the barn.  Guess we are never so wise that we cannot learn a few lessons and enjoy beautiful moments of life all in the same day.

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Happy Christmas Tales

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Fireside chat on Christmas Eve?

When I delegated the tucking in of the animals on Christmas Eve to my husband and son,  I was grateful to have their assistance but sorry to miss out on my  little Christmas Eve chat with everyone.  Typically I give everyone extra carrots, hay, grain, apples, even peppermints sometimes.  I sing carols to them and tell them that tonight is the night that Santa comes and brings treats to good little ponies, and the like.  I also ask them if they wouldn’t mind letting me in on their midnight conversations and send me some sort of sign so I know it’s time.  I refer to the old legend about how Christmas Eve is the night that the animals talk…  Silly, you might think, because they talk all of the time!  From what I can only trace to early European superstitions, at midnight they are all able to speak the same language, the language of humans.

Indeed Jim  had actually remembered to give them the word!  He reminded them that it was a special night and I was relieved and delighted.

What would they be saying?

We decided the goats would be full of toddler chat and enthusiasm for Santa and the reindeer. I happen to think that the Sheep would speak with a Scottish accent and comment largely on the sparseness of the grazing material and the quality of the hay they’ve been getting and who looks good in what color and such.  There are a dozen of them now, and they have been spending time together 24/7 since Balrog went buh-bye.  (He was the ram I’d used for 2 breeding seasons.)  The wethers and ewe lambs and pregnant ewes have been dining and sleeping pretty peacefully and it sure does simplify things around here for me.  So they might also discuss their new togetherness and whether it is agreeable to them or not.

The horses would probably be engrossed in a gossip-session as they are the few animals on the farm that have gotten out and about.  They’ve gone swimming in Lake Champlain,  know the neighbors, the neighbors’ horses, pets and the geography of the area far better than the sheep.  I would guess they enjoy the night sky, also, and are on lookout for eight tiny reindeer and a jolly little elf.  I mean, really, there would be a wonderful opportunity for an exchange with the reindeer to find out what is going on in the world so it would be worthwhile to be alert.

Bean-the-bunny is in her own stall on the far end of the barn, but if the barn kitties, Wasabi & Niska, cared to stroll by, they could have a catch-up.  Seeing as Wasabi and Niska spend time in the woods and fields, hunting rodents of all sizes, including rabbits, Bean might not enjoy that they are her only companions to share with.  She’s been shorted, I realize, and so next year we’ll have to make sure she is situated near the goatsies or sheep so that she can have a less-threatening convo.

The poultry, except for the peafowl, are all of the same species so they don’t have a language barrier anyway.  Perhaps the peafowl speak a dialect, of sorts, but I’m betting the Araucanas could interpret for them.  The turkeys are now in folks’ ovens or freezers and so they’re not part of the equation.  The Indian Runner ducks are in a separate yard and have each other to communicate with also.  No need for the special gift that Christmas Eve brings for them under those circumstances.

I used to lie awake listening for, not Santa, but my dogs and cats to talk.  Now that I am an adult, I still have a smidgen of hope that I would catch them in the act!

Yes, there is room for silliness this Christmastide.  The celebration of holidays is always special and with the ups and downs, an opportunity for finding deeper meaning in life.  But you just can’t knock a holiday that has a legend associated with it as being a night the animals talk.

the lion and the lamb

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Winding Down

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Enjoying the last mild days of November

Tonight I began to prepare for turkey-trot-Saturday. Experimenting, I decided I’d see if anyone wanted to hop into the back of the truck of their own free will and so I threw a handful of grain in the bed.  Interestingly enough, not one bird hopped in.  Every other day of the week they light onto the truck with no prompting.

They’re definitely suspicious.

I opened the barn doors and carried a scoop of grain with me to an empty stall.  This was hugely and immediately successful.  Sixteen birds tweedled, en masse, and tripped their way into their new bunk for the night.  Meanwhile, there were 4 turkeys in the sheep run out which were clamoring to come in. I opened the door on Iglesias & Obaamaa’s stall to the outside and the clique bolted in, wolfing down the sheep’s grain much to the sheep’s chagrin.  ”Break it up!  Break it up!” I jovially demanded and they followed me across the aisleway and into the stall with the other gobblers.  Oh happy day!  They chortled joyfully to be reunited with their mates and I shut the door.  Making sure they had fresh water, hay and a little more grain for the night, I then turned out the lights.

Twenty more  to convince tomorrow.

Tonight they roost on the roof, the fence posts, the gates and one rotund statue squats on the barn stoop.

Snowflakes falling as I walked back into the house were the perfect finish to this beginning-of-the-end task.  Quiet barn, quiet night.  Fat, healthy turkeys for Thanksgiving dinners.

Bourbon Reds' first snow

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Musical livestock

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A day like every other around here, in which animals are discovered to be where they don’t belong while others dutifully stay put.  Yes, I had to haul Max & Nite Nite out of the chicken grain bin and off our mound-system more than once.  They are the Arabian/Quarter Horse cross and Shetland pony that have been escaping nightly from the horse pasture and acquainting themselves heavily with the various poultry grain-bins around the farm, as well as lush greens wherever they decide to pause.  It has been frustrating keeping up with them.

And then there were the Shetland Sheep break-outs to deal with.  Just when I solved the problem of how to keep Pansy & Nikki in their pasture with Balrog-the-Ram and Ruva-the-bossy-ewe, well, the second and third pastured baa-baas decided to have a mixer.  The reason they were separated is because one was full of boys, two of which are old enough to breed, and the other was full of girls either not old enough to breed or needing a year off. 

And turkeys are everywhere around here!  So I enlisted Char to help me convince everyone to go into one pasture and then systematically separate them into the appropriate pastures and at the same time leave the turkeys in just one pasture.  The turkeys are really quite liberated around here, but I felt it was a good evening to put a stop to that.

We’re exactly where we’re supposed to be!
Could you direct me to the nearest cornfield?

So now we’ve got sheep all where they belong and turkeys where they belong.  Once again the pony escaped, but we dealt with that at a later time.

My husband arrives home and we discuss the weather.  Tomorrow the Shearer comes and the forecast is for rain:  lots of it!  We decide we should get the sheep all into the barn so as to keep their fleeces as dry as possible before shearing.  It is much easier to shear the sheep dry than wet.  This means we have to ready three different stalls for the three different groups.  Aw shucks, I’d just done such a great job cleaning the barn the week prior and wasn’t really ready to get it all soiled again!  But alas, it is a barn and it does make sense to bring everyone in this evening to capitalize on the extra hands to help as well as the keeping of dry fleeces.

pretty wooly girls
Iglesias & Obaamaa sharing stories
Gandalf-the-Grey’s fleece

So back out to the barn and the pastures and this time with another plan.  The barn stalls get fixed up with straw, hay to munch, water buckets and grain troughs.  We make “chutes” for the sheep to pass through to the appropriate stalls when I lead them in, and off I go with a scoop of grain to bring them in.  I first go to the breeding group’s pasture and open their gate.  Then shake, shake, shake the scoop and they stampede up into the barn.   A little confused, I shake, shake, shake again to the other stall, across the aisle, and they file in to inhale the grain that is in the trough.  

Door #1 shuts!

Door #1, the breeding group

Now to retrieve the boys.  Shake, shake, shake goes the scoop as I head down the long chute to undo their gate.  They are a bunch of sweeties and have no problem finding their way up and across the barn aisle into their appropriate stall.

Door #2 shuts!

Door #2, the boys

Last, but not least, the girls!  They are very confused as I unlock their gate and try to get them to walk around it(it opens the wrong way, sending them opposite from where I want them to walk) and to follow me up the darkening chute to the barn.  Some of them figure out where they’re going, but then two of the ewe lambs, Winky & Daisy, insist on being difficult.  After several minutes of trying to convince them to follow me, they make their way to the barn and then fall into a dead run to join the others after they hear their baa-ing voices.  

Door #3 shuts!

Door #3, the ewes

And they’re in.  So great, now I just have to get the bowling balls, I mean little fatties, I mean young Freedom Rangers, into their stall.  I also have named them the “Underfooters” because they insist on being underfoot.  It is truly a dance, the dance of the Underfooters, as I try to step in and amongst them placing their waterers and their grain troughs into the stall for the night. Their crops were loaded as they’d been foraging all day, but they still had room for the nightly incentive to come inside and gobble up grain! Finally every last one was rounded up and I shut the door on that stall for the night. 

the “Underfoots!”

There were a few more things to feed/close the doors on such as the barn kitties and the layer hens’ coop, then the doggums to be fed and finally the grill is on to make burgers for some hungry people who live here too!  At about that time, friend T shows up at the front door and asks if we want a 4-legged friend.  ”Small or large?” I ask.  ”Well, sort of small, but you know her anyway!”  

It was Nite Nite again, and she’d been wandering by the driveway when T pulled up.  

We decided that she might like a night in the barn for a change and so Char led the way.  The following photos depict our notion of inviting her for dinner, first, but then a change of plans when Jim gave us a firm “N-O!”

Would you like a seat at the counter?
Something from the fridge?
Dad says “No” to having Nite Nite for dinner
Out the back, Jack!
Nite Nite, being vegetarian, passed on the burgers
Into a stall for you tonight, Pony-Jac!
Fall Farm tucked in for the evening