Spring Rush

The farm is a beguiling mistress. She demands our full attention and lots of money. She rewards us with evenings like tonight where I've taken the camera out and photographed lady's slippers, apple blossoms, lilacs and more. Standing in the field and watching the wind move the grass in waves I was filled with a sense of calm and peace. It was a well needed respite as it feels like we have been running flat out for the last few months. Weeks have flown by as we prepared for new arrivals and cut and split next winter's firewood.

The star attractions this season are a quartet of Berkshire pigs and six turkeys.

Pig fence.

The pigs required a huge amount of infrastructure. The pen where we housed our first two pigs the first summer on the farm has since been turned into garden space and the barn is now used for the laying flock. This meant we needed to create a new paddock for them. We're challenged here because we're perched on a slab of bedrock; this makes it difficult to drive fence posts. Rob decided to build a tradition snake fence. These take a large number of rails and Rob spent weeks cutting and limbing trees around the property and bringing them to area where we want to run the pigs. At the end of the project we used almost 150 eight-foot rails to build the pen.

Eastern Wild Turkey Poult.

My project is six turkeys. I framed in part of the big barn and hung chicken wire to predator-proof their new quarters. Three weeks ago I brought home three Royal Palms, two Bourbon Reds and one Eastern wild turkeys. They are interesting additions and they're already starting to posture. Depending on what sexes we have and how the summer goes, we may try to keep two for breeding next year.

We are raising meat kings again this year. This will be our third summer raising them and we've started 30. We took advantage of having the extra penned area in the barn and moved them in with the turkeys. It has worked out really well. This batch is more active and is already foraging through the bedding. Another week or so and we'll move them out to pasture.

We have new neighbours and we bartered four tractor buckets full of manure for an old chest freezer they were throwing away. The freezer perfectly holds the pig, horse and cow feed and is rodent proof. There's even room for me to keep my brushes for the horse.

We lost one of meat kings this week and one of our layers. Chickens can be  hardy and resistant but when one takes it into its head to die, there's nothing you can do about it. They become the most fragile creature on the earth.

Spring is here and summer is at her heels. Tonight's stroll around the fields just reminds me of the beauty lurking just outside our door.

Lilacs in the big field.