Summer-Fall Photos 2008

Another Busy Summer and Fall with no time to post to the farm blog. So here is an update in photos of what we have been doing!

Happy 3rd Birthday Asa!

Asa celebrated his 3rd Birthday today!!

He got some Thomas trains and a Roundhouse to store put them in.

Then he got a handmade toybox (red box on right) that his papa & mama made for him. Lets see if he can use it to house his toys!

Piglets & Pasture

Some friends came by today to buy some piglets that they will raise for food. Their kids really enjoyed watching us catch those fast piglets!

















Kris takes a piglet while her little boy looks on. He seems pleased!























The two piglets are in a crate for the ride home. They have a nice big place to run around when they get to their new home.


















The market pigs are on some lush new pasture - boy do they like it! They graze for a while before they start rooting.


Here is some video of the pigs eating grass - in case you don't believe that they do!

Farming starts with a "G"

Christa on a new (0ld) farm tractor: the Allis Chalmers G cultivating tractor. Only about 30,000 of these were built for market gardens from mid 1940s to mid 1950s. These are great tractors with the tools mounted on the "belly" of the beast. In the photo is a basket weeder on a tool bar which is ground driven and has bent hoops that turn up the soil between the plants. You can add other tools such as a seeder, disc hillers, and of cultivating shovels. This G has a manual lift seen just to the left of Christa's head. You pull down on the lever to lift up the belly mounted tool, either to fine tune the depth you want it to work at, or to get it out of the way when heading out of the field.

This is a gas powered tractor that we may one day convert to run on electric. We liberated this tractor and a nice mix of implements (seeders, cultivating shovels, plow, disc hillers) from Canada last fall. The other G we found about 15 miles away - it resides at a farm we are leasing a few miles down the road.

Here is a shot of the "G" heading down the field. You can see the narrow tires straddling the seed bed, and the disturbed soil thrown up by the basket weeder. The hoophouse on the right is where we overwinter our laying flock and you can see the material they leave us after their tenure. We apply this composted manure to the fields and disc it in. Other manure that is not so composted goes onto our compost pile.

Christa working hard again, pitching some well composted donkey manure onto our small garden plot at home.

The other day we saw what looked like pools of oil on the ground in front of the house where we park our car and truck. But it didn't quite look like or smell like oil, so we dipped a finger and tasted the liguid and found it to be Vermont Maple Syrup! Just then around the corner comes our boy Asa with gallon jug in hand, syrup all over his face and shirt. We explained to him why this was not ok (the spilling of a fine Vermont product which cost $35 a gallon).

For punishment we made Asa train our apple tree limbs to become more horizontal (just kidding).

Sugarin Time!

The Bryan Sugarhouse in Jeffersonville, Vermont. Lisa & Beckner Bryan operate a 20,000+ tap sugarbush on a beautiful farm.

Interior of the sugarhouse with boiling pans and evaporator.

Another interior shot of sugarhouse. Beckner about to give Asa a sample of this years crop of maple syrup.

One of the many 50 gal drums of Maple Syrup made from the Bryan Farm. They wholesale most of their syrup.

Asa checking out the ATV with tracks. He likes any kind of farm equipment.

Three turkeys bid us goodbye after our visit to the sugarhouse. Thanks Lisa, Beckner, Lucien and Merritt!

Snowfarmer, Cultivator, Sledding

Asa and Mama posing next to their snow farmer!



Here is a recent purchase for the Farm: a Williams Tool System. It is a large metal frame with tine weeders. It also came with cultivating knives, hilling discs and gauge wheels. It has a 3 pt hitch to attach to the back of our tractor. This tool will allow us to significantly cut down on our hand weeding. The tines allow for blind cultivating of crops after seeding and just before the seeds come up. Some crops can even be cultivated with the tines after the plants are up: pumpkins, potatoes, corn, etc. We bought this from a vegetable farmer up in North Troy, VT.

Asa sledding down the hill behind the house. He really enjoys this fun activity, even when he wipes out!

Local Food Everyday!

Who needs to go to the store (wasting time and fuel) when you can eat from your local landscape - courtesy of your own agricultural labors, or your local farmer(s).


Just about every time we sit down to a meal, we are thankful that we eat a diversity of local food from our farm. We really are fortunate to have 2 chest freezers full of our 100% grassfed beef and lamb, pasture-raised pork and chicken, vegetables, berries and chicken stock.


100% grassfed hamburger, potatoes, squash, pickles, and raw milk


We have plenty of root vegetables to eat during the winter - most stored in our old farmhouse root cellar: potatoes, carrots, celery root, beets, brussel sprouts, parsnips, and turnips.


Root vegetables from the root cellar and pantry


In our pantry on the first floor of the house we have canned tomatoes, pickles, berry and tomato jams, garlic, onions, squash, pumpkin.


Fruit Cobbler from summer fruit


We also make and smoke some link sausages during the winter, and I have a Ham aging down in the root cellar that will be 2 yr old Prosciutto this spring! Of course we have our farm fresh eggs year round.


Smoked sausage made from our pork and beef!


The only items we pick up from the local general store (Jericho Center Country Store - oldest continuously operating general store in the great State of Vermont, having just celebrated 200 years as a general store!) is milk and fruit. Well .... also some Vermont beer and ice cream on occasion. Though my brother-in-law Brian is a homebrew meister and usually keeps me supplied with the local brew!

So if someone tells you that you cannot eat local foods year round - tell them Bullpuckey! It is easily done, better for you, and affordable.

Winter Fun

Here are some photos of the family playing in the snow outback of the homestead.

This was about 3 weeks ago. After a big January thaw - we have no snow!

Asa and a horsedrawn cultivator outback in the woods -

we may have to pull this out and put it to work on the farm!

Asa skiing on his grandmas old wooden skis at 2.5 years old. What, your kid isn't skiing yet?? Good skate technique I might add.

Winter on schedule!

We received about 15 inches of new snow this week. Snow this time of year is about right for Vermont. Last year we didn't get any real snow until mid February and we got hit with 31 inches in 6 hours!

For most of the pigs its the first snow of their lives. For our sows its their 3rd or 4th. They don't seem to excited about it, but the market pigs sure enjoy playing in it, running around, scratching themselves on the trees and rocks in their pasture. Just think of the joy that those confinement raised pigs never experience.

market pigs playing in the new snow!

Sows eating some bread.

The laying hens don't venture too far out into the snow. They must have an aversion to white. If the snow becomes dirty they walk out onto it. They do like to eat the clean snow though.

Busy Summer!

Sorry for the lack of posting to the farm journal - its been a crazy, busy summer!

Here are some photos of various happenings on the farm during the summer.

Hosting a Pastured Poultry Workshop

Christa and I hosted a pasture walk workshop on our pastured poultry operation. We also walked around and showed folks, the pasture-raised pigs, lamb, laying hens, and vegetable operation. We had over 40 folks show up from all over the state.

Jenn Colby of the University of Vermont Center for Sustainable Agriculture, did all the hard work of putting anouncements and flyers together, and providing some great snacks on a hot and humid evening. The center and the Womens Agriculture Network hosted this pasture walk.

Those assembled got to see our outdoor setup and chick barns for raising birds on pasture for the first 2 weeks, then our day range system of letting the birds roam free instead of keeping them in pasture pens. At 8 and 9 weeks we process the birds. Our pasture-raised chickens come packaged with great flavor!

We had been to many of these great pasture walks in the past and came away with a lot of new ideas. It was great to be able to return the favor to the Vermont farming community. I hope they learned something useful.

Vermont Heating Fuel

Asa sits on a 2 cord pile of green firewood delivered by Clifford Lumber in Hinesburg, Vermont. This pile will be stacked to air dry, then unstacked during the winter and put into the woodstove to keep us warm. We go through 3 to 4 cords of wood during the winter. We also have backup heat from an oil furnace that also heats water, but the woodstove is the primary heater of the house.

Nothing like homegrown fuel to keep you warm on those cold winter chore days!