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!