2017 farm veggies -sept

Harvesting-growing:  GARLIC,TOMATOES,POTATOES,KALE,ARUGALA,SPINACH,PARSLEY,BROCCOLI,LETTUCES

2016 Harmony Gardens

We are busy spreading compost on West Pasture Garden,reconstructing the Guest House Garden,preparing Barnhouse Garden, and preparing for the South Pasture Garden groundwork.
May 10,2016:
  Today I am discing our own compost into the West Garden again.....Steph is continuing putting seeds into germinating flats.... Very Chilly the last two days -through this morning. Glad I have postponed shearing the sheep...Baby Itsy Bitsy sheep is happy and playing with her new sheep family.  Guard Donkeys staying out of the icey wind....
 The plan for this week is to disc,scarify[chisel plow]] the west garden,  disc again; then create rows for the beets/daikon with my new cultivator.  By the end of the week,I should be ready to apply our four year old compost the the Earth Island Garden,hook up the fence charger to the battery and close off the West Garden to the livestock-typically this is very,very upsetting for my guard donkeys who can be quite aggresive who believe the farm belongs to them...    Put a finishing touch by planting sunflower seeds into Earth Garden-[center of the farm] + plant Buchwheat cover crop into carefully selected areas,.   Before planting anything,we will apply our Biodynamic Field spray onto the soil...
   We are eating a wide macro diet during this often intense period:buckwheat,beans,salad,coffee.

Thanksgiving Snow,2015

Snow and ice here-pre thanksgiving.
Mid October,we opened up the gardens to the livestock,who ate and ate and even developed a taste for the daikon radish-tops and bottoms!  They even eventually ate the beets that I planted late september-too late.  As the donkeys and sheep headed strait out to the gardens after their morning grains,I jjust pilled short of much needed  fall disc harrowing .But/and as friday is projected to be warmer,I will disc then amd lime.  Oh well,sad and sorrow for animals regarding harsh Nortth Country winters.

keep thinking'this is the last crop of beets for 2015' and/but they keep a growing and I keep hauling them back to the barnhouse and preparing them for borscht..  and the daikon radish is either going to winterkill  for soilfeed or I may bring even more up to the barnhouse for pickling,etc.

Northern Vermont Growing Season

The growing season in 2015 has been so scrambled that our veggies were necessarily planted on Northern Vermont Weather Time.  Those who pushed too early lost their tomatoes to blight, and the corn in many areas is stunted & late compared to previous years.  In planting late we have some great cool-weather plants, and the crows helped us to give up on corn (35 stalks are coming along, of over 2,000 planted).  This weird weather is also making amazing weeds--threatening to smother what we've chosen to plant, in a fierce battle for resources. 

But other things are growing this year too -- Our Geese (3 of them -- they did sitting shifts on the pile of eggs) decided to sit for weeks on end and the result was our first ever hatched geese -- 1 Chinese goose, and 1 Toulouse Goose.  Now another goose has decided to also try.  Like our sheep born last year, I erred about this goose's gender, and presumed this goose to have become some predator's meal weeks ago, never imagining it was a female sitting on eggs.  Then suddenly, she appeared last week for 10 minutes of ravenous eating, only to disappear again somewhere (we've searched plenty), and then yesterday she suddenly appeared again looking thinner and somewhat frazzled.  We have a guard donkey (Bobo), and the male Chinese Goose is a guard goose, but young momma has chosen to be away from their protection.  How she has avoided becoming food is a great miracle.  I eagerly await the arrival of a new gosling, as her persistence is formidable and her courage great.   What a beautiful growing season we're having up here.  - Stephanie

a heap of sheep

Feb 20: Our first baby sheep (2) are born on this day--to proud parents Mrs Mavis Bourdelle-Sheep and Mr Romeo Bourdelle-Sheep...  Sparky lived & thrives to this day (he's the one with the long tail).  For about a year I thought he was a she, until the shearer came & informed us otherwise.

conscious uncoupling

Doin' some conscious uncoupling from agribusiness--smarter, quicker...all business.  Getting more and more done in less time, and faster, faster, faster.

vermont farm time

We are on 'Vermont FARM TIME' which amounts to --'we-dunno-what-time-you-may
believe-it-should-be-TIME'

putting gardens into winter rest....

disc harrowing
rototilling
applying compost
winter rye and oilseed radish

feed the soil

feed the soul

what we have here is a bona fide guard donkey

just fixing up some winter paddocks and a stall for some sheep so Old Bobo can do what he does best.....
  and carrying out compost and not quite compost  onto the west garden..&carrying in some pumkins.

 if you are coming here for a stay-over,bring your longundies and your Bermuda shorts-this weather here changes dramatically from dat to dis and from dis to dat.

if you get the giggles practicing this qigong,enjoy yourself....

 this winter,we will be adding sheep and longear manure[composted[maybe] to the west garden,

a round of tai chi a day keeps the need for outside farm help away.

straight out with fall farm chores--one 20-minute  tai chi or qigong session in the morning does the trick.

planting seeds on october new moon

despite literal ego convictions such as' its too late to plant anything that can grow', I followed another knowing-phoned the manurer yesterday to come to the west pasture[that runs a football field sized north to south garden] and to cowgoosh the entirety.  In between deliveries of cowslurpies,I seeded forage seed-maybe for the sheep,maybe for deepening the connection with all that is:the Tao               early today-sunup- in the mist in the snowfall ,facing norhdeast gua, I heard innerteacher prompting"Just let Little Marky see-let Little Marky be.  just dissolve and let Marky breath and be breathed"   and I did.I complied with the promting-with the seedings....   I have Marky-a happy nature boy.

liquid manure & mountaintop firsy snow

yesterday began at 330 a.m. for me-in anticipation of deluge of liquified cow manure over entire new gardens.   first manure spread at  soon enough a.m.; very last spread way past sundown p.m. in all blackened nite-with one little headlamp on his tractor.   no sweat-a crackshot manure spreaderer at the helm.                                oh,so steff dowsed as to timing of broadcast seeding oilseed redish with a 'yes' answer from whoever the old ones consistently tell her is standing behind her.                         so i applied with relished expectancy my oilseed radish,asking the naturespirits who do live here to enjoy and to help.

 today our first snowfalling.-to blanket, protect and nourish.

Snow & a guard donkey named Bo

"Hee Haw"  Bo calls me.  A nuanced different  song:  sorta resonated inside my thorax receiver like "Aw Nuts"    So I  scrambled to the kithchen window where he demonstrates long distance from barnyard to farmhouse,with precise appolonian communications  whenever some important transition needs my attention.       & once he registered I would now be required to serve breakfest in his barn,he tiptoed through the six inches of extra farm labor into his straw floor in the longear barn..                                         yesterday,he froze & brayed till I joined him in the north pasture where the showed me a hole in the outercattle panel fencing.  he has only been here two months. I love his uniqueness-a true daoist.
  yesterday as i was interviewing farmers who were selling their sheep,one mentioned that sheep were compatible with guard donkeys only;otherwise most donkeys will play soccerball-killtoy with smaller animals.I believe we are gonna have a go at it...

crawled into my jeans 3:30 a.m.

crawled into my jeans,,grabbing some chow;write work shheet,sheet;open gate for the manure pspreders to spread load after load of cowmanure into garedens-between snowflakes.                                                                                   Laying out new fencing for a backup paddock for the soon to arrive sheep-only if Bobo guard donkey-doesnt initially accept them                                                                                         Building  a shed for round .bales to feed the sheep and donkeys through this coming winter..                      Straw on the barn floor for the winter.                                                            Still much more squash,pumpkin,radiccio,kale,lettuce,bok chow-out in the west gardem-to continue to be carried into the kitchen for Steph to freeze for the winter.

still drops of warmth to nudge up my new forage crop

if my manure speader er gits around to gittin his bleep together enough to piddle his cow dropping over this away,why-we are gonna have have somethin to cover all the oilseed radish I broadcast reseeded onto "IT".    meanwhile,lookin out my window watching the birds eat till their beaks burst- full of my covercrop seed , kinda brings the lifeforce into a tite jawed,clampfist,clampbreath , much undesireble ,highly animated fashion of farmstress.

wonderful harvest mayhem

it is just so wonder full to be in 'it'. one with it. a part of it.           'it' is over an acre now.   guests visit it and i tell them' i did not do it.'    i am going to comment that'i do not know' did it.     an alchemical soulsoil  dreamfest.       just walk out there and wolf down a tomato and some watercress,pull up some arugalia,wash it in the creek and munch. go behind the cornstalks and sunflowers and take a leak.                                            let your spirit soar.

spreading manure till the snow falls

cow manure galore -spreading out onto/into the western pasture/comercial garden till the snow falls n sticks.    + wheelbarrows of donkey manure here and there...

process

outside all infectious broadcasting seeds dancing with the wind struggle dissolving,disolving trying no point-no point just let go all joy all joy

spreading manure: tractor stop. uh oh? no point just dance the spreading step left step rite father sky mother earth heartbeat within the three rain,wind, grandmothers,ancestors,eight wu-all present- all big smile hearthome for so many

8 hours hard workin man? no sir,just fun-free play with the elements. throw into the soup:the soil,the compost,the chi of it all, the planting song,the harvest song, the mountaintop energy,the growth cycle,the seeds, thr rain-just taste this food -how you feel? but we did not grow it. the mystery-the beauty grew that.

Organic Soil, Organic Mind and Organic Body

Yesterday, I am driving around and I felt spent--hypo this&hyper that--so I stopped off for some fried fish and today I could hardly move.. Still, I willed myself, I wheeled myself and the food wagon [a 2' x 3' pull wagon] through this afternoon's harvesting, did my medicine wheel, which transformed my mind but not my muscles, bones & joints.

Got back to the farmhouse and Steff cooked up our own garden stir-fry veggies with brown rice, and -- ain't it somethin -- I feel great all over.