Monday, March 12, 2007

Maintenance Mode

We have been in sort of a maintenance mode for the past several months here at the A3 farm.

The cattle have been next door with my neighbor’s herd all winter. Each day we feed horse, dogs, cats and sheep.

We collect eggs. We feed the laying hens when they need it. Since Mid January we’ve had broiler chickens to feed water and move each day.

Some of the equipment has been serviced and some fencing work done. Mostly farm work has been as minimal as farm work ever gets.

I’ve done two business trips related to my day job. One trip was to Arizona, which was pretty, and one to the DC suburbs, which was not. OK, Montgomery County Maryland is fine for those who like that sort of thing, but traffic and snow are two things I would be happy to do without.

Things here on the farm are about to change from maintenance mode to the more usual state of affairs, which is “way too much to do and not enough time to do it”.

The laying hens have been moved away from their winter quarters, that spot is ready to disk.

I started processing the broilers yesterday and will finish, I hope, next weekend.

It’s time to get more feed into the ewes, lambing is just a month off.

The grass will start to grow if we ever get rain.

All the hay we put up last summer is gone.

I bought two rolls of peanut hay, not perennial peanut, regular peanut. We have one lonesome roll of it left.

If we get rain any time soon it will be enough. If we don’t get rain I think I’ll take the ewes down to the welfare office and sign them up for food stamps :-).

One great thing about farm living is that the seasons have meaning beyond switching the thermostat from heat to AC and back. Even down here where we have fewer seasons than some places.

Just to get everyone in the mood for lambing, a new calf was born Saturday across the fence on the neighbor’s place.

2 comments:

Goat Mom said...

Best of luck during lambing! We northerns have not had a good season with sheep and goats... Hope yours is outstanding.

Anonymous said...

Welcome back! It's good to see you weren't wiped off the map in the last tornado.