Getting ready for Spring

It sounds crazy, but I can already feel my internal clock adjusting itself with that of the farm animals and the sun. Every night we have to close the doors to the chicken coops so that predators can’t eat all our egg layers.  But, we cannot accomplish this task until all of the chickens have already entered the coop on their own volition (It is nearly impossible to herd chickens). This only happens as the sun goes down. So now, I notice the most minute changes in the time that the sun sets. It seems much later now than when I arrived on the farm, although it’s only been 3 weeks…and about 15 minutes change in sunset time.

With that said, as the days get longer, the farm managers, plants and animals begin to anticipate spring. Here is what we’re doing around here to prepare:

 

We have separated all of the pregnant sheep from the rest of their flocks. We keep the mothers (called Ewes) grazing close to the barn so that we can monitor them for the next 5 weeks or so for signs of anything abnormal that might jeopardize their big day. In March, hopefully we’ll have between 10-15 little lambs running around!

The big white sheep are called Texels and the little brown sheep are Shetland sheep.

Derek and I have been pruning apple trees for the last few days. We clearly have no idea what we’re doing.  But, it is important to prune off all the dead, unnecessary, or just-plain-ugly branches so that the fruit on all that’s left will flourish. This needs to happen before the tree begins to show any spring buds. We cheer each other on when we make “Decisive Moves”, which means we cut a HUGE branch off that may or may not have been a “Smart Move”. And I think we are slowly learning how to do this right. 

Derek and the livestock manager have built a summer home for the pigs! The pigs will be moving to a new pasture in the spring and need a shelter. During this process Derek learned the basics of building a log cabin. I will use this as leverage one day when I want a log cabin: “Don’t you care about me as much as those pigs?”

And finally, I have been working with our garden manager to get the year’s calendar and garden map together. We will be planting about 100 different varieties of vegetables on about 1 acre of land. It’s trickier than I imagined trying to get the timing and placement right for seeding, transplanting and rotating of all the crops. This is our map of the garden so far. 

So, although it’s still wintry and slow right now at the farm, things are going to be picking up really soon.