Late winter farm projects

Now that the snow has melted and the weather is moderating somewhat, we're trying to get back on track with all the winter outdoor projects that have mostly been on hold since November with near-continuous frozen ground and/or snow cover. We effectively have until the end of March to do non-vegetable work, as once April comes we need to be in full produce-farm mode. Here's a mostly complete list of our potential and desired projects.


Starting this year's mushroom logs

Last spring we inoculated 26 fresh oak & maple logs with shiitake spawn (see above). We got our first small flush in the fall, and expect/hope for production for the next 3-5 years. We'll keep adding new logs every year; this spring we're doing around 40. I hope to offer more detail on the methods and considerations involved in a later post. We did 20 on Monday, and will do 20 or so more on Thursday.

Preparing for goat kidding & milking

Above is a very wide goat. She's only a few weeks away from kidding, maybe less, and I have a few cleanup/organizational chores around the goat barn before that happens (getting a sink set up, preparing a kidding kit, etc). We've been present for every kidding on the farm so far, though sooner or later we're going to miss one, especially as they're now farther from the house and thus out of earshot. But we're very excited to see this year's results, as we desperately want a doe (female) after years of nothing but bucks. We even bred to a dairy-breed buck this year, to ensure we'd want to keep any females that resulted. Spring means more goat chores than simple winter feeding, but also the return of fresh milk for us (we've been getting by on our aged cheese and lots of milk frozen in the fall). With both Frankie & Garlic pregnant, we expect anywhere from 3-5 kids this spring.

Preparing earliest spring crops

Onions are already started indoors, and we'll start seeding radishes and lettuce outdoors soon. Other indoor seeding will begin soon as well. The first small hoops are going up, to start warming and drying out the soil. Several overwintering crops should also start to regrow, including collard greens and spinach (below), possibly allowing for some early sales. The beds in foreground are garlic.

Clearing fence lines and building fences

This is a big one. As we continue to expand and improve our pastures, mostly cleared from overgrown/abandoned fields, we get to the point that putting in permanent fencing becomes practical. Long-term this will save a lot of management effort over rotating our temporary reel and net fences around, and is high on my priority list to help make livestock management more time- and cost-effective. So far I've nearly finished clearing the lines of our two top-priority pastures and will start building fence very soon (I need the ground to dry out some so I can auger corner post holes). We're also working within these pastures to thin out the existing trees and brush to achieve a better balance of shade, mixed habitat, and lusher ground cover/goat browse. The photo above shows a typical fence line project, establishing a boundary between the established forest (to the right) and the brushy cedar scrub (left) within the pasture.

Cleaning up brush

Clearing naturally means disposing of the results. We chip what we can for mulch, and use larger logs for fenceposts, firewood, and lumber. But there will always be lots of scraggly top branches, dead wood, and other scrap that needs to be burned. Even here we try not to create waste; every fire pile like this gets sealed in with soil once it's burned down, choking off the oxygen to effectively make biochar, a form of charcoal. This makes an excellent soil amendment, richer and more neutral than wood ash, returning many of the trace nutrients that trees draw from deep underground to the surface soil where vegetables can use them.

Rebuilding the garden fence

This was supposed to happen last year but the season (and another harsh winter) kept us from finishing. We've pushed back the thick cedars on the south side to get more sunlight into the lower beds, and want to expand and improve the fence on this side to allow us more room, and to be more deer-proof. This will involve taking down the existing one (digging the chicken wire out of the fescue & mud), felling one remaining large cedar that's going to fall into the garden, then trenching and building the new fence in its proper location.

Packing barn improvements

I built our walk-in cooler last year, but our main packing barn still needs more infrastructure to reach its potential. This spring I intend to build/install a stretch of sinks/basins and washing tables along one wall, with parallel moveable work stations in the middle of the floor, to allow larger-scale and more efficient washing and handling of produce. We're also intending to install a small water heater and hand sink in this barn to allow proper hand washing, and to finish cleaning up the rest of the barn so we can gravel in the remaining dirt floor. I also hope to take down a few trees that are preventing us from establishing a turn-around at this location, which would make tractor and truck movements easier at this busy site.

Pasture/landscape burning
There are multiples areas we want to burn off, to encourage native plants and discourage invasives. The photo above shows us burning the northern fence line of our bramble/berry area, but we extended this burn up through the rest of the orchard. There are several pasture areas we'd like to get to as well, though we may wait until May for some of these to get the proper timing for specific plants.

Orchard & tree work

Every year we increase our fruit plantings, seeking to slowly establish enough production to feed ourselves in bad years and make some sales in good years. We recently thinned and pruned all the brambles (blackberries and raspberries), and are chipping hardwood branches & saplings to generate mulch for our blueberries. Later this spring we'll be establishing our first five apple trees higher up in the orchard, and will need to finish preparing those sites. Strawberries and asparagus will be needing attention before we know it. We also ordered bundles of saplings from the Missouri Department of Conservation, including mulberry, osage orange, and pecan, that we'll be trying to establish in various parts of the farm.

Time budget
There's more on the list, including lots of little projects like cleaning and sharpening tools, tractor/equipment maintenance, updating/changing market supplies, finalizing employee plans for this year, and...oh yeah, taxes.

We sat down to do some estimates of project times, and came up with 50 person-days from now until end of March for just the outdoor infrastructure work (that doesn't include any work on actually growing produce, like bed prep, seeding, irrigation setup, and so on, or other mini-projects). From mid-February to end of March, assuming we work 7 days a week, there are about 80 person-days. So once you factor in the reality of runs to town, occasional days off, personal/household chores, produce needs, and so on, it's not clear we're going to get all this done. One item that has already been temporarily stricken from the list is a new and larger chicken shed, to accomodate a hopefully growing flock. That can wait if it has to, and so it will. So can the hoped-for improvements to fences on other parts of the farm. We'll reassess our situation at the end of March and decide what else can be cut or added from the list.

Weather will certainly play a huge role; the forecast for the next week of continuing rain and storms doesn't make me happy at all. On the other hand, it's wonderful to finally have my ideal working temperatures (40s), some sun, spring birds passing through, and a general sense that 2011 is finally getting underway after a long winter that made me very antsy. For better for worse, we're on our way into this very important year on the farm.

Welcome to spring at Chert Hollow.

Signs of spring

We've had a wonderfully sunny, warm spell lately, though that doesn't in itself mean the coming of spring. March is still one of the highest snowfall months for Missouri. But over the last few days, coincidence or not, we've observed a series of natural events that really do demonstrate the slow changing of the seasons.


Snow geese moving

Tuesday, as we worked outdoors burning brush and clearing fence lines, we watched flock after flock of low-flying snow geese cruise overhead with their distinctive, high-pitched honking. Each flock was small, never more than 100, but they just kept coming throughout the afternoon. Spring migration is starting.


Cardinals singing

Cardinals are here all winter, but just in the last few days they've starting singing again.


Possible blue jay mating behavior

Recently I observed a flock of around 10 blue jays, clustering close together and being extra-vocal, including a unique clicking/chattering that isn't part of their normal repertoire here. They would cluster in a treetop for a few minutes, hopping around and pumping their necks, then move on. Some research suggested that this is typical mating behavior in which a cluster of unattached males pursue a small number of available females (probably young, as blue jays generally mate for life).


Crocus & daffodil leaves coming up

This is pretty self-explanatory, but a good sign of spring


Trees budding

Both cottonwoods and hickories are developing their first buds. Sure hope we don't have another 2007.


First weeds

We have our onions started indoors, and Tuesday Joanna officially conducted the first weeding of the year, pulling out an unwanted sprout from our homemade potting mix. What better sign of spring?

Birds of Chert Hollow Farm, January 2011

Birding is one of our favorite shared activities; we simply find the world of birds endlessly fascinating. It's something we can do every day while working on the farm, by simply paying attention to what's around us in the fields and woods. Or it's something we can do as part of quick trips to conservation areas and wildlife refuges, as well as longer trips. Paying attention to birds fits well into our lifestyle and our interests.

Knowing and understanding the presence and patterns of birds on the farm also helps us assess the changes and improvements we're making to the landscape. As we clear and restore more overgrown land to pasture and eventually prairie, we hope to start seeing more open-land birds return (such as quail, dickcissel, etc), while preserving a significant tract of established forest. Understanding birds helps us understand the farm.

To this end, we've started keeping daily records of bird observations on the farm. While we've often noted the arrival or presence of new or unusual birds in our farm journal, these isolated records don't help us capture the overall patterns, especially the negative data for when birds leave for the season (it's harder to notice the absence of something than its presence). Hence the daily records, which in the first month have been great fun to peruse. Obviously these are not fully complete, as weather, tasks, habitat preference, and other factors affect our ability to observe. But it's still a useful overall dataset.

Throughout the year, we're intending to post monthly summaries of the birds seen or heard on the farm, with any important notes on behavior or context. We hope this will be of interest to folks who care about the natural world on farms, and it will certainly be a good record for us if we keep it up over time. So here goes with January 2011.

17 days from January 15-31, 2011 (Number of days we saw/heard the species is in parentheses)

Canada Goose (7) Flocks of 20-200 in flight over farm

Red-shouldered Hawk (1)

Red-tailed Hawk (2)

Mourning Dove (2) Foraging after heavy snow

Barred Owl (5) Hunting from trees along the orchard, post-snow

Red-bellied Woodpecker (12)

Downy Woodpecker (7)

Northern Flicker (6)

Pileated Woodpecker (2)

Blue Jay (16)

American Crow (5)

Tufted Titmouse (14)

Black-capped Chickadee (9)

White-breasted Nuthatch (4)

Carolina Wren (12)

Golden-crowned Kinglet (4)

Eastern Bluebird (4) Usually in large flocks passing through

American Robin (2) Usually in large flocks passing through

Hermit Thrush (1)

Yellow-rumped Warbler (4)

Northern Cardinal (17)

Song Sparrow (5)

Dark-eyed Junco (16)

Unidentified ducks (1) Flock of ~50 in flight over farm

Snowstorm photos & road conditions

In the end, this storm wasn't too bad for us. We got a few more inches of snow than the 18" that fell in December 2006, with stronger wind, but it never really achieved blizzard status down in our valley. I'm sure it felt worse out in open terrain, and the fact that I-70 was closed throughout Missouri for a while shows how strong a storm it was, but for us it didn't do any lasting harm. It certainly wasn't as bad as these poor folks in Chicago had it.

Here's a time-lapse panorama taken every hour from our porch throughout the day. The gusting winds kept snow from accumulating too thick on the porch itself, but if you watch the rain/show gage carefully you'll see it fill up, get dumped, and start to fill again. It's 12" tall, we dumped it with 1" remaining, then again with another 7" at dusk, then again with another 3" the next morning. So about 21" overall. What you don't see here are the birds which spent most of the day foraging for grain; they took off everytime I opened the door to take another shot.
Snowshoes are wonderful things. Here's a view of my tracks walking out to the goat barn on over-knee-deep snow (I took one off to check). Note the tracks only sink in a few inches.
And here's a panorama of the field and barn. It's deceptive, with few reference points. Keep in mind that most of this field is built into significant permanent raised beds, especially the foreground, which are completely obliterated into the newly flat surface again. The north wind really whips down this valley (view is NW), which kept the snow from getting too thick on the barn. It's a solid blanket which will take a long time to melt, if the temperatures ever even rise above freezing.
And here's an interesting view of a small cattle-panel hoop that holds grain, straw, and the water hydrant for the chickens (once upon a time it was a milking structure. Heavy snow will do this to such structures; it's one reason we aren't too interested in investing lots of money in over-wintering hoophouses that can be done in by storms like this. As it was, folks in this area are real lucky this wasn't a heavy, wet snow. We've now had two >18" snowstorms in the last 4 years; I don't like those odds for delicate structures full of landfill-destined plastic. And that's not counting the severe weather we can expect much of the rest of the year here.

The real impact on us from this storm relates to our steep entry road. After the December 2006 storm, the road was impassably iced in for nine weeks. Even though Joanna was still working off-farm, it wasn't a disaster as she had left her car at the top of the hill in preparation. Walking in and out got annoying after a while, but it was also good exercise and fresh air to balance an office job. This time around, I think conditions are even worse because we had a layer of ice already formed from the last snow's melting and refreezing, along with a fresh coat from the day of freezing drizzle that preceded this storm.

21" of fresh powder on a solid ice layer is the devil to plow. I spent almost 7 hours today on the tractor, slowly bucketing and blading my way up the hill. I slid off the road once, into a ditch, and had to rig up a contraption to get back out. I slowly used the bucket and what little traction I had in the wheel-packed snow to "grasshopper" the tractor around until it was aimed partially across the road toward some trees. Then I hooked several log chains together, wrapped one end around a thick tree on the other side of the road, then ran them across tightly to the tractor's bucket. By carefully manipulating the bucket, I could slowly winch the tractor forward, retighten the chain, and repeat. A few rounds of this, plus shovelling the packed snow out from under the chassis, got me back on the road. Sorry for no photos, I had the camera with me but the cold blew the battery by the time this happened.

On another section, I actually slid about 20' down the hill, gently rotating on the ice like a slow-motion ice dancer. Nasty stuff. I was able to make it almost all the way up, but a last bit near the top defeated me, where ice accumulates especially thickly when earlier melting occurs and I could get no traction on the slope. I'll go back with a bin of ashes from the stove, which we save for just this kind of situation. Hopefully by the weekend the road will at least be open, though it won't be driveable for a long time afterward, as partial melting makes such conditions worse as the day's meltwater refreezes each night. We left the truck at the top, and will just go back to walking in and out as needed. This time of year that's not very often, as we need virtually no groceries and have few other off-farm commitments. So we'll just see how things progress.

In the meantime there are taxes and other business paperwork crap to work on, and we'll need to start trays of onions indoors by this weekend. By the farm's timeline of work, spring is starting to arrive. Now we just need the temperature to actual go above freezing someday.

Blizzard

We're getting our fair share of the huge winter storm dumping on the Midwest on its way east. Through 7pm Tuesday evening our gage has recorded around 18" of snow, with drifts much deeper than that. I broke out my grandfather's old wood & leather northern Minnesota snowshoes to go do animal chores this evening:

I used these all the time growing up in the lake-effect snow belt of western NY, going for long tramps through the fields and woods. I've kept them with me always, though haven't had much call for them in Missouri. He'd be proud to see me using them again; I wish he could. They sure made the trip out to feed & water chickens and goats much more comfortable. I just glide along the top of the powder drifts instead of struggling through. Here's how deep it's gotten near the house; this is me pointing to the top of a standard-sized all-weather outdoor hydrant. My snowshoes are at nozzle-level.
While this storm is causing mayhem all over the place, it's really no issue for us. We have our entire winter's supply of food preserved and bulk-ordered anyway, and with our overall self-sufficiency there was almost nothing we needed to do to prepare. We have ample firewood, having just taken down and split up two more large dead oaks last week. We have a small generator if the power goes out, are quite good at entertaining ourselves, and just really don't care much if we get out soon or not. I did do a bit of weather proofing on the animal shelters, given the extra-cold temps and high winds coming (lows for Wednesday night around -10, with winds up to 40mph), mostly just stapling up a few old sheets along the walls of the goat barn and chicken shed to block micro-drafts. And I hauled out a few extra straw bales to make a more insulated corner for the goats to nestle into.

So with the house at a comfortable 68, the fire happily humming along, we'll just enjoy watching the storm. Birds were really active yesterday, and even through most of today in the teeth of the storm, and it's quite a sight to watch juncos, cardinals, titmice, sparrows, and more fluffing through the rapidly accumulating snow to find the grain I set out for them. They ended up digging a nice open-pit mine down to the grain even as the walls rose around them.

Long-term this snow will be annoying, as it will once again set back our ability to do the winter outdoor work we want to do before spring arrives. And the forecast doesn't imply any melting soon; early next week we'll be back down in single-digit lows. But for now we're cozy and comfortable, eating excellent food and enjoying watching weather happen.