Arrival, Landing, Transition, and More Clean-up(!)

To encapsulate a long, difficult and sad part of the story of the first month of this new farm endeavor briefly:

Tim and Regina moved to the farm after 3 years of relationship with lots of rapidly acquired animals to pursue what had become Tim’s vision.  Then Regina left. She is supporting from afar with good feelings between us.This blog is then the account of one man attempting to launch a community farm.

While the insanely busy first two months of development were very hard on the humans, the animals have been happy as clams in a beach in Baja.  Thanks to the late spring rains and the fertile valley bottom land of the farm there has been lush forage for the goats, turkeys, chickens, ducks and pigs.  They have been so busy eating that they have not even noticed the humans struggling and toiling.  I have been bearing the hot days together with the animals, doing more water carrying than a smart person with plumbing parts in the barn should stand for, but the systems get more established every day.

The above mentioned lush forage quality also meant that in June we walked onto an abandoned 25-acre farm of head high grass.  There were many hours of tractor mowing, weed whacking, fence removal and continuous discovery (and subsequent disposal) of more debris and trash and metal wire and so on and so on.  So my earlier declaration of the slaying of the trash pile was an underestimation of the clean-up process of at least a hundred hours of labor and 10 more cubic yards of landfill and almost that much scrap metal.  Besides getting help from Regina, I received many incredible volunteer work blessings from friends and neighbors.

The lush summer pasture yielded 800 bales of hay of varying quality from high to low in early June and then re-grew to 2-6 inches of grasses, clovers, vetch, and plantain.  The focus of the farm work has been largely around the structures, fencing, and infrastructure needed to raise and pasture the animals.  Tomorrow on the second to last day of July I will be putting my first vegetable garden in the ground.  The sad starts have spent an extra month in their 4” containers because having my own tomatoes or cucumbers wasn’t the highest priority (maybe it should have been).  The plan is to do a fall garden planting in late August aiming at doing some marketing in October along with the eggs that will be coming in, in order to get out and solicit members for our CSA launch the next year.   

More chicks will be hatched this fall to have the ideal size laying flock and turkeys and ducks will be bred over winter, all with careful projection for the farm season next year.  The 5 female goats will be bred also this fall to our soon to be arriving buck, Elvis.  This should of course result in goat babies and lots of milk!   

Okay, back to work… I mean off to bed.