The past few weeks have been a blur. The Jewish holidays in the fall basically all fell out in
October. So, I haven’t had the time to bring you all up to date. And given how busy the holiday
schedule is, we have been treading water on Farscape Farm. Now that does not mean we
weren’t getting things done. It’s just that the holiday schedule made it more difficult to do all
the things that we would have liked to do.
There have, however, been a number of fun things accomplished. We pickled cherry peppers
and made for Hungarian wax pepper jam. We put up eggplant in oil and spices. We have about
well picked over most of the garden. The only leftovers are a few eggplants hanging on, a
boatload of shishito peppers, and various hot peppers.
So now that Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are now
complete, today was the day I was going to get EVERYTHING done. The big project was mucking
out one of our enclosed areas. With help from Paxton and Morty (a Baltimore friend who stayed
over for Shabbos) we were mucking fools. That is until my skid loader made some really strange
sounds and starting dumping hydraulic fluid out of its bottom. So instead of taking advantage of
our wonderful technology, we got to muck have the stall by hand. Ugghhhh. Instead of one hour
of work it turned into four hours of hard labor. Ok, fine. It could have been worse. My skid
loader could have died on me in the middle of a winter storm while I was ploughing our 1/3-
mile drive. Lemonade from lemons.
We took on a large delivery of straw so it was the perfect time to clean out the top of the bank
barn from all the left-over straw and hay that have accumulated for a few years. Then, a friend
of Farscape Farm ( Andrew L.) was kind enough to drop off a few deer carcasses. Our dogs eat
raw diet and this time of year we get leftovers from the men and women who love to deer hunt.
So, there is another couple hours of cutting up deer meat for the hounds.
Oh yeah, speaking of dogs, we have a new member of Farscape Farm. Her name is Ladybug and
she is a beautiful harlequin Great Dane from Tammy Hagen and Chickaree Mountain Danes. This
lady knows her Danes. Her puppies are healthy, well socialized, beautiful and big. And Pops likes
his dogs big. Ladybug has made me her PERSON. And for dog lovers you know that being a dog’s
PERSON means that your pup has made you, her alpha. She trusts you and will love you
unconditionally. That is a really big responsibility.
It’s now almost 9 pm and I am exhausted. Today started at about 5:30 when Ladybug
announced her need to use the outside facilities and the day absolutely flew by, even when
considering the rather dirty job of mucking stalls. And this is the thing about owning a farm.
Even though the days are long, often busy, and very often smelly when you get to the end of the
day, you feel a real sense of accomplishment. This is a feeling that I rarely got when I lived in the
city or the suburbs of Baltimore.
The near future is full. Our goats and lambs go to be processed on the 27th. Our new farm sign
will hopefully be delivered in the next week or two. Our new cabin by the pond needs to be
finished by Thanksgiving and we still have more of our beds to “put to bed” for the winter. Now
that our straw is in, I will be making a permaculture garden and hopefully that will be the topic
of the next blog.
So, some of this and some of that. Until next time.
Pops
