Mid spring we were planning the location for the well near the workshop. We selected a location behind the workshop next to a brushy area. I decided to go ahead and have that area cleared by our friend Nate Hoffman and his brother, its nice and flat and I thought perhaps it might be more useful cleared.

In May right before a rain storm arrived I lit the brush pile up and spent most of the day and evening churning it up to keep it burning. Even after most of it burned, there were at least two full loads that I hauled out with the dump trailer of large stumps and just remnants of the brush that didn’t burn. More of a job then I bargained for.

Fast forward a month, and after Emily & Randy arrived and got their bearings, they thought that one acre lot would make and excellent spot for their planned market garden. They went ahead and had the soil tested by the Va Tech cooperative and I scheduled it to have the appropriate amount of lime spread.

Well, if it was going to be a garden then I needed to get all of the remaining roots out, plow and till the soil and add in some fertilizer. I used a ripper to pull out the remaining roots and sticks, again, way more than I thought was in there. This also loosened up the top layer of soil. Next, I used by single board mould plow to turn over all of the weeds/grass that had begun to grow. This was tedious as the sheer bolt snapped a number of times on remaining roots and some significant rocks. Once that was done I waited for the lime and fertilizer as Randy suggested that I till both in. Randy did some research and recommended an organic composted chicken manure which I picked up down in Waynesboro at New Organics, a 2000 pound bag. I borrowed my neighbors PTO spreader for the tractor and simply shoveled it into the spreader as I didn’t have another piece of equipment big enough to pickup the bag and pour it in.

Next came the tractor driven tiller, which did a great job smoothing out the dirt and mixing in the fertilizer and lime. The tiller ‘found’ many rocks, we now have some piles at the edges of the field. Lastly, I purchased 200 pounds of cover crops, that just happen to be very tasty for the deer. This will hold the soil over the winter and provide a form of fertilizer when we turn it over next year for the final making of the beds for the crops. In the meantime, the winter rye and oats is coming up like crazy!!

A very busy month of September, topped off with Emily’s birthday the day after we got back from Glacier Park. We got her a deck chair for sheep! You can back the sheep onto it and they just lay there while you clip their hooves or do whatever else you need to do with them. Of course we sang ‘Happy Birthday’.

After much research Emily & Randy picked up their sheep today and they arrived back at the farm. They have been working diligently to clean out the barn and make the run-in shed the primary location for the sheep. Emily stopped mowing the grass around the barn back in July and it has grown quite lush, albeit with lots of chiggers as Patty can attest. They used some of the spare gates and hog panels to make the enclosure and to make a clever, lightweight, easy to move shelter from a hog panel, chain, and tarp.

The sheep are to be used for their wool.

For over a month now Emily has had to feed/water and manage two flocks of hens. The older hens in the big chicken tractor, and the young hens that weren’t laying yet. The reason they were separate was two fold; we didn’t want the older hens picking on the smaller new ones, and the young hens are on a chick starter (high protein) feed as opposed to the lower protein level of the layer feed.

Once the hens had gone up into the tractor for the night we moved them close to the big chicken tractor and proceeded to grab, tag, and put them into the big tractor, one at a time, all 70 of them. The picture below depicts the typical process; Patty grabbed them, Randy tagged them, and me & Emily walked them over to the big chicken tractor.

We hosted Jim’s 60th birthday party at the farm. Jim & Syd took care of all the heavy lifting, tent, catering, tables, chairs, food, etc. I warmed up the pool to a nice 90 degrees!

And of course you must have the happy birthday song!

As time went on it became apparent that the new batch of 70+ hens actually contained 11 roosters, which is WAY too many. I purchased these in three batches and with each batch I had the option for a free ‘mystery’ chick. Well, I think that gave us three roosters. It is also apparent now that the Whitting Blue chickens must be hard to sex at birth, because the other 8 rooster were from that breed. We decided it was time to ‘process’ the roosters before we combined the younger and older flocks.

Our first attempt at capturing the roosters failed. I thought we could corral them in the morning when they had left the chicken tractors…big mistake, didn’t catch a single one. They got another days reprieve. Ended up doing it at night when they were roosting in the chicken tractors. Could only capture 9 though, but that was enough. We processed them the next day over by the barn.

Riner well drilling started today to drill a new well back by the workshop. I was a little worried since its up on a knoll and close to the highest point on the property. I just came back from checking and they have only gone 200ft and its estimated at around 15 gallons per minute! Very happy about this as it should be enough water to irrigate, water animals, and provide water to more than one new home.

Beautiful walk this morning, definitely high summer. We had a cold front come through after the remnants of hurricane Debby blew through and it has really cooled things down by 10 degrees or more.

This is a nice one, pretty decent size in my opinion. While her and Randy were back to listen to the beetles making munching noises on my logs I just cut down she found this arrow head. Very cool. Below is the video, turn the sound up and you can hear the munching…