Halcyon Days

The first ten days of May saw stellar weather and some significant milestones for the farm.  The late April loss of two newborn lambs and one stillbirth were offset by three successful birthings - a black ewe lamb and white ram w/ brown spots to Elska, and a white ram lamb for Opala.  Mothers and babies are doing just fine, and we have now successfully moved the entire flock across the road to their summer pasture area.

We will be moving the flock within a portable electric fence every ten days because the barber pole worm parasite requires ten days from when a sheep defecates until the worms can hatch out from the eggs within the fecal matter.  By moving the sheep it breaks the cycle and maintains a manageable and healthy parasite load within the sheep's digestive tract.

Here's an interesting video shot by Al as he encouraged the sheep to cross the road in front of him (thanks to our neighbors Heidi Masucci and Katelyn Thompson for assisting with the moving of the sheep):

For some true relaxation on the farm - turn up your volume, expand your screen view and for a minute and a half let the stress of the day slip away as you watch our flock graze while you listen to the red wing black birds and the Dyberry Creek in the background - it's very therapeutic:
http://www.youtube.com/edit?ns=1&video_id=ENlPu3ehZJg

We are now able to cut our pastures that were recently limed to raise pH and free up minerals for the grass (and subsequently our sheep) as we recently acquired a used "Big Bee" brush hog (made in Alabama).  Here you can see Dave coming down the road on our 195?  Ferguson T035 tractor (love that sound :)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwaB9F1JAXQ&feature=youtu.be

The big project thus far this month has been the installation of the frame for our 96' x 28' high tunnel that was a grant from the USDA and will be used for crop season extension in both early spring and late fall/winter.  This project has been quite an undertaking for Dave and Al.   Special thanks go out to the guys from the nearby Ant Hill Farm - Sam, Ben, and Derek for their much needed help and to Ant Hill Farm owner, Sky Ballantine for allowing his crew to spend some time with us.  More than two pairs of hands make some parts of this installation much easier.




Next up are the plexiglass end walls, and finally the poly cover.  The house will have roll up sides and large doors on each end for venting in the summertime.  We purchased the high tunnel kit from H. Schwartz & Sons in Wilmington, DE and have been pleased with the quality of the steel and with working with this family owned business.






Water is going to be critical for inside the high

tunnel, so to improve output from our solar powered watering system, Dave recently moved the pump house, solar panel, and intake pipe much closer the small spring fed stream we are using as our water source.  Since the distance from the intake pipe to the pump was greatly reduced, we seem to be getting a lot more water flow/pressure to our soaker hoses when the sun is shining.  Next step is to add a drip/soaker line and control valve for each row in the garden.

The wagon is almost complete.  It is a gem. With help from our friend and neighbor, Ron Otto, we re-welded some of the frame, and then Dave built the entire wagon out of "green" hemlock.  The  "running gear" or chassis was also re-worked and wheel bearings repacked. Used truck tires were added and the wheels re-painted.  All she needs now are some summer campers that will be arriving come June for farm adventure retreats.  We will also be adding a back tailgate/step of some sort that will allow for easy on/off access.

Speaking of farm tours, our first workshop/farm tour/earthen oven pizza baking event has been postponed from May until Sunday, Sept. 29th.  Please visit: http://store.mossacres.com/category_s/1941.htm   for more details or to sign up.

Early season crop planting has also been going on in ernest.  "Purple Viking", "Butte" Russet, and
"Katahdin" potatoes have been planted.  Snap peas, carrots, and our signature "Grax" giant beets have also gone in, as have various onion set varieties.  Parsnips round out our current planting list.  June 10th or so marks the last frost date in our chilly valley, so we need to wait on some of the warmer season veggies.  We also brought in additional compost from a local compost supplier and have been spreading that into each unplanted row and tilling it in with the help of Roger Hill and his Kubota tractor.

Rubarb harvesting has been taking place from
the plants given to the farm by neighbor Jim Sanders. The are growing like weeds.







Speaking of weeds...

Wild Food Alert:  Wild mustard greens. Al's wife Deena's favorite are just now winding down upstate.  We find them to be best sauteed slowly for several minutes in olive olive with onions, lemon and salt and pepper. The much coveted fiddlehead ferns come next.   Some wild leeks ("ramps") were also enjoyed, as they are very prevalent in our river valley and wooded hillsides.  Dandelion greens will be experimented with as we are new to those.

Our eggs are now more delicious than ever since we moved our 27 bird flock into our orchard area where we are blessed with some incredibly lush grass.  The four hen turkeys are still sitting on two large clutches of eggs.  As we approach the 28 day hatching date we don't have very high expectations, as without a tom to have fertilized the eggs we will only get polts if somehow the wild gobbler that was circling our fence repeatedly got into mate with our hens when we weren't looking :)



With the chickens our results have been much

better, as to date close to twenty chicks have hatched in our incubator (in 21 days) from our fertilized eggs.  The chicks are mutts for sure, crosses of some 16 possible different breed combinations.  Regardless they sure are cute and very vigorous - we haven't lost one yet.  We would have preferred to let the chickens go "broody" and sit on the eggs, but they weren't doing that this spring, so to continue to build our flock of egg layers we will probably rear a couple more batches in our 41 egg incubator in the coming weeks.

Numerous tree swallows and bluebirds jockey for our four nesting boxes down in the garden.  The one surviving hive of bees is hard at work pollinating our lower orchard that currently has peaches, cherries, and some pears in full bloom.  Our newly planted orchard in the upper pasture appears to have transplanted well.  Close to 100 mushroom logs have also been inoculated and laid down in damp shady areas.

Hard cider:  For those of you interested in making hard cider from Apples, Al's trial batch was a solid success.  Although very much on the dry side, this first batch packs a pretty strong punch and turned out incredibly clear as it was finished off in a 1 gallon jug after coming out of the 1.5 gallon jug, and allowed to set for about five months in the basement before the final siphoning and bottling.

Until next time, enjoy all our photos below and this amazing weather we have been having - it's nice to get some extended spring weather for once instead of moving directly to summer.  Heck, we might even get some fruit in the orchard this year thanks to a more normal bud break.

Your Friends at Old School Farm

Icelandic wool beginning to shed naturally

Chicks under heat lamp in basement - hours of fun!

One of our trails with glacial boulders blanketed in moss

Red Trilliums 

Asparagus poking through mulch & compost

An old horseshoe now imbedded in a beech tree

A proud father and his son

Uncas (he enjoys having his forehead scratched)

Moving sawdust up to raspberry beds for mulch

Hop Hornbeam logs inoculated with Shitake Mushroom spawn 

Getting the old piano tuned up and overhauled for the boys

Olive Walter's daffodils live on

A push wheel seeder such as this makes planting
 long rows of small seeds much easier

Our rooster "Owen" stretches his wings.

Setting up the portable electric fence

A zen moment for Dave while hand
planting parsnip seeds with Al

A Sad Night on the Farm

April to date has seen an almost frantic level of activity at the farm as we rush to get plants going, soil beds ready, and our high tunnel greenhouse erected.  We've had some nice successes, and one very unfortunate setback, but all in all Old School Farm is thriving.

For starters we now have 25 holes dug for our wide range of cold-hearty heirloom fruit trees that will soon arrive bareroot packed in damp sphagnum moss from Michigan.  These will be planted in our newly established upper orchard out of the frost pocket found lower down on the hillside where our current orchard is located.

The chickens have been re-directed into the orchard for a few weeks, as they had picked the hillside behind the barn bare (aside from a clump of wood leeks seen in a photo later in post)  We  have since re-seeded this slope as well as a couple of acres that were cleared for pasture up near the upper orchard with a clover/grass mix - good for both chickens and deer/wild turkeys.  We also planted a wildflower mix for bees and other pollinators around the perimeter of the orchard and near other boulders and trees in the upper pasture.  This will help with flower pollination and fruit set on the trees when they  reach fruit bearing size in 3-4 years.

We had a serious micro-burst of wind a few days ago that flipped one of our sheep shelters upside down (fortunately no sheep were using this one)  We used our truck "Hoss" and a tow strap to right it.

Speaking of sheep, we had a horrible incident occur ten days ago, when two newborn lambs died
soon after birth by drowning in a water trough in the wee hours of the morning.  It's a long story, but suffice it to say, we learned a very valuable lesson the hard way and are still reeling from the loss.  Our dark colored ewe Freya had given birth to twins - one black and one white - it was a major blow.  Fortunately Elska and Opala are still very much pregnant and we are very optimistic about having lambs frolicking in our pastures soon.

Egg Delivery to neighbors in Philadelphia

Our chickens are not going broody and the
demand for our free range/organic eggs is out-stripping supply, so as part of the boy's birthday present, a 41 egg, auto rotate incubator was purchased - we have it loaded up with 23 days to go in the 28 day cycle at 99.5 degrees.  Our plan is to start another large flock in the lower pasture along w/ the sheep.

Our heritage breed turkey hens are either out of touch or know something we don't, as they have been diligently sitting on two large clutches of eggs in the coop for several days now.  Although we have no surviving Toms to have made the eggs fertile, we did regularly observe a very "enthusiastic" wild Tom circling round and round our orchard fence enclosure where our hens are kept.  He also roosted nearby in trees.  Did he fly in and spend some time with our girls?  Time will tell !

Asparagus is poking through the ground now - we have 300 plants that are going into their 2nd year. With up to 12 stalks per plant last  year, we are expecting to remarkably make a small harvest in this the first full year of growth - normally you wait 2-3  years.

Roger Hill has been over with his Kubota to till the beds, and Al and Dave were hard at work getting all the hoop insert sleeves driven into the ground for the high tunnel - a lot of hard work, as getting them plumb (straight) is challenging.  Thanks to Ben and Sam from Ant Hill Farm who helped Dave out to get the first five hoops up... we have 20 or so to go!

Spinach from last  year that spent the winter under fabric row covers is pushing forth new growth and Al's first harvest was incredibly flavorful - he'll be bringing and "old school" spinach and egg salad to a friend's house this weekend.  The peas are in and the potatoes and onions go in soon.

Our new sign is up down by the old Norway Spruce at our driveway entrance.  Close to fifty 4' logs have been inoculated with mushroom spawn (logs are drilled and wood plugs tapped in)  We used poplar/aspen for the Oyster
Mushrooms and Maple and Hornbeam logs for the Shitake.  We will soon be inoculating some beech stumps with "Hen of the Woods" plugs as we don't have any oak trees on the property.

Rainfall has been hard to come buy, so we are anxious to get our solar powered watering system revamped and working more efficiently.  The barn has now been plumbed and wired for water and power.

We will be hosting our first "Family Farm Getaway" on Sunday, May 19th.  If you or anyone you know is interested in joining us, please sign up as space is limited.  We will not only be providing a complete hands on farm tour, but will be doing a workshop on how to build an earthen oven and will be mixing up the earthen cob mixture and applying another layer to the oven.  We'll then enjoy a wood-fired farm pizza together.  There will be plenty of activities for the kids if you decide to bring them along.

To learn more and sign up, please visit our website here: http://www.oldschoolfarm.com/family-farm-getaways.html
You'll notice we added a slideshow with a lot of photos from the farm. We had this running at our booth at Philly Farm Fest on April 14th where we had a lot of interest in our Farm Getaways.

Time to sign off, but in closing, be sure to get out and soak up this amazing spring weather while we have it and enjoy the photos from the farm... The first of which shows some "old school" forking of of hay stems left behind during the winter by the sheep.  It was used as mulch for the asparagus...

Your Friends at Old School Farm

Chickens enjoying fresh greens in lower orchard

Wild leeks - not a favorite of our chickens.  Remaining area picked clean

Hens enjoying bugs and larvae in compost pile

Big tooth Aspen logs await oyster mushroom plugs

Final batch of syrup - For next  year we will build a large stainless evaporator pan so we can process all our sap before it spoils

Al used river rocks that he and his dad, Dave raked out
of the area that was trenched from house to barn for power
and water lines prior to seeding with grass.  Then topped
with fieldstone to form a "French drain" for the outdoor
shower that will be installed here.

The central distribution point from which 1 ton per acre of lime was spread to
raise pH in the pasture. This will free up more minerals in the soil for the grass - an
important feed source for the sheep and chickens.

An additional plot that Roger just roto-tilled.  Beets, cover crops and
perhaps some heirloom field corn will be planted here this year.

Sleeve/inserts for high tunnel hoops being positioned

Signs of spring in Northeast PA

Al snuck out one warm afternoon and took his old man fly fishing on the Upper Delaware 

Raking up the remnants of feed hay from the winter - to be used as mulch 

You never know what will happen next on the farm !  -  A microburst of wind flipped a sheep shelter

Spread Thin...

We are hustling in a lot of directions all at once right now, trying to get ready for what promises to be a very busy year for Old School Farm.

Well, we did such a good job of setting up our gravity feed sap line from twelve sugar maples on the hill above the house, that we have not been able to keep up with the flow rate.   Currently there are over 200 gallons of sap in food grade drums waiting to be cooked down in our antique cast iron cauldron.

So far we have produced about 6 quarts of "kettle" syrup and expect to make quite a bit more.  Keep in mind it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.  So we have really only cooked down about 60 gallons of sap so far!  Next year we will be setting up a large stainless steel evaporator pan so we can spread the sap out over a much larger surface area and cook it down much faster.  We need to cook down as much as we can as fast as we can now, for if it sits too long it begins to ferment!  Here is a short video clip showing the sap flowing into our kettle via the syphon/gravity feed line:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzXCULWIwGM&feature=youtu.be


Our chickens are averaging close to an egg a day and we are giving them away as fast as we can.  So far finding regular customers for our free range organic eggs has proved challenging.  We hope some area restaurants soon begin ordering, as we distributed some samples recently.  Our flock is now up to 27 birds since we acquired some speckled sussex hens from a farmer friend.

Our barn will soon be wired with electricity and plumbed with water - we are finalizing our contractor selections now.   A small food prep. area will then take shape in one corner of the barn near the earthen oven. We will be prepping food for our Family Farm Getaways and summer workshops for area summer campers from this location.

Twenty five more fruit trees are arriving in mid-April, and the boys and their dad along with Dave have been hard at work installing a virtually invisible deer fencing system for this new 1/2 acre orchard area.  Watch the video clip here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5iE7im4b54

Al and his sons Owen and Coleman recently took a 1.25 hour drive north to Binghampton to visit their friend Mary Thomas - now 95.  As you may recall, Mary was one of four children who grew up in the Walter homestead that the Benners now own.  It was a great visit - Mary treated the Benners to lunch in the dining room

of her very nice retirement community, and then Al and the boys enjoyed a swim in the indoor pool.   Thanks Mary for a great time!   Note: Unfortunately the box of German chocolates that was sent along for Al's wife Deena was pilfered by the two youngsters, who proceeded to eat the entire box the next afternoon.

Back to the farm...    Seeds are sprouting under the high pressure sodium grow light.  The hay/farm tour wagon that Dave has been
working on for several days now is nearing completion, with the hemlock decking going down.  All that remains to do is to build the sides.  This is one heavy duty wagon!  Owen and Coleman can't stop talking about all their plans for a haunted hay ride come fall...

Cold weather and frozen ground have kept us from erecting our 100' x 28' high tunnel (greenhouse) -  a grant from the USDA.  We expect to be focusing on this work in the coming weeks.

Our four ewes all appear to be very pregnant.  We are anticipating the births of several lambs sometime this month - it's very exciting!   Congratulations to our young and very friendly ram, Uncas for making good use of all his free time this past fall!







Thanks to our neighbors Jim and Pat Sanders for all the firewood we have been getting from their property and for the four bluebird nesting boxes that Jim so kindly set up for us on our fence posts around the garden.  These are essentially predator-proof, as they are installed above an electric fence.

Bee update:  This winter was very hard on bees for some reason, with many area bee keepers losing large percentages of their hives.  Fortunately one of our two hives pulled through and we hope to re-colonize the other hive later this spring.

We  have an awful lot going on, but spring is in the air and it is all very exciting.  We even have a new sign for the farm - made by local artist, Joe Kluck.  Joe has also put some of his artwork on consignment at Old School Farm for guests to enjoy (and possibly purchase).  You can see some of Joe's art here: http://joekluck.blogspot.com/
Joe will also be on hand May 19th at the farm for the first Family Farm Getaway to offer a beginner's painter workshop.  Sign up here for the workshop: http://www.oldschoolfarm.com/family-farm-getaways.html

Old School Farm will have a booth at www.PhillyFarmFest.org to promote our farm workshops and to display raised bed systems from www.BackyardFarmers.com  Stop by and say  hello if you happen to be at the show - it's at the Philadelphia Convention Center on Sunday, April 14th from 11 - 4.

Until next time, soak up that early spring sunshine and keep those seedlings moist...and enjoy the rest of the photos below...

Your Friends at Old School Farm

Watercress transplanted into spring pond

Boys at Cooperage with Mike - guitar & vocals for Great Party Band

Coleman in "jail" for candy thievery 

Great Party Band at the Cooperage

A quart of "Old School" Kettle Syrup

Al's friend Frank in from Chicago for a visit

Gravity sap line to 55 gallon drums.  Six year old with maul.

Fresh sap - what could be better

A boy on his favorite moss covered boulder

Coyote scat with deer hair

Being six

One of four of Jim's Bluebird houses

A boy-size bonfire kept the little fellas entertained for two hours burning up scrap wood

The Sap Man, or is that Grizzly Adams?...