Birchtree Farm

I've been lax at updating so here is some of what has been going on, in random order:

Yesterday we scored a huge pile of used metal roofing from Freecycle. Woohoo! We are going to be building a woodshed, and used metal roofing is just fine. Plus, any leftovers can be used for roofs on hayfeeders. Hurray for Freecycle!

All the ewes were sheared and then moved over to the summer pasture with their lambs. We kept the ram here and also the bottle lamb, Oliver. We only have the one ram here (Umbri) along with Oliver. They are doing OK with each other for company. Oliver is getting big and spunky! Here is Umbri pre- and post-shearing, and Oliver learning how to graze.

The oldest of our two rams sadly had to be put down. He had gotten an infection in his front teeth, and we didn't notice it for quite some time as he wasn't acting any differently. Not until a couple of his teeth fell out was it apparent. He ate fine but I think the infection got into his circulation and he couldn't shake it, even with antibiotics. We were going to butcher him this summer, but the way he went, we didn't feel comfortable even using him for dog food, so we had to dig a very large hole.

On a happier note, recently I have updated our farm website with pictures of lambs for sale so venture on over to Birchtree Farm if you'd like to take a look!

Of course, I have also been working on getting a garden in. I started tomatoes (three heirloom varieties: Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, and Giant Pink Belgium), peppers, eggplant, broccoli, and cabbage indoors in early April. The cabbage and broccoli went out into the garden a few weeks ago. I also planted peas a few weeks ago and they are now up at least a foot high and are climbing the trellis. I got the tomatoes in the ground in mid-May, and the peppers and eggplants in on Memorial Day, and now have to cover them tonight due to a frost advisory. I've also planted pole beans and two kinds of bush beans, two kinds of beets, and some swiss chard. That filled up the garden, so my lettuces and spinach will have to go into big pots.

On the perennial side of things, I put in two heartnut trees, two beach plum, two aronia (black chokeberry), two different table grape varieties, three lowbush blueberries, two cranberry bushes, and twenty-five Ozark everbearing strawberry plants. Then I whacked the raspberry patch back into it's original boundaries and perhaps later I'll clear out the center and turn it into two rows to make them easier to pick.