It is a busy time in the life of a vegetable farmer, especially with the hot sunny weather we have been having! While the motto of April may have been “hurry up and wait”, May is definitely the month of “don’t stop moving” here at Four Beat Farm.
Most hours of the day (OK and the evening too sometimes) are devoted to preparing the fields for planting, transplanting and seeding the earlier vegetables, planning for markets and harvest season, keeping an eye on the early salad plantings to ensure that the weeds do not take hold, and putting the final tweaks onto those “spring projects” that somehow never did quite get finished. It is still spring in the calendar, though the temperatures might indicate otherwise. There is little time for reflection or lounging around, yet there is a sense of fun and excitement in the air as the days grow longer and momentum starts to build.
Even though there does not seem to be much time to go for a hike at the moment, there is fun to be had in the field, such as on this Saturday morning with some canine, equine, and human friends testing out a few new (to us) ways of cultivating in the vegetable field.
Today is a Pro-D Day, which means no school for the kids, no work for me. I fell asleep last night excited about sleeping-in (I don’t want to brag but I am an excellent sleeper), the kids were equally excited to sleep-in (I may have passed my excellent sleeping skills on to my daughter). Of course, you all know what happens on sleep-in days. I was awake bright and early. The horses were galloping around and their thundering hooves was as good of an alarm as any. They’re not small horses and the pasture is beside my bedroom, I could probably feel the pounding of their hooves before I heard it. The sound of running horses is always a reason to leap out of bed and check that the gates were still closed. Luckily they were only playing with each other! Galloping, biting, rearing, kicking, striking, being magnificent and 100% contained in their pasture. But I was now fully awake and ready to tackle a few of my morning farm chores.
The boys: Banjo, Guinness and Taurus.
I fed the boys their breakfast and headed over to my chicken “duplex”. I had my flock separated, 15 on one side and 22 on the other side, until last night when my son and I moved the “chicks” (they’re now 7 weeks old and need more space) into the smaller side of the duplex. I wanted to let the hens out into the run early now that there are so many hens on one side. I opened the door to the coop as I looked up into the nearby Elm tree and there perched at the top is our new friend from yesterday, a massive Bald Eagle.
Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner.
Yes, he is magnificent. Yes, he is majestic. Yes, it is really, really cool that he is so close. Yes, I could watch him all day. And yes, he wants to eat my chickens. After a quick count of my flock, I am missing one of my beautiful new Bovans Brown pullets. Usually I count them every night but I forgot to last night, fingers crossed that she missed curfew and found somewhere else to sleep but Mr. Eagle is suspect #1.
My sweet Bovans Brown pullets.
I spent about 15 minutes in the run with my chooks, talking to them and counting them, watching Mr. Eagle. I managed to spook him out of the tree and watched him soar through the back field.
I hope, for my flock (and my cat’s) sake, that he finds a river full of delicious fish and never comes back.
I headed back into the house, emptied and reloaded the dishwasher and tuned off my 7:15 a.m. alarm.
Time to put on a pot of coffee, it’s going to be a long day.
I ended the cattle drive around 1995. I couldn’t keep it up. It was too much work. We had a growing farm and a growing family and we just couldn’t justify it any more and it made me sad.
When I was young, our every summer was spent driving our herd of cattle to alpine grazing at Goat Meadows (aka Miller Creek ). We thought it was normal for children to push big old bellowing cows up a mountain. We were little ruffians with rocks and sticks and running shoes. We darted and loped across the brushy hillside, cutting off escape, alway trying to make the cows think we were impassable.
Dad was alway there, in charge, and always at the back, patiently trying to instruct us on the instincts of cattle and how to use them to make this job easier for all.
When my sisters and I were small, we mastered sleeping on horseback double (although that may have been mostly me.) I remember how a horse’s shoe can turn the pitch black into daylight as they struggled in the dark on the steep rocky trail. We took a lot of these trips in the dark, after Dad’s work day on the farm was done. Our old workhorse type horses had no problem travelling in complete darkness.
The cattlemen had a cabin in the Second Meadows where we would camp and cook and play while the adults did the hard work of cutting out trails or building bridges.
Our destination was the Third Meadow which overlooks the Pemberton Valley. Our cows knew the way and once their memories of last year in the meadows kicked in, it became a slow walk to paradise.
Coming into the Third Meadows was uplifting – the smell was amazing of alpine flowers and grasses. The view opened up to grassy Meadows, and far below at the end of the Second Meadows was the massive Miller Glacier which roared constantly on the breeze lifting from the Second Meadows.
Traced Elements 