Garden season over, winter’s coming

As our 2012 garden season has come to a close, it’s now time to concentrate on getting ready for winter. Around here, winter can arrive in a heartbeat.

The hay is all in place, over $7000 for the the 7 blocks this year. At that price, we bit the bullet and invested in a professional hay tarp. We had the hay all put into one place this year, since we have the tractor to move bales. We’re also installing gates at each access road.

So far, we’ve pretty much dismantled the gardens, except for some parsnips, beets, turnips, cauliflower and cabbage. We had a hard freeze on the 5th, and that pretty much took care of the garden.

We’re adding a “storage container” to our little farm. That will allow us to properly store our garden and farm tools someplace other than in “Mom’s garage”. That has meant clearing a large area of loose sand and tumbleweed, and moving stuff (including an old truck) so the big truck has enough room to make the correct turns, and back into the spot for the container.

The horses are all gone. We put down the one gal that had eye cancer, and then gave the other two to our neighbor’s grandson. He’s great with horses. The day he came to load them, it only took about an hour to get them into the trailer. Not bad, considering Dusty (the gelding) had only been trailered once (and he didn’t have pleasant memories, having been gelded, vaccinated, and hooves trimmed), and Dakota had never been in a horse trailer.

This past weekend, we put the ram in with the ewes, and the buck in with the nanny goats. In about 5 months, we should have lambs and kids popping out all over the place.

A month or so ago, we took our “old cow” to the butcher. She was 4 years old (had 8 teeth), and didn’t breed last year. After the younger heifer presented us with a beautiful heifer calf, the old gal was “excess inventory”. She’s in the freezer now, and the steaks and burger are absolutely awesome. Except for her poor confirmation, her meat would grade out at prime or better. We got 452# of meat, nearly a freezer full.

We also hatched 11 chicks in September and they (along with their mothers) have moved to the “grow-out pen”. Soon we’ll put their mothers back into the big coop, leaving the youngsters to grow. First one that crows is a Sunday dinner. Any others that crow will seal their fate, too.

Over the winter, watch for “farm tales”, stories about the Four Country Gals living their dreams. They’ll be here on the blog, so will still be doing more “re-arranging”.

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