This Saturday, Howell Farm's beekeeper comes to examine the hives and handle some honeycomb.
In preparation, the bees appear to be busy.
In preparation, the bees appear to be busy.
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It happens every spring, but it never gets old: Howell Farm’s lambs are out in the pasture, running, chasing, leaping, and flinging their tiny bodies through the air. They take breaks to nurse from their mothers, and then it’s back to more running, chasing, leaping, and flinging.
I don’t think there’s any other explanation for this behavior than to say the lambs are having an incredible amount of fun. Just outside the pasture fence, it's impossible not to notice the visiting schoolchildren. They've just finished lunch, and now they're running, chasing, laughing and shouting. Saturday is Howell Farm's sawmilling program, which begins at 10 a.m. This year, all the tress to be milled came down during Hurricane Sandy on the farm or nearby on Bell Mountain. The salvage includes oak, beech, ash, and plenty of white pine. (One of the oak logs is particularly huge.) According to Farmer Gary, some of the lumber will be used for framing new storage lofts to be built in the pole barn, and the oak might end up as some nice hardwood flooring. The kitchen garden is now sculpted into raised beds, a trellis is waiting for the arrival of the just-planted peas, and a cold frame sash sits over a bed of direct-seeded spinach. The cold frame is an experiment this year. The idea is that it will warm the soil and lead to better germination. In the farm’s workshop, Intern Virginia has also been working on a larger cold frame that will sit over the raised beds.
Take a walk down to the Howell Farm barnyard and something is much different than it was last week. Last week, and especially two weeks ago, you would have noted an enormous pile of manure behind the barn. Today, the manure pile is just a shadow of its former self, a smallish heap.
Farmer Ian and Intern Virginia deserve most of the credit for putting in long days of manure spreading, although many others pitched in (quite literally). After the last load was finally forked into the manure spreader on Saturday and then dispersed across the crop fields, Intern Virginia reports feeling a great sense of accomplishment. The Howell Farm sheep barn is now full of lambs – seven to be exact. Five are black sheep, one is white, and one is mottled.
Farmer Jeremy noted an unusual occurrence this year. After the first two lambs were born this spring, there was a two-week gap before the next lambs appeared. He wouldn’t have thought much of it, except he knows another farmer with sheep who had a three-week gap between his lambs this year. Farmer Jeremy has a theory that the gap has something to do with the stress of Hurricane Sandy, which struck while the ewes were with the ram last fall. |
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The Furrow is the online newsletter of The Friends of Howell Living History Farm. We will be updating this site about once a week with crop reports and other insights into life on a horse-drawn living history farm. Archives
June 2015
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