After an exceptionally hot weekend, the air reverted back to its crisp state. Finding a free half hour before dinner, Davyd, Gwyn and I headed out back to collect apples.



How do we get them out of the trees?

Davyd is pretty talented at getting them down.

Then comes the fun of collecting them. Bumped, bruised, and with insect inhabitants? No problem! The unsavory bits will be removed in processing.

These apples will be used to make delicious applesauce. Except for the mostly-blemish free ones, those will be eating apples.

Can't wait for the potatoe pancakes & applesauce this winter!

The month began with us saying goodbye to our roosters and is ending with us welcoming five new residents to the farm.

Rusty, Bella, Eldred, Maple May Fiona, and Sophia have taken up residence in the barn. 

They are Katahdin breed sheep, which is a hair breed. This means that instead of having wool coats, they have hair coats. They don't need to be sheared in the spring, instead they shed.

We purchased these Katahdins as breeding stock to start our own larger flock. We plan to then sell future lambs as breeding stock, as well as offer lamb meat. Our neighbors raise two sheep per year in their field and share the most delicious lamb stews with us in the winter. Hopefully we can do the same in future winters.

What do sheep need you ask? They need a cozy sleeping quarters with either hay or shavings to sleep on. Each night they get fresh hay to eat as well as a tiny bit of grain. You can't feed sheep too much grain, or they get the runs. We think of the grain as sheep dessert. They also always need fresh water, and enjoy a salt lick in their stalls.

During the day we put them out to pasture in the back fields. We have electric netting fencing that runs from the barn door all the way out to the fields, where there are two sections for them to graze. Rusty and Bella are in one section, and Eldred, Maple May Fiona, and Sophia are in the other. Maple May Fiona and Sophia are the youngest, not yet a year old, so they cannot be in the same space with the ram. 

It is very important to also always have fresh water available for the herd during the day. Davyd lugs up buckets from our spring-fed stream for them.

Now that we have sheep, our eight-year-old neighbor has decided we are bona-fide official farmers. "You have two animals now, so that makes you real farmers" she told us. We're pretty excited to be considered bona-fide. 

Today was the day.

Last night Davyd and Jonathan loaded up the roosters into a container Davyd had constructed from chicken wire and two by fours. This morning he hopped in his truck, roosters covered in the truck bed, and drove off to Greene.

Normally we have our chickens processed in West Gardiner, which is right next door. This year though they were booked until December! Raising chickens must be really taking off here in Maine.

This evening Davyd stopped at home, unloaded the empty chicken wire box, and re-loaded the truck bed with a cooler and empty box. Then back in the truck he went to Greene and returned home a little over an hour later with a bed full of nicely individually packaged birds.

Baby Gwyn and I helped him lug them down to the basement, and into the freezer they went, one by one. Davyd checked the weight listed on each bag and tried to guess which bird it had been.

While he was gone, Gwyn and I were swinging in the hammock beside the stream reading Peekaboo Baby and Sophie's Busy Day. We could hear one rooster crowing back near the garden and one out in the field. Davyd decided to keep these two in hopes of being able to hatch our own chicks. The crowing sounded sad and forlorn. The two roosters were definitely looking for the rest of their flock.

One of the roosters we kept we call Elvis. He has gray and black feathers that go all the way down his legs and look like Elvis-style bell bottoms. He is also a prolific crower. He has an Elvis-lookalike female partner who we also kept. In our batch of heirloom roosters, we did end up with one or two hens. These three birds got re-located to the pole barn with the rest of the hens last night. They seem to be settling in, but we did have to trek out to the field to bring in Elvis tonight. There he was, sitting all alone in the rooster house waiting to be put to bed.

The other rooster whose life was spared was Lancelot. Margaret nursed him back to health the day he arrived in the mail as a baby chick. She held him close to her skin most of the day to keep him warm. She couldn't bear to send him to the processor. Davyd's sister Claire offered to take him in with her flock in Farmington and he is now happily living with them.

We knew this day had to come, but I must admit that it was emotional heading out to the field this evening to get Elvis and seeing the empty rooster house. 

It probably won't hurt so much eating delicious free range chicken all winter.