Miscellany

I'm working on a relatively in depth post that I'm sure will stimulate some comments so here are a few updates to enjoy in the meantime.

Really, it's been a crazy couple of days. The five cords of wood are finally stacked. I know that for "real" farmers, that is probably a pitiful amount, but we had never had more than a couple of face cords to stack at one time. My darling husband's most memorable comment while stacking in the dark, dank basement (aside from "there's a lot of wood") was: "Something large and furry definitely just crawled over my feet." I have been conducting interviews for teaching positions, which is pulling me away from the farm, and particularly the garden. I did end up staking all of the tomato plants (which I had failed to do earlier) and they are in the process of ripening. The one problem with doing this is that tomato plants stain really easily. So, the first morning of interviews, I was in the shower and noticed how dirty my hands looked (even though they were quite clean--just stained brown). Well, that's country life I suppose. I suspect our candidates were too nervous to really notice. We also had to pull the potatoes out due to something getting to them. They are still really "new potatoes" and I wonder if they will end up storing okay. Not nearly as many as last year which is unfortunate as those tend to be a staple of winter dining. Speaking of food, a couple people made me aware of this link from the New York Times about local eating in the Berkshires.

Just as the evening was winding down, the neighbor's heifer apparently got bored and figured out how to get out of her pasture and into our yard. She ended up in one of our open pastures (which we closed when she got in it), met the horse, and then started bawling (in the way only cows can do) for her own pasture-mates. We phoned our neighbors up, and they got the heifer safely over to her pasture (and actually then moved all the bovines to their far pasture so they couldn't break through again) and came over to chat. Apparently, their neighbor's on the other side (renters) have a couple of dogs that ate half their chickens the other day. Yikes! Not good. Right now, our fence charger which is normally on the chicken fence is on the corn (to prevent raccoons from eating it). If we didn't have our own dogs who are relatively good watch dogs, I would probably electrify the chicken fence again. I guess the question is whether eggs are more valuable than a few bushels of corn...