Sylvia's Farm

by Sylvia Jorrin

  In one of my reprints of old farm books, I have found a picture of what was thought to be an ideal sheep barn. Loose hay was fed out in those days, both lighter and in some ways easier to handle. Part of the mow floor consisted of what is in effect a trapdoor on hinges with a weighted pulley system on the nonhinged side. Hay was tossed onto this trapdoor. When the weight of the hay exceeded the weight on the end of the pulley, the door slid open and the hay slid into the feeders below. The trapdoor itself formed part of the short chute that carried the hay to the feeder. The feeders are situated and built to accommodate the angle of the trapdoor-cum-chute, and the sheep can easily eat from it.

  I want this trapdoor in the floor of my barn. Badly, very badly. I had hoped to have it last year. But the sudden arrival of hay, and a lot of it, prevented me from having it built in time. And so I allowed a compromise that was in essence the absolute wrong way to put the hay in the barn. This year, I am determined to put nothing whatsoever in that section of the barn until the door has been installed. The recently installed barn floor is also begging to have some extra posts put in to help support it. That too must be done before the hay goes in. If I were truly courageous, which I am not, I would not allow the hay to go in until those posts had been installed.

  A small amount of hay arrived by a circuitous route today. It was unexpected but came in small enough increments to make it manageable. I shoveled and raked and hauled and spread much of the damp and spoiled hay that had matted onto the upper level of the floor, outside. Most of it was sent, to my intense satisfaction, to places that it best served. I was pleased. The little bits of hay that escaped lay on a relatively clean floor and could be raked out onto the mow. No waste here. It also became far more easy to walk, carrying bales to throw over the mow, when the floor was unencumbered by wads of hay clumped together.

  Some of the matted hay went to a section of the barn that is about to be shoveled out. Some went over the bridgeway. And some went onto the pasture where the donkey now lives. With any luck, the seeds will be pushed into the earth by his feet, and the manure from the sheep that got mixed in from their occasional visits to the loft will fertilize the ground and the hay scraps will mulch it all to bring back a little grass. I planted some tomato plants yesterday and today. There are a few more left to do. I also planted some radishes and radicchio, both to sell and to have for the house. Rather than waiting until I had properly prepared the entire vegetable garden, I prepared several beds as perfectly as I possibly could and planted in those. I even managed to get the rows relatively straight. The seedlings had come from Georgia, are relatively inexpensive, and are of special varieties that I have not been able to locate in garden centers in this area. It shall be a task to keep the roosters out of the mulch. I love best to use a mixture of sheep manure and chopped hay. The roosters think it makes a great place to take a dust bath. In effect, what the mixture does is provide a source of a slow-release fertilizer each time it rains. By the second year it has disintegrated well enough to lighten the soil and make it far more friable.

  While the twelve small, rectangular beds that are left unplanted are in stages ranging from absolutely overgrown to in need of a quick raking, those three well-planted little stone-edged plots have all afforded me guiltless satisfaction. The remaining plots bear no reproach, as yet, because the very correct neat ones are simply offering promise, examples of the absence of compromise.

  A clear section of hayloft floor and the well-ordered garden plots gave me somewhat of a change in perspective. I began to view some other little space in the environment with fresh eyes. The yard where the geese are fattened became a source of interest. The manure and bedding had become packed so firmly that barely a blade of grass has had the courage to break its surface. It is fenced to about four feet with chicken wire, a fertilized, fairly sunny spot next to the barn bridgeway.

  For several years I’ve wanted to grow kale to add to the diet of my sheep. I even have some two-year-old seeds. The fenced-off area is next to the barn. It can be easily cut and fed with relative ease, only a few feet from the barnyard. I took a pick and dug a small trench. Sure enough, beneath the concretelike texture of the goose droppings, matted hay, and seven-month-old mixture was some of the blackest, richest soil I’d ever seen on the farm. I immediately thought of planting beans there as well.

  Tomorrow I shall watch the sun to see if there is enough to support a garden in that spot. And if there is, I’ll plant beans, interplanted with kale. The absolutely right way. Not only shall the nitrogen from the beans support the kale, the beans will be pulled long before their canopy stresses the kale. What is amazing is how doing something without compromise leads to still more solutions. Correct ones.

  A PACK OF COYOTES

  A PREGNANT EWE was killed by a pack of coyotes the other night on my farm. I didn’t hear a sound. The horror of it lingers with me. My farm has been severely menaced by coyotes since spring. They have been bringing my lambs to their pups and feasting on my sheep. I called the Department of Conservation and a conservation officer was dispatched to the farm. Contrary to public opinion, here, at least, no reimbursement is offered for sheep killed by coyotes. The officers themselves can do nothing except make recommendations. They suggested I hire a trapper and offered me the name of one with a sound reputation. For the past several mornings he has been coming to set and reset a series of traps around the farm. The elusive coyotes avoided them. An innocent sheep did not. I’ve lost fourteen lambs to date, plus two ewes, to two- and four-legged dogs. It is all too heartbreaking.

  We are in the midst of a drought, and the sheep have been eating hay for about a week now. The cows stand in the evening, their chins resting on a gate, waiting for a bale to be brought to them. Today, I shall bring them hay in the morning as well. The sheep get some at night, but I shall begin to morning-feed them also. Winter hay fed out in summer.

  This was the drought I never believed would happen. The third in four years, a nearly impossible sequence. I remember the first drought. It was a glorious summer, clear and beautiful. The summer people were raving about what wonderful weather it was.

  I walked up to Tom Connelly’s hill often that year, to get my sheep and bring them home. The incongruity of the absolute beauty of the countryside and the impending disaster, resulting from the summer use of the winter’s hay, was constantly on my mind. I knew the year’s profits would be lost, fed out on those beautiful sunny days. The winter seemed so far away and yet was ever-present. No matter how hard I was to work that next winter, no matter how many lambs would be born and no matter how many would survive, the profits of it were all burning under my feet. And I knew it. Walking up that pretty, pretty path on those lovely summer’s days to Connelly’s hilltop to bring my sheep down to parched pastures said it all to me.

  A wind blows across the page as I write these words, and the sudden sound of rain accompanies it. I leave the windows open to feel the rain rushing in. The unvarnished floor changes color and becomes suddenly beautiful. The roof in my dining room has begun to leak. And I don’t care. The sound above my head is childhood and summer and gratitude all rolled into one. Rain. We have had some whispers of it for a day or two. An hour of a haze so thick it almost could be called rain. And last evening for a quarter of an hour before dusk there was a touch of something so gentle it could hardly be called anything at all. Rainbow weather without the rainbow. But this is the first occurrence in six weeks that could be called rain. Hard, solid drops, straight from the sky, with wind and noise. A gray light between the house and the hills. Thunder. Tree leaves rustling. A faint chill in between the waves of heat.

  Between the intimations of rain we’ve had for the past couple of days, and the sudden effort being made as I write, there is new hope for the meadows and pastures. It is too late for the cows, at least until autumn. The grass will not recover fast enough for them, even if the rains persist on a more normal course, but it’s not too late for the sheep by any means. An hour after Nature’
s gesture, yesterday’s clover darkened in intensity and became green again. I shall still see my winter’s hay fed out this summer, however; it is a long way from autumn. I still shall see the profit from my winter’s labor lying on the summer’s earth wasted around the feeders. But we are still alive. At least most of us. Whoever as has not been killed by coyotes.

  Last winter I believed there was a possibility I might get killed here. It comes as a shock to me. I feel so alive today. So alive that it comes as something of a shock to realize that last winter I believed I would die. Here. On my farm. The words, “My way of life could kill me,” kept running through my mind. Some people’s way of life, smoking, drinking, driving carelessly holds the possibility of killing them. Mine is the country. Fresh air. Pink cheeks. Exercise. On a farm, living as farmer. I thought my chances of survival were fifty-fifty. Well, maybe sixty–forty. And I went through the process of accepting it. Every day. Wet firewood. Forty degrees indoors. A dangerous barn. Restless cows. Never enough to eat. I may die today, I thought at least once every day. Because of my way of life.

  The rain has stopped again, but a fierce wind blows low to the ground. My son is here to help me, and Don Roberts is addressing the leaks in the house roof. Things are moving very fast all of a sudden and for the better. I’ve begun to drive myself. A little faster. A little harder. I’m not afraid of the winter this year, no more than I am afraid of the drought. Nor much of anything.

  I went up the side hill with the trapper yesterday in order to see where he set traps to catch the coyotes. He is a careful man, deliberate and intelligent. I hadn’t said whether or not I wanted to see the dead pregnant ewe. She was one of my firstborn Dorset girls. He went on a bit ahead of me. “Don’t come any farther,” he said. “You don’t want to see it.” I didn’t. The coyotes had killed it and didn’t eat it. The birds had gotten to it some.

  I’ve watched the profit from the farm spilled onto the ground during a summer’s drought. I’ve seen the winter’s hay fed out and the lifeblood of the farm spilled out on the ground by coyotes on the attack. I’ve seen the summer’s most beautiful days spell hardship for us all.

  MANGEL-WÜRZELS, ROUGE VIF D’ETAMPES PUMPKINS, AND LEEKS

  THE SEARCH for information on planting the root crop mangels, sometimes called mangel-würzels, and subdivided into classifications called Mammoth Red and Golden Tankard, has led me across an ocean as well as caused me to write numerous letters and badger countless extension agents. It was to my great joy that I found, at last, two shepherds at the Royal Agricultural Show in England who fed mangel-würzels to their sheep. They gave me planting information and argued between themselves, to my edification and education, about the relative merits of each type.

  This morning’s mail brought me a fall catalog from Smith and Hawkin. I’d bought a pair of barn shoes from them once but nothing else; they are a bit too precious for this farm. The covers are too pretty, however, for me to tell them to stop sending the catalog. As I looked through it, hopefully, finding nothing to covet, suddenly there it was. The barn thermometer of my wildest dreams! With a picture from a French seed packet of a smiling Gallic farmer, red cheeked, stout, holding a formidable mangel under each arm. The Mammoth Red under the right and a Golden Tankard under the left. I want that thermometer. And I want those seeds. Having tracked them down across this continent and the adjacent ocean, the mangels have come to me. It has taken too long. I’ve wanted and needed to extend my ability to feed my stock for a very long time now. I’ve deliberated about planting Jerusalem artichokes and mangels and kale for a number of years. My whole-farm planner, Dan Flaherty, has tried to shy me away from annuals, and while I understand that, it is tempting to try anyway.

  For what seems like eons, I’ve wanted a farm stand as well. This year, my tomato investment died because I had to earn some mortgage money away from home and couldn’t keep up with the watering. The leeks survived, however, and are beginning to look good. I don’t want to sell them all, though, as they are almost all that I have from the garden. But hope reigns high at the moment, and I am thinking once more of what to plant next year.

  It is barn-shoveling time now, and I’m going to have to put it all somewhere. Why not move it a little farther in the pasture and pile it on an ideal section of field to begin to decompose? I’ve also wanted to do the big fluted dark orange pumpkins for a very long time. They keep exceptionally well, don’t turn to mush when they freeze and thaw, and can be left frozen in the barn and then sliced and fed to the sheep. But where to put them?

  I love to walk around this piece of land and think. Unfortunately, it is a slow process. Not the walking. Just the thinking. It seems to take so long to come up with the right solution here. Everywhere I’ve thought to put the farm stand and the pumpkins has never seemed right. Too far from the road to carry things. Not enough sun. At last, however, the right sites for the farm garden and stand have presented themselves to me. I had unintentionally ruined a corner of pasture by feeding out hay on it for cows. They stomped down the earth and in all other ways compacted and smothered the ground so that absolutely nothing cares to grow on it. It is a corner only a few feet away from the vegetable garden and my house. At the opposite corner of the pasture is a charming spot right outside of the fence, perfect for placing a farm stand. It is next to my driveway and a good pull-off place for cars. The potential garden site has full sun all day, as well. And it won’t be taking anything away from the pasture because nothing can grow there at the moment anyway. But piling composed manure there will create favorable soil in that section of the field in the fullness of time. In addition, it isn’t too far away to push a wagon or wheelbarrow to the farm stand site.

  I have a copy of one of Lee Valley’s marvelous reproductions of old farm books. In it are plans for making all manner of structures from tree limbs. I am about to get a supply of elm, some of which would be ideally suited to creating a small stand in which to sell some produce. I’ve yet to find the correct place to grow the mammoth reds and the golden tankards. They are said to be milk makers. I shall find out soon enough, Along the same fence, bordering the driveway, is the ideal strip in which to grow turnips. It is forty feet wide and about one hundred feet long. Were I to plant the small red-and-white turnips in that spot, I’d be able to move electric net fencing for forty days, one strip of one-foot by one-hundred-feet each day, to feed my sheep. Strip grazing. In the process they would fertilize the ground and pound their manure into the earth with their little sharp feet. It was the realization that root crops could be winter fodder for livestock that revolutionized farming in the Middle Ages. All hay had to be cut by hand and stored in hayricks, subject to the same kind of spoilage that our farmers are now discovering in the use of round bales. Many had to slaughter some livestock in November rather than allow them the possibility of going hungry in the winter. Once root crops began to be fed out, things changed dramatically. Both cows and sheep would eat the tops and pink roots, and the pigs and geese would be fattened on what was left in the ground. I’m going to try it.

  For many years, I listened to some sound advice to not spoil my pasture with crops. I’m glad I listened because the places that I had considered were the wrong ones. But this plan and the needs prompting it have evolved slowly, as I believe farming decisions should. For the first time it seems correct.

  There are days when life seems possible. That I have a fighting chance. Although, I must admit, I can’t remember when I last thought I had one. This chance was given to me by the fact that the apartment in my house is rented. Despite the continuing huge sums that are being demanded of me to refine the place, it means that this month, at least, there’s enough money to take care of the house. And suddenly I can be creative about the farm. It is easier to get up in the morning. And pushing a little harder at the end of the day no longer feels like a burden. To go the extra mile for fifteen minutes seems worthwhile.

  In the morning I shall call one of the extension agents who have worked very
hard to help me demystify the raising of the mangels and tell her about my latest find: the thermometer decorated with Golden Tankards and Mammoth Reds. I’ll call Dan Flaherty to ask how to prepare my pasture for next year’s turnip crop. The pumpkins shall be familiar enough to do on my own. Henry Kathmann cut down an elm for me today. Some of the wood might become part of the farm stand. I may even start drawing ideas for the sign. It would be so tempting to do that French farmer, with a mangel under each arm.

  PIGS AND COWS

  THE LATEST round of Tamworth pigs are due to arrive on Friday. Six of them. I intend to be ready for them. In the absolute. Pigs have been known to cause me, on occasion, great grief. On the other hand, they have earned money and provided the best pork this family has ever eaten. These six pigs are the final experiment. If it doesn’t work, there shall be no more pigs.

  My old books of plans for sheds and outbuildings and other farm accoutrements show various plans for pig houses. I’ve found one I like the best and hope to convince Henry Kathmann to spare some time to build it for me. He understands farm-building projects extremely well and indulges me with clever solutions to the complex problems that this farm often presents. There is some green metal left from the roof, a few pieces shortened to size, that will make an admirable roof. And there is some straw that once called itself hay that will bed them. And I have extra wood from the barn-building project, already cut. The latest plan is to make the pigs root up the field that wants to become my truck garden, complete with mangels, kale, turnips, leeks, and tomatoes. This year, after they leave a well-secured place in the barn, the pigs will be enclosed by electric fencing within my wood fencing in the designated sections of pasture. I shall work one third of it this fall. If it proves successful, next spring’s pigs will start the second third.