This will be short. My hands are very weak and shaky from two days of pounding a mushroom inoculation tool! I estimate I filled 2000 holes in logs with mushroom spores in the past two days. So now you know what we did this afternoon, the final 29 mushroom logs. Here is the rest of the day:
5:45-7:15am: delivered baked goods to Bald Guy
7:15-8am: animal chores and breakfast
8am-noon: assembling racks and supers and putting in foundation (it was 22 degrees with an inch or so of snow on the ground, so we had to delay working outside)
12:30-1:22pm: animal chores
1:22-4:22pm: mushroom logs
papa left (thanks for two great days of work papa! He's such a good father to me.)
The remainder of the day involved wandering around doing animal chores, cleaning eggs, riding the four wheeler and pushing the four wheeler (it wouldn't start after I turned it off about a mile from the house ... luckily it is mostly downhill from where I was so I coasted), planting 15 Christmas trees, hauling wood, and eating pizza. Now I am going to bed. For Shannon: I tried to work on the shower, but no luck yet.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Monday, March 24, 2008
Home Alone
Shannon and the children left this morning to go to the beach for a few days with Ron and Marcia, Reine, Clark and Britney, thus leaving me home alone. I have to go to work Wednesday, but in the interim, I have two days to work on the farm!!! Papa Bob (aka the great actor in several of my videos) came up this morning and is spending the night.
Today was quite busy. After finishing the packing and saying goodbye to the beach bums, I called a local Christmas tree grower and ordered 200 seedlings to replenish our tree patch. He just so happened to be coming this way and agreed to bring the trees with him and meet me at the corner store. As I waited for papa and the trees, I began assembling racks and supers. Papa soon arrived and joined in the assembly. We built 6 or so supers with frames with foundation in a couple of the supers before I went and got the trees. I ended up with 250 from the generous nurseryman. By now it was time for lunch. After lunch we drove across the creek and through the woods to my mushroom tree spot and cut down two more trees. I hoped this would be enough to get us over the 200 log goal. We brought the logs out of the woods and began the innoculation process. We fixed about 20 logs in the next two hours and then counted. We were at 168 logs and there were 29 left on the truck. Do the math ... three short. I'll have to cut one more tree.
Throughout this day, other farm chores were performed: gathering eggs (27 today!), feeding and watering chickens, catching and feeding escaped goats, feeding and watering rabbits and making sure the baby rabbits were alive (they were), and feedinng cats and dog. Oh yeah, it was darn cold today too and we ran out of wood at the house, so we had to take a load to the house from the barn.
As the day drew to a close, I decided we would plant a few Christmas trees as a test to see how long it would take us to plant all of them. The first tree was in the ground when a few flakes of snow started to fall (did I say it was cold?? it had been snow showering off and on all day). We continued without much thought and before we knew it, everything was getting white, our holes and seedlings were getting covered up as fast as Papa dug the holes. I was timing the planting of ten trees so I could multiply by 20 to get the time for 200 trees. It took us 17 minutes to do 10 trees. The snow fell so hard that in 17 minutes everything was white. At least half inch had fallen. We went inside to stoke the fire, scramble some eggs, fry some bacon and toast some homemade bread. The snow fell for another 17 minutes or so. We had more than an inch of accumulation, but now it was clearing off.
After supper and the evening animal chores and cleaning 27 eggs, I had to wrap 2 dozen muffins and a dozen cinnamon rolls to take to the Bald Guy at 6:30 in the morning. Which means it is time for bed! I'll give you another post tomorrow evening summarizing tomorrow's exciting events ... as if anyone out there is really reading this. Of course, Shannon will have to read it.
Today was quite busy. After finishing the packing and saying goodbye to the beach bums, I called a local Christmas tree grower and ordered 200 seedlings to replenish our tree patch. He just so happened to be coming this way and agreed to bring the trees with him and meet me at the corner store. As I waited for papa and the trees, I began assembling racks and supers. Papa soon arrived and joined in the assembly. We built 6 or so supers with frames with foundation in a couple of the supers before I went and got the trees. I ended up with 250 from the generous nurseryman. By now it was time for lunch. After lunch we drove across the creek and through the woods to my mushroom tree spot and cut down two more trees. I hoped this would be enough to get us over the 200 log goal. We brought the logs out of the woods and began the innoculation process. We fixed about 20 logs in the next two hours and then counted. We were at 168 logs and there were 29 left on the truck. Do the math ... three short. I'll have to cut one more tree.
Throughout this day, other farm chores were performed: gathering eggs (27 today!), feeding and watering chickens, catching and feeding escaped goats, feeding and watering rabbits and making sure the baby rabbits were alive (they were), and feedinng cats and dog. Oh yeah, it was darn cold today too and we ran out of wood at the house, so we had to take a load to the house from the barn.
As the day drew to a close, I decided we would plant a few Christmas trees as a test to see how long it would take us to plant all of them. The first tree was in the ground when a few flakes of snow started to fall (did I say it was cold?? it had been snow showering off and on all day). We continued without much thought and before we knew it, everything was getting white, our holes and seedlings were getting covered up as fast as Papa dug the holes. I was timing the planting of ten trees so I could multiply by 20 to get the time for 200 trees. It took us 17 minutes to do 10 trees. The snow fell so hard that in 17 minutes everything was white. At least half inch had fallen. We went inside to stoke the fire, scramble some eggs, fry some bacon and toast some homemade bread. The snow fell for another 17 minutes or so. We had more than an inch of accumulation, but now it was clearing off.
After supper and the evening animal chores and cleaning 27 eggs, I had to wrap 2 dozen muffins and a dozen cinnamon rolls to take to the Bald Guy at 6:30 in the morning. Which means it is time for bed! I'll give you another post tomorrow evening summarizing tomorrow's exciting events ... as if anyone out there is really reading this. Of course, Shannon will have to read it.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Going on the Web
Faith Mountain Farm is developing a web presence: www.faithmtnfarm.com
We are doing everything "in house" using simple google apps, so it may take some time to get the site up to speed. However, if Margaret gets hooked on the web page design side, we'll have things built sooner. Note that we are also launching a new venture in beekeeping: www.backyardbeehive.com Check it out!
We are doing everything "in house" using simple google apps, so it may take some time to get the site up to speed. However, if Margaret gets hooked on the web page design side, we'll have things built sooner. Note that we are also launching a new venture in beekeeping: www.backyardbeehive.com Check it out!
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