Spring IS coming!!

Not only are the bees flying on nice days, but it’s getting noisy at night.  These little guys are going nuts in every wet spot that will hold water for more than a week.  We found this little gent crossing our driveway, and took a little look at him, before returning him onto his urgent errand…

Updates are also on the way, the January farm meeting (for lots of reasons) got postponed till the end of February and we are just finishing up the production calendar for this year.  I’m really hoping to have this year nailed down in the next week or so.  Unless our first doe decides to go a little early, and given how this year has gone so far, that’s highly probable.

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Eggs on the farm.

Talk about holding the future in the palm of your hand… If another salmon had not riled up the gravel in the stream, this little thing could (with a lot of luck) have made it back here in a few years…  It’s been an epic Coho run this year.  All the reports say so, but all I have to do is step out on the back porch and listen.  It sounds like a water fight at the local pool.  Typically we see salmon in our creek from about Thanksgiving till now, but this year, they started rolling in about a month early, and they are still thick.  New ones showing up every couple of days to take the place of the ones that are spawned out and dying.  And getting hauled up on the bank to be munched on by other critters.  Yep, the lab figured that one out, and he’s now on a short leash.  Yuck.

I contemplated fishing REALLY close to home, but I have not seen one yet that was not a fire truck (full spawning color, and soft squishy flesh).  I was able to get a few out of the river before the river got high and wild with the winter rain.  I like a float trip as well as the next guy, but not in my waders, in November.

So back to the egg, salmon lay their eggs in redds, a spot in the gravel where the salmon lay on their sides, and thrash to clean the gravel, so their eggs don’t get smothered in the silt that’s on the bottom of the river.  Here’s a great overhead shot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Salmon_redds.jpg.  When they are pinched in a creek that’s only about 6′ wide, and stacking up like firewood, they will build redds on top of each other, and the later salmon will end up inadvertently kicking eggs out of redds as they clean a spot for their own eggs.  Makes me wonder if over time, the run will shift later in the year, as the fish pre-disposed to early spawning don’t have the high survival rate that the latecomers do.

Either way, it’s cool to be able to walk the kids (and adults too) back to see how it works.  Nothing like learning about everything from ecology, to biology, to physiology in your own back yard.  Even if it does stink.

 

Little nugget of life, found high and dry in a gravel bar, thanks to a neighbor hen’s redd making.

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Magic Winter…

My DSLR died several weeks ago, and I’ve fallen onto the cell phone camera for much of my quick, in the moment, and documentary image capture. I shared this on my facebook wall a little over a week ago, and wanted to share it here as well.

Our property is wet (long pause for impact), very wet. This makes some for some wicked mud if we don’t manage the pastures and animals well, but it also makes for an extended, almost magical time in the mornings. Fog and steam rise off the land from dawn till well into the morning, and I often find myself, staring at some beautiful scenery. It’s the kind of moment that my daughters might call ‘fairy time’ (thanks Disney), and I can imagine other worldly beings flitting about too. It is truly beautiful, and makes the wet socks, and cold fingers melt away in wonder, at the beautiful world we are stumbling through.

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June is (going to be) busting out all over!!!

It’s been a cold spring.  Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.  For the last 5 years it seems like we are just a tiny bit ahead of WildRootsHomestead in Alaska.  I know we aren’t, but it feels that way, when I see other folks posting photos of open poppies, and day lillys that are almost bloomed out.  Here are our dallias.  Well, some of them anyhow.  We have about 120′ row of them growing all down a fenceline, and when they are blooming, they are beautiful.  It just seems like it takes f. o. r. e. v. e. r. for them to get rolling.  Same with the garden.  And I’ll show that to you in another couple of days.

So, what’s blooming in your neck of the woods?  So far we’ve seen the dandy-lions and fruit trees.  Oh, and the trillium make their show again.

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Look who’s 3!!!

Yes indeed, by the time she wakes up, she’ll be a big 3 year old.  They do seem to grow fast here at the Adalyn Farm.

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Our Turn!! Hooping it up at Adalyn Farm.

I got the coolest Christmas present from my wife this year.  The box was about 6×6 and an inch thick.  Inside were 12 flexible drinking straws and a chunk of plastic wrap, and a note.  “your own hoop house, just add water”.  I’ve been sinning thinking of the hoop house over at my folks farm.  Sin is bad, and with my wife’s help, I will overcome it 😉  I’ll try to remember to take some photos, but so you can see what we are in for, here’s the post from a couple years ago at my folks place…

August 2009
It was really fun last weekend!  My folks had some milestone birthdays and a whole pile of folks showed up for food fun and hoop housing!  Lots of people I didn’t know (that doesn’t surprise me) and lots of folks I did!  It was a great success!  I’ve managed a work party or two, and unless you are used to coordinating tasks and materials for 15-20 people it can be a bit overwhelming.  It really did go well, with all but the front door done and the plastic over the top!  Here are a few shots….

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Twirling with flowers…

Just had to share this shot of our two little flowers. They wanted to twirl by the flowers. (I would guess the dahlias will be with us for only another week or so). Fun to see what a handful of years will do with twirling prowess…

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Getting a swollen head….

I’m speaking of pride here.  Our garden this year is very utilitarian (read weedy but full of food).  I have never had much luck with brassicas, until last year and the MASSIVE cabbage…  This year we skipped the cabbages (they went mostly uneaten, and so slipped off the ‘to grow’ list) and put in some broccoli starts.  Next year I am going to start my own, and simply hope for heads half this big…

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Cluck Cluck. Laying hens for sale!

There is a quote that goes something like ‘the best intentions….’  We have wanted to grow more of our own meat for a long time.  We also wanted to try to support the heritage, non commercial gene pool.  Well live and learn.  There is a reason Cornish Cross are so popular.  We could have had two batches out the door/in our freezer in the time it’s taken to get these girls to where they are now (almost 16 weeks).  We brooded all these girls together, and transitioned them into chicken tractors when they were old enough to handle the cold.  We pulled the roosters out of the pens about two weeks ago, they are milling around with the goats.  Now the hens intended for eggs are almost ready to transition to ‘big girl food’ and move on out to the chicken yard.  We had planned on butchering any roosters, and the extra hens that we have.  Then folks started asking if we had any chickens for sale.  We had planned on selling/processing the old hens, and most of them have sold.

So, we have decided to offer up the young layer hens for sale as well.  They are $18 each, and with a minimum order I’ll deliver them to you (within a reasonable distance).  I did some quick math and each of these birds is worth about $125 in eggs in 24 months.  Boom.  Feel free to shoot me an e-mail me adam@adalynfarm.com or call 425-610-6723 for more info…  We are down to Buff Orpington’s (listed as recovering by the ALBC), but plan on doing this next year with more variety.

Looking big!!!

Will you take me home?

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Look Who’s Two!!

What a trip it has been! From re-learning all the baby routines to helping a big sister learn that it’s not all about getting to be a ‘little mommy’. Now that she’s 2 her independent little personality is coming out. As if you could have guessed it would go any other way. She is learning to hold her own in conversations as well. Her vocabulary went past 300 some time ago and we have focused on more important things… Like trying to reason with her about her diaper. I don’t think Joscelyn thought she would be trying to reason with a two year old who takes her own diaper off during nap if it gets wet. Joscelyn walked into her room the other afternoon to find her standing in her crib, holding a wet diaper and saying “doaking wet Mommy. It doaking wet, I know.” Hard not to at least smile. She is still talking about her finger the chicken pecked to get the bread..

Yes Technically this should have gone up ‘yesterday’ but, with Easter, three birthdays, and my wife’s pending abdominal surgery, the week has just ran right away from us…