week 24: the many wave tops
this week on the little dream farm
Hello friend!
There has been SO MUCH going on around here lately it’s hard for me to think of where to even begin!
Let’s do this…how about we hit the wave tops of all-things LDF this week.
Sound good? Let’s dive right in!
The Furmers:
For those of you who follow us on IG and recall that Black Kitty was limping on her back leg recently, we had her see the vet, he didn’t feel it was necessary to do x-rays, and felt like it could have been a sprain or possibly even a bug bite or scrape that caused a little bit of cellulitis in the leg. He even went as far as to say it could maybe be small blood clots in the back leg and gave us some solutions if it persisted. Thankfully, she’s fully back to herself, no limp, and no issues! The Head Farm Kitty is back at 100 percent!
Now, for Little Lady…that’s a nut we still have yet to crack. She’s no longer marking in the house now that Jimmy the kitten (whose name is now Emerson!) was adopted out. But, whatever was wrong with her a few months back…our vet up in Vermont called it a “Fever of Unknown Origin” and gave her a shot of Penicillin, some fluids, and had us give her a round of antibiotics at home. He said it could’ve been a respiratory issue, a cold, or a virus. Well, since that time she’s been sick twice and we had her at a different vet for a second opinion who ran some bloodwork and found nothing but a healthy cat. It still doesn’t explain why she’s been lethargic, randomly refusing food, and all around acting really off. We gave a call back to both vets who feel it could be a lingering viral infection and gave us an antiviral and anti-inflammatory to try. So more to follow there and we’ve been keeping a close eye in the meantime. Poor baby girl!
Micro and Buist were both due for their annual vet appointment this past week so I ran them up to Vermont to get the news that they are both perfectly healthy. They’re both 10 lbs (hard to believe Micro is fully grown now!) and the vet always praises us for how great everyone looks (we always says it’s their food—what we feed them has made all the difference!). I’ve mentioned before that we take the cats on a rotation for the vet so we don’t have to do all of them in the car and all the bills all at once. The older cats, Dodger, Oliver, and Black Kitty all go in the spring and the younger cats, Buist, Micro, and Little Lady, all go in the summer. We tried vetting Black and White Kitty and it was a total disaster so we’ve agreed with our vet we’ll likely have to skip regular vet care for her.
Dodger, Oliver, and Black and White Kitty are all doing great so nothing to report there aside from the obvious of the three of them being ridiculously adorable!
The Buggos:
Mr. Shawn, our farrier, stopped by this week to trim Molly-Max and Dominic’s hooves. They were on their best behavior for him because we’ve finally nailed our routine for getting them harnessed up, having them stand in a specific spot every time, and giving them treats at exactly the moment Shawn is lifting up each of their legs to work on each hoof without them kicking or moving. It’s a pretty flawless system!
Before they lived on our farm they used to have to be sedated to have their hooves worked on, and the weird thing about sedatives for equines is you give it to them and they spend the rest of the day standing like zombies staring off into space. They’re still awake but they just look like their totally dazed and zoned out—I really hated the idea of that for Molly-Max in case he dinged a leg or tripped or something went wrong while he was under sedation.
So, we worked really hard to come up with a routine that doesn’t kill Shawn’s back and doesn’t make him have to wrestle two donkeys in order to get them the hoof care they need.
Shawn said this is the best their hooves have looked in all the time we’ve had them and we couldn’t be more proud—it took a little more than two years and deliberate and consistent farrier visits every 8-10 weeks for us to get them to this place. We’re so lucky to have Shawn to help us give them the very best care.
In other buggo-related news, we’ve been mowing their grazing pasture every week to cut down on ticks and also to keep their food intake in check. When the grass is nice and lush and green in the summertime it becomes like a sugar fest for equines (especially donkeys who are desert animals), which is bad for their feet and leads to what is known as “founder” or “laminitis.” While Molly-Max’s will never fully and totally heal from so many years of foundering, we can at least manage where he’s at now, which thankfully, happens to be a really good spot.
They’re both almost fully shedded out and likely within the next two weeks they’ll be sleek and ready for the heat of the summer!
Finally…we can’t stop refreshing our IG and gawking in amazement that this Instagram Reel of Molly-Max and Dominic has more than 2 million views…did our donkeys just become a viral sensation?!
The Girlies:
Last year we penned the girls into what we call the Chicken Area—a nice big fenced in area that connects to their coop, so that they didn’t disturb the gardens and the hydrangea hedges I planted and all the garden beds we mulched. This year, we just decided to let it be…if they kick the mulch everywhere we can rake it back in the beds. If they root around new plantings too much we can always put up small plant cages…but with only seven hens their far less destructive than a large bunch, so we’re letting them have their freedom to free range the farm this summer.
In the chicken coop, we’ve been mixing concrete this week and patching holes in the cement floor to keep out the rats and the mice who’ve dug holes clear through the old barn floor…the rats keep catching the eggs before we get to them and they eat a little hole in the tops of the eggs and suck out all the contents. Can’t have that! We’re also patching walls and plugging holes in the inner barn walls to keep them out as best we can. Rather than using poisons or traps we’re sticking with natural solutions and deterrents and monitoring as we go. I’ll share that natural product with you today down in the Sarah’s Favorites section of this Farm Note!
The Dahlia Patch:
Things are happening in the dahlia patch! All the tubers are poking up out of the ground and by the time you’re reading this I’ll be out in the patch running a few lines of drip irrigation so that we can automate watering the dahlias for the remainder of the growing season. In a few weeks when they’ve put on a few inches of growth, I’ll go out there and start stringing up the twine to all the t-posts that will provide corralling to each of the rows to keep the plants nice and upright as they grow.
The Big Garden:
All of our fruits and veggies have tripled in size since planting them Memorial Day weekend. This year we’re growing onions, leeks, potatoes, edamame, green beans, peas, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, kale, spinach, salad greens, beets, corn, squash, pumpkins, watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew melon. Then of course we have the blueberry and raspberry bushes, the apple, pear, and plum trees, and we added a peach tree to the Lower Orchard this year, too! I’m due to take you out into the gardens on IG Stories and show you around…can’t wait for you to see it!
The weather:
This needs a section all on its own! We’ve enjoyed incredible weather thus far this growing season but we’re about to head into our first hot spell of the year. This morning we’re waking up to temps in the low-40s…almost registering as the lowest low on record for this day of the year here. By Tuesday it’ll be in the mid-90s, likely registering as the highest high for this area on that date.
When it gets this hot, as it will be for a string of days this week, we set out extra waters for the hens and donkeys and flip on a fan we installed in the run-in shed for the donkeys. We don’t have central air in the farmhouse either, but we were sure to install our window and portable a/c units ahead of time, as we’ll be surely needing them this coming week!
Farm Projects:
On Monday we got our annual wood delivery dumped just outside the wood shed and Chris and I spent an hour that afternoon getting it all stacked neatly into the wood shed. It feels good to get that chore checked off in the summer knowing that we’re well prepared for the coming winter.
Our running list of farm projects has finally slowed considerably and now there are finally no big projects left on the list for this year. We’ve got all kinds of little things we’d like to tackle, like doing a complete clean out of the Lower Barn and maybe even hosting a yard sale, but otherwise we can finally take a load off and bask in all the goodness of the Little Dream Farm and what we’ve accomplished so far this year and so far in our journey on the farm.
Chris and Sarah:
As for Chris and I, we’re both feeling refreshed after spending our Adventure Day yesterday in Providence, Rhode Island. Neither of us had ever been there before, and it might just be our new favorite small-ish city! We stopped at two really great cafes, a doughnut shop, walked both the Brown and Johnson and Wales campuses, and strolled as much of the city as we could with the time we had. Then we headed to Bristol, Rhode Island and had lunch on the water and really enjoyed feeling like we snuck away to the beach for the day!
We went out of the way on our way back home to stop at a small dairy farm in Massachusetts that is famous for their Hadley Grass ice cream…did you know asparagus is also called Hadley Grass? I certainly learned something new, and also learned that paired with pecans and churned into ice cream, it makes for the most delightful flavor…seriously it’s now a top favorite flavor for me! We planned ahead and packed a little cooler so we could bring home a pint and my only wish is that we’d gotten a few!
That about does it for the wave tops of the goings on here on the LDF this week. Of course, there are a million other little things to share with you, but we’ll catch you over on Instagram for that!
Now we’re all caught up to speed on the goings on here on the farm. Have a fabulous day, friend, and we’ll catch you back here next week for another edition of the weekly Farm Note!
So many farmers around here have skin cancer from so many years of cooking in the hot sun doing farming work. That’s made us even more particular about protecting our skin in the summer months, but most sunscreens on the market today are highly toxic, filled with ingredients that do more harm for your endocrine system than good for your skin. The only sunscreen brand I’ll use was formulated by a mom who was also a teacher who kept looking at her students out playing at recess wondering…how come we’re not putting sunscreen on the kids when they go out to play, and what do they put in this stuff after all? She went on a many year hunt to find a chemist who would help her formulate a high-performance sunscreen that doesn’t compromise our health. I use the 50SPF in this size on my body, the Unseen Sunscreen in this size on my face, and the lip balm in mint. I highly recommend these three for all your summer activities!
This is the natural rodent repellent we’re using in the chicken coop. They hate the scent of mint so it acts as a deterrent rather than using poison or traps, which we don’t like and isn’t safe for BK or the hens anyhow!
I kept wondering why one of my two hydrangea hedges is growing so slowly until I noticed it’s getting nibbled on all the new fresh growth at the tips! Those pesky deer (whom I also love and are adorable, too)! We’re using this deer and rabbit repellent around the hydrangea hedges and around the border of the Big Garden fence to let the hydrangeas get a fair shot at putting on some considerable growth this year and to try and keep the bunnies out of what looks to be a giant salad bar in our back yard to them!
Did I read that right? Asparagus ice cream? Is it green? I have so many questions 😂
Hadley Grass Ice cream is great! You were in my area!