Rolling Dog Farm

Here They Come

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First, a quick "programming note": I will be taking a blog break next week in light of the Labor Day holiday and will resume posting the week of September 10th.

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I had posted a couple of months ago about our potato crop. Well, last weekend I started harvesting them, and wow, do we have potatoes. I took that photo with my cellphone on Sunday. I had harvested rows of Green Mountains (yellow) and Sangres (red) on Saturday; the potatoes in the photo are Salems I pulled up on Sunday. So far the Salems are the high yielders, producing about 50% more than the other two types. But I have many more rows, and types, to pull out of the ground again this coming weekend before I can hand out any ribbons!

We grew these without any chemicals -- no fertilizers other than good old-fashioned manure, and no pesticides or herbicides. We controlled the major potato pest, the Colorado potato beetle, by handpicking the little devils. And there were a lot of them, even though we rotated this year's crop onto new ground that hadn't seen potatoes before. But the handpicking worked and the potatoes survived the beetles just fine.

Ever since reading in Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire several years ago how conventional potatoes are cultivated, we have only eaten organically grown potatoes. In a New York Times Magazine article that later became the basis for his chapter on potatoes in The Botany of Desire, Pollan recounted a conversation with a potato farmer named Danny Forsyth:

"I asked him to walk me through a season’s regimen. It typically begins early in the spring with a soil fumigant; to control nematodes, many potato farmers douse their fields with a chemical toxic enough to kill every trace of microbial life in the soil. Then, at planting, a systemic insecticide (like Thimet) is applied to the soil; this will be absorbed by the young seedlings and, for several weeks, will kill any insect that eats their leaves. After planting, Forsyth puts down an herbicide — Sencor or Eptam — to "clean" his field of all weeds. When the potato seedlings are six inches tall, an herbicide may be sprayed a second time to control weeds." 

But that's not all. The potatoes then received 10 applications of chemical fertilizers during the growing season, as well as 8 applications of a fungicide ... followed by two applications of a chemical spray to control aphids. 

Pollan continued,

"...farmers like Danny Forsyth must spray their fields with some of the most toxic chemicals in use, including an organophosphate called Monitor.

'Monitor is a deadly chemical,' Forsyth said. 'I won’t go into a field for four or five days after it’s been sprayed — even to fix a broken pivot.' That is, he would sooner lose a whole [135-acre] circle to drought than expose himself or an employee to Monitor, which has been found to cause neurological damage."

You can see why we stopped eating conventional potatoes a long time ago! And yes, it's not just potatoes that get this kind of chemical drench, so we generally only eat organically raised food.

After pulling the potatoes from the ground, we let them "cure" for a bit and then put them in the root cellar. If the rest of the potato varieties yield like the Salems, our root cellar is going to be overflowing and we'll be looking for more places to store them!

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!

In The Ground

It doesn't matter how many Kuranda dog cots we have in the yards -- if there's a good size hole in the ground, the dogs prefer it. And it doesn't matter what their disability is ... they'd rather curl up in a hole. This is blind and deaf Spinner, who spends a lot of time these days in this deep hole right outside the front door. The cots are in the shade under the roof overhang, so it's not a question of one spot being cooler than the other -- except the dirt itself can be cooler, or feel cooler, on a hot day. I took the photo above a few days ago, but this morning she was back in the hole, this time curled up tight in a ball and fitting entirely inside the hole!

So, while we have more than enough Kuranda cots, the one thing we don't seem to have enough of are holes in the ground. Which, judging from what's going in some of the yards around the house, is a situation the dogs seem to be resolving for themselves just fine.

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!

Tree Stress

I know it looks beautiful, but those trees are turning way too early. In fact, they started turning back in July! The strange weather -- 80 degree days back in March followed by frosts, long dry spells followed by torrential downpours, and hotter than normal summers in general -- is no doubt taking a toll. The trees most affected are the maples, which you see turning in that photo above. Birches also seem to be particularly stressed -- they started yellowing back in July, too, and have started losing their leaves already. One day last week I was outside down by the barn when a breeze came up, and the sudden rustling of falling leaves from a nearby birch had me suddenly thinking and feeling like we were in mid-autumn .. except it was 80° in mid-August.

 

Here's another view, taken to the right of the shot above:

You can see not only the color changes but also how thin some of the deciduous tree tops are. The small birch at the very bottom of the photo has already lost all of its leaves.

 

This next view is looking down to the horse sheds:

 

We've seen this happening everywhere we've been in northern New Hampshire and Vermont -- not sure how widespread it is elsewhere. It's just a few species so far, which is fortunate. The one tree we have that is clearly thriving is the big oak next to the front yard; not surprising, I suppose, since oaks are one of the trees that are expected to "move" north as the climate warms.

 

When I say "hotter than normal summers," there is real data behind that. Every week the local paper publishes a weather summary for Lancaster, including previous year temperatures for that same week and the 30-year average. The monthly average maximum temperature for July 2012 was 81.3°, while the 30-year average for July is 78.8°. (July 2011 was 81.5°.)

 

It's too soon to know what this will mean for the "real" autumn colors still to come. This early taste of fall is ... tasting rather strange.

 

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

More Clearing

This is another field we've been working on this summer. As I mentioned in a previous post about the other field we cleared, this was also part of the same, once-productive farm. This used to be exceptional hayground about 40 years ago. We know that because the fellow who picks up our trash said his grandfather once owned this land, and he worked with his grandfather to hay it when he was a teenager. He said they would get 10,000 bales from these various fields we've been restoring.

That hay production included a 10-acre pasture adjacent to this cleared one; we grazed it this year and hope to try haying it next year, though at the moment it's pretty weedy. We're counting on grazing pressure to help bring down the weed burden.

This next shot is looking inside another 4-acre "field" next to the cleared land; we took this photo at the tree line at the top of the photo above. This is what the cleared field looked like a couple of months ago:

That was once high-quality, highly productive hay ground. <Sigh.> We might tackle that next year, or just turn the goats out into it. It may not be hay land, but it sure is perfect goat habitat!

This is what happens in this climate when people let cultivated land go ... it naturally reverts to forest. The only way to prevent it is to mow it or graze it. It's really a shame to see this happen, because it took such back-breaking effort and labor to create those wonderful hayfields originally, back in colonial days, and after two hundred plus years of farming, people just abandoned them in the last half of the 1900s. Now we're expending a lot of effort and labor to restore them to their original purpose, though thanks to machinery it's not the back-breaking burden it was back then.

Here's another view of the same cleared field, looking up towards where we took the first photo:

The only benefit to this project was getting a year or two's worth of firewood from it. If you click on the photo for a larger image, you should be able to see two large piles of logs up next to the treeline at the top of the photo.

I seeded this field with grass seed a week ago. Two days later, a torrential downpour washed most of the seeds away. I seeded it again on Saturday, and yesterday "rolled" the seeds into the ground with our land roller. We have several dry days ahead. Now what we need is a nice, soft, gentle rain. 

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

Where's My Dish?

I took these photos on Friday evening of Wilbur checking out the long row of dog dishes drying on the back deck. The barely one-year old dishwasher quit working on Thursday -- about a week after the warranty expired, of course! -- and so we're back to washing them all by hand. This is the second dishwasher we've had in two years -- both new, both died just after warranty expiration. We've had similar issues with a variety of appliances in recent years -- stoves, washing machines, dryers, you name it. I don't mean to sound like a crank, but it sure seems they don't make them like they used to. Generally the failures are related to their electronic controls -- as was the case with both dishwashers. Our appliance store, Top Furniture in Gorham, New Hampshire, promptly sent their repair tech out on Friday. He hopes to have the parts as early as Monday. 

In the meantime, that's a lot of dishes to wash ... and the ones you see in the photo don't include all the small dishes for the little dogs like Wilbur. Alayne had already done those and taken them down to the dog room to dry on a table.

Meanwhile, Wilbur kept looking:

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

Pals

Wendy M., who adopted blind Stoney and blind and deaf Baron from us a few years ago, recently sent me this photo of the two of them. I'm not sure it can get cuter than that! Baron is wearing a bandage on his foot because he was just at the vet getting an infection treated. A while ago Wendy moved from Montana to Washington, D.C., so Stoney and Baron are now enjoying life in the nation's capital.

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

Another Perspective

I thought you'd enjoy seeing some photos of the farm taken by someone else -- in this case, Judy H., who was here for our visitor day earlier this month. Judy took a lot of very interesting shots during her visit, posted them on her Flickr page, and kindly gave us permission to share them with you. She has two sets of photos -- one of the dogs, and another of the horses. The photo above is of me with Bugsy, who was being a total lovebug. 

Here is the link to the dog photos ... Judy posted some text from our website at the top, but scroll down the page to get to the photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38203292@N05/7735763022/in/photostream

And here is the link to the horse photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38203292@N05/7732143372/in/photostream/

It's always fun to see how our animals look from another person's perspective!

Thanks, Judy!

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

Horse Stock

Our farrier, Steve Sandvil, was here the other day to put horseshoes on the two Belgians, Bill and Bob. We don't typically put shoes on the blind horses, with the exception of Rosie, who occasionally needs "corrective" shoes to deal with a hoof flaring issue on her front feet. But because of the kind of work the two draft horses do, they needed to be shod.

Although BillyBob are a pleasure to work with -- well behaved and responsive, easy-going and calm -- they are a bit touchy about having their feet trimmed. We suspect they had some less than pleasant experiences in the past. To help the trimming and shoeing process, we got a horse stock specifically made by the Amish for draft horses. You can tell that Bill in the photo above fills the entire width of the stock; yet he's not even a large draft, so the Amish make a "super-size" version for the really big guys.

Here's Steve fitting a shoe on the rear foot:

And finally, here's an interesting shot of Steve using the grinder in his work trailer to put the finishing touches on a shoe, with sparks flying:

The small oven-like box on the left there, with the white insulation, is really just that -- an oven to heat the horseshoes to red-hot temperatures so they can be hammered and shaped to fit. It's fueled by a propane tank in the trailer. It's kind of a modern version of the "farrier's forge."

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

Someone To Snuggle With

Dexter hasn't really been himself since we lost our beloved Goldie a couple of months ago. He loved Goldie -- she was really his best pal, and the dog he snuggled with most of the time (though sometimes not to his liking!). He seemed to spend the first few weeks looking for her, and was just out of sorts.

But then Alayne noticed the other evening that Dexter had cozied up to blind Madison, and was propping his head up on her as he napped:

Madison's not really a "best pal" in the way Goldie was, but it was still heartening to see him finding some comfort in resting with -- and on -- another of our old girls.

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!  

Ella's Extraordinarily Difficult Life

Some dogs seem to have it made. As in three-legged Ella, who Paul and Jennifer M. adopted from us in 2010. Jennifer sent this photo to me about a week ago, saying "This is what I woke up to this morning. Although she was sleeping, snoring AND drooling....she did open her eyes as the flash went off."

I responded to Jennifer, saying "Now, I have to ask ... doesn't that man have his arms around the wrong girl?  What's wrong with this picture???"

And I used to think Oscar the miniature Dachshund took up a lot of space in bed.

I just hope the thread-count in those sheets is high enough for Ella's standards.

Ella ... sheesh!

P.S. Yes, Jennifer and Paul gave me permission to post this!

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Please Vote for the Farm!

The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, July 9 and ends at midnight on September 16. Grand prize in this round is $5,000, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories ... please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.

*** We are now LISTED UNDER OUR NEW NAME, ROLLING DOG FARM.  State is still NH for New Hampshire. ***

Please remember, you can vote every day ... consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.

We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!

You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.  

Thank you for your votes!