It’s definitely feeling like winter out there today and we are feeling quite festive at our house.  John really did a nice job attaching some twinkle lights to the major beams in the living room.  I love having them up, we don’t end up turning the beam lights on as much.

All twinkled up

I hope that everyone who celebrates Hanukkah has had a peaceful holiday. We have enjoyed our latkes and the menorah with our son and grandson very much.  It’s certainly a nice way to bring some light into the darkest afternoons of the year!

John's copper tubing menorah

Yesterday was our first snow day of the school year.  It was a great call as once the snow started it really came down.  And then of course it was followed by torrential, windswept rains.  Totally yucky by the end of the day.

I had finally picked up our smoked pork last Friday and we were forced to cook one of the hams over the weekend (held my feet to the fire and all… not!).

Leftover ham

It was fantastic, some of the best pork we have raised yet.  The breed cross is my personal favorite (Tamworth boar on Large Black Sows) and then they had all of that goat milk and whey, they couldn’t not be wonderful!  Even though we have our hams cut in half, they are still pretty impressive hunks of meat and we ate from it all weekend and into the early part of this week.  So yesterday my husband looked at me and begged for lima bean and ham soup.  One of my all-time favorites as well.   Trouble was, only a few dried limas were hiding in the pantry.  So I dug through the containers and unearthed two different kinds of beans

Locally grown beans

that were grown locally in Jefferson, Maine, at Bluebird Hill Farm.  Wild Goose beans and cannellini beans.  The wild goose beans are small and multicolored, with little swirly markings on them.  Then I found a handful of black beans, not locally grown, and decided to throw those in as well.  It cuts down on the ‘locavore’ listing of this meal, but that’s o.k., it was awesome, and we have a huge pot of leftovers that will be welcome again tonight. To make it even better, a neighbor invited us over to share supper with them so we ended up having a small feast.  Can’t beat that on a stormy night!

Ham and bean soup

It’s been awhile since I last posted and I feel like a slacker.  Starting the week before Thanksgiving we have had a crazy schedule which is partly to blame, and holidays always kind of knock me out of sync with my usual daily patterns.  I dried off our doe Elf, as she was having some shyness about being milked during the whole breeding craziness, and I just didn’t want to fight her!  Salsa and SnowPea’s milk amounts dropped, and

Salsa on the milkstand

Salsa’s appetite wasn’t what it usually is, but that has changed drastically in the last week.  So I am down to two goaties on the milk stand and am probably going to start the drying-off process toward the end of the month.  I like having some milk coming in so I can make mad batches of chevre and throw them into the freezer for our winter and spring dining pleasure!  Choretime isn’t the same without the milking routines, and I miss that closeness with the does, but on the other hand, below 20F temps and howling wind make the whole milking experience less than fun.  It’s all part of the flow of the seasons and the year.  It’s also been a relief to note that Elvis the stink-o has returned more to his normal self and is not constantly trying to impress the girls.  I actually got into the pen with him the other day and he didn’t act as though I needed to be inspected and snurlfed like crazy.  Hopefully that means that everyone is bred and all’s right with the herd!

As for the sheep, we disbanded the breeding group that was up at the house with Mr. Big

Mr. Big with his girls

the week before Thanksgiving.  He hadn’t been showing any interest in the ewes he was hanging out with (and hadn’t marked any either), so he went back to the boys’ pen and the girls went up the hill into the group with Zorro the llama.  That left our breeding group down in the pasture to handle.  Everything appeared to be fine with the breeding:  our little Hamish the ram lamb took care of business promptly and they have had what is left of the grass in the pasture in a huge area.  I had been getting a little nervous about them being in the field as there have been a very vocal group of coyotes in the area.  Around dusk I have been hearing them yapping and calling, and then very clearly, an answering bray from Jingle the donkey, who was down there with those 6 sheep.  She had also been doing her perimeter run about the same time of day, so I guess she let them know who is the boss! (That. Or a combination of that and the electric fence).  The weather has been so balmy that I haven’t felt the usual frantic need to get them home and into the winter paddock, but the threat of this snowstorm got my attention at last.  So with Chloe and our son’s help on Saturday, we made 3 trips down to the pasture and loaded them two-by-two into the Subaru and brought them home.  Then Jingle walked with Chloe and I up the street and home at last.  Another chapter closed as the year ends and our minds turn to lambing!

We have had a lot of unnaturally warm weather this November and I have to say that I have been enjoying it.  It’s not winter yet, but the brilliance of October has definitely gone past.  I always feel as if I want to hold onto those brightly colored leaves on the skyline, but when the leaves are down and it’s not really winter yet, there is a certain feeling of expectancy, first of the Thanksgiving holiday to come, and then of the winter.  I have been thinking about that as I do chores and am enjoying even these gray Northeast skies, the clouds and the birds.  It didn’t seem like something I would bother to blog about, but I happened to visit the blog of one of my favorite children’s authors, Cynthia Lord of Brunswick, Maine, and I just had to put a link to her beautiful and simply written thought about November, as well as the other in-between months that come to us in northern climates between the drama of the 4 seasons.  Here it is:  The Concept of November.  Thank you Cynthia!

Wow, it’s Sunday and it’s still sunny and warm. I am reveling in being at home for the day and  am recuperating from the back to back trips to butchers:  Friday night a trip to the butcher in Albion to pick up the fresh pork cuts from our pigs, and a 200+ mile round-trip yesterday to Dover-Foxcroft to pick up our lamb and goat meat from that butcher.  It feels wonderful to have gotten that taken care of before Thanksgiving, but I am bone-tired.  I wish I had taken a photo of the back of my Subaru crammed with boxes covered with blankets, towels and those heavy moving blankety things.  I rode with most of the windows open as it was a really warm day yesterday and was afraid of the 2.5 hour ride.  But between the cardboard and all the coverings, the meat was fine and still frozen solid.  It was great to get this taken care of.  Now all we wait for is the smoked pork cuts like the bacon and the hams.  Yum!  Can’t wait :*)

Gotta love a freezer full of home-grown meat!

I am not so very ready for Thanksgiving however, except that I did order a turkey and while cleaning out one of the freezers, I came across my back-up supply of locally grown cranberries.  Well, grown in Maine cranberries!  That’s two items taken care of.  I want to make Thanksgiving as close to a locavore meal as I can this year.  Coffee, olive oil, sugar and flour can’t count, I guess, as I don’t think I can get that here in Maine yet, although the flour is going to be possible in the near future.  We have our own potatoes, onions, milk, goat cheese, italian sausage for the stuffing, turkey from nearby, cranberries from Maine, eggs from friends (? Hatchtown???), and maybe instead of a pumpkin pie I need to make one with our butternut squashes.  It might work.  Hmmm. I am going to give it a try.

As everyone else has pointed out this week, the weather couldn’t be nicer.  Decidedly unusual for this time in November, the week before Thanksgiving.  I am still trying to get over the sinus infection and feeling a little draggy, but the worst of it is being at work and looking out that window and imagining all the wonderful things I could be doing at home on the farm!  Scooping poop, moving the sheep one last time out in the pasture, dyeing skeins, planting the garlic, you know :*)

But the highlight of my week was on Monday night and early Tuesday morning:  the Leonid meteor showers.  I didn’t have the energy to do what our neighbors did (get up in the middle of the night), but between 6:30 and 7:30 on Monday night during chores, and then again on Tuesday morning during the 5 a.m. chore hour, I saw plenty.  I always look forward to the Perseids in August, but this past summer it was too cloudy that week.  So we have to be content with this show.  What a hardship to live in such a beautiful place with such a great expanse of sky!

A truly gorgeous day out today.  It was 40 F when I got up this morning, and although it’s breezy, it’s beautiful.  I wish we didn’t have erranding to do, I would much rather be working outdoors!

As I was walking in from chores, my eye was caught by this lovely volunteer that is thriving near the parsley and the dried up cucumber vines in the vegetable garden, and I just had to take a picture.

Volunteer pansies in the vegetable garden

Since I stopped to admire the pansies, my eye was caught by the other garden denizen that is looking kind of exotic and special.  John had tied one or two of these plants up as they were sprawling all over.  One of my most favorite vegetables!  (Sorry the picture isn’t a little more distinct, the little berries (?) on the plant are so eye-catching!)

Autumn view of one of the the asparagus plants

Bear and Josie footprints on the back steps yesterday morning

Snowy morning yesterday.  Day for loading up the piggles.  Usually we have them getting acquainted with the trailer for two or three days before the big day, but John was having some trouble with the wiring… so it was dark before the trailer gate was closed, but we could hear them happily sucking up the last of the evening’s milk and burrowing in the straw.  One more yearly task can be checked off of our list and, as the winter approaches, at least the chore load is diminishing!  And think of all that lovely pork in the freezer :*)

With all this talk about sheep breeding groups, I have left our poor LaMancha dairy goats out of the equation.  Even though we have very flexible fencing and paddock areas, I have been scratching my head over how to get the goats together as a group with a buck, and just let them get down to business.  That’s what we have done in the past few years and it works like a charm.

The young guns hope to be picked for the next doe!

Traditionally, instead of keeping a buck, most goat keepers get their girls to another farm and pay to have the does bred as they come into heat.  It’s problematic for us, since we both work and can’t just drop everything to get them to another farm, so we obviously need to keep a buck around. But with only a small pen inside the greenhouse available, we decided to wait until we saw signs of a doe in heat (difficult to miss with most!!!) and then put them into the pen with the chosen buck, let them have a day together, and then put them back in their usual grouping. When I wake up in the middle of the night and hear a doe calling, and come out in the morning to her plastered up against the fence, bleating and wagging her tail like a frantic flagger at the boys, it’s a pretty clear sign! This has worked for most of them, but Elf and Rhubarb may have silent heats.  I haven’t caught them yet.  So all but those two have been bred.

Elvis was extremely laid back and easy-going last year after we got him in with the does.  Like the year before, when we had Stinky Pete, everyone was happy and well-mannered.  I was able to walk amongst them with no trouble, feed them, check on them, etc., no problem.  Well that was then, and boy, this is now!  Elvis was fine until he had a visit with 2 does and then had to go back into the buck/ram pen.  His world came to an end, and he lets us know it, every time we are out there.  Oh my!  And after he went to the trouble of peeing all over his face and rubbing it in the dirt… all dressed up and nowhere to go!  He has decided that I am the cause of his frustration, so I can’t go into their paddock anymore… he jumped on me and almost knocked me down, making chortling noises the whole time.  Do I look like a doe?  After milking, I may smell like one to him maybe!  No one I know can stop laughing….

Elvis lets his son, Bud, in on the secrets of life!

It always happens when I am not looking.  It seems as though just yesterday (or the day before maybe) that this is what the tree line looked like at the bottom of the pasture field at our friend’s house:

Color in the pasture

I went down to the field yesterday to visit our little group there and this is what greeted me:

No-leaf zone

Always a surprise! No leaves already…