Life lessons in the woods

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Today at work, I ended up with an unexpected open afternoon. Cold snap last night, bad weather coming tomorrow, first week of November, and Alex was out of school! I headed home at lunch and loaded my new (off Craigslist) 2 seater ladder stand in the truck to take Alex out for a hunt, his second with me this year. Earlier in the season, I had hunted a new property and found a promising area that I was saving for this new stand. However, when we got there, I was disappointed to find another stand in the same area. Ok, we can find a different spot on the property.
However, I also found a pile of apples and a corn feeder. While I am completely supportive of baiting, I limit my baiting to legal areas only. This bait pile is illegal. I’ll let the landowner know (because I know he didn’t put the pile out), but it gave me the chance to discuss with Alex the legal and ethical aspects of hunting.
It was disappointing that I won’t be hunting there anymore, but it was an excellent teaching opportunity for my young hunter wannabe.
I’m sure he will explain it to his sisters when we get home since they were both disappointed that they didn’t get to hunt this year.

Wesleyan Local Food Co-op

The Wesleyan Local Co-op was started in 2011 to help students gain access to more local food.  The first year, the co-op had thirty members who received weekly deliveries of local produce.  In 2012, it expanded to 100+ members with 86 produce shares, 46 egg shares, 25 dairy shares, and a few meat and tofu shares too.  The co-op is student run with the help of our food service provider, Bon Appetite’s Production Manager, Ernie Arroyo, and Matt Couzens, who operates Horse Listener Orchard.  The co-op has a pickup every Wednesday in our student center, and all co-op members work two hours over the course of the semester to help with pickup while a leadership team of six people deal with logistics.

Sawyer Family Farm is happy to have joined other farms in supporting this student organization with farm fresh eggs!  I believe we are providing about half of the eggs consumed by the co-op.

Hurricane Sandy – Part 2

The winds and rain have passed, thankfully ending earlier than expected. We were lucky and never lost power. We have heard 75-90% of our town is out.
We survived the storm with very minor damage. Our Shelter Logic tractor shelter is a complete loss. There was 1 tree that came down, but it is in the woods and doesn’t impact anything. We have a few branches to clean up, but otherwise, no issues.

Hurricane Sandy – part 1

This past weekend was very busy BEFORE we needed to prep for a hurricane.  Saturday was working to set up at a horse show, Saturday evening we took the kids and friends to the Haunted Submarine at Nautilus and activities on Base.  Sunday was spent working at the horse show.  By the time I got home to help Anna get working on storm preps, it was 3:30.

We got the turkeys moved into our mobile coop and housed under the deck.  They will be off pasture until after the storm.  Anna and the kids did general clean up of loose items around the farm.  Extra wind break boards were added to some rabbit cages.  The horses were all put into their stalls with the doors to the paddocks left open (they are normally left outside all night).  We have about 600 gal of water for the livestock, the big and little tractor are full of fuel, we have lots of spare gas and diesel, and plenty of food to last a few months.

So, around 9:30, we declared the preps as good as they would get and settled in for a movie.

So far, the rain hasn’t been too bad, but the wind is definitely going to take a toll.  We just came in from the first round of animal checks, topping off water buckets, adding hay, etc.  While we were outside, the wind destroyed the Shelter Logic 12’x24′ that we use for the Kubota.  I could tell it wouldn’t make it through the storm, and took the tractor out only 5 minutes before the shelter gave in.We also saw a 15″ oak tree snap off while we working in the horse barn.  There are a number of limbs down around the property, but so far, none on the fences.  There is a birch that I do not expect to survive the storm which will likely take out a post and 2 sections of fence.  We will do another quick round right before dark, but, I doubt we will still have power at that point.  More updates to follow.

 

4:45 – I occasionally hear a shotgun type blast outside.  It is the sound of another tree snapping.

Making Yogurt

Earlier in the year, our family developed an expensive food habit: yogurt.  We were using yogurt on cereal at breakfast, for snacks, in smoothies.  In fact, we were easily spending over $60 a month just on yogurt (normally Stonyfield and Chobani).  Since we have all our own milk, we decided to start making some yogurt on our own from goat’s milk.  It’s very easy.

1. Pasteurize the milk.  While we drink it raw, we pasteurize it for yogurt to ensure only the desired culture grows.

2. Add 3-4 tablespoons of plain yogurt from the store per quart of milk.  (We tried purchased cultures, but didn’t like the flavor and for the cost, it’s cheaper to just get a little from the store.

3. Pour into pint jars. We sterilize the jars first because when we didn’t, other cultures started to grow after about 3 weeks of storage.

4. Load into Excaliber Dehydrator.

5. Cook at 100F for 6-8 hrs.

6. Refrigerate.

The consistency is much more liquid than store-bought yogurt, similar to European yogurt.  Anna is fine with that. I found that it was only a mental issue to get past and now enjoy the yogurt just fine.  Alex and Vicki stay away, but they were really only eating the yogurt in smoothies anyways. Amanda will eat whatever Anna and I eat, so she’s happy.

Why we use (and sell) Zephyr’s Garden Products

For many years, Anna and I have owned horses together.  We have used or investigated many different options for horse health over the year.  Over the past year, a few things have occurred in our lives and on our farm that made us step back and reconsider the products we used on our animals.  In the process, we became fans of and advocates for Zephyr’s Garden equine products.  Here is why.

In 2011, we decided to start raising meat products on the farm for our family.  This decision was based on health concerns about commercial food supply chains, such as uncontrolled use of antibiotics in meat animals.  There are a lot of documentaries and articles about the food supplies in the US, and the more we learned, the more concerned we became.  Now, over 90% of the meat we consume at our house was raised by us, harvest wild game, or raised by another local, small farm.  This also led us to start raising dairy goats for the milk supply.  We switched the family to raw goat milk and haven’t regretted it at all.  Since we were now eating meat from our farm, and drinking milk from our animals, we were concerned about chemical usage on the farm and the impact on our own meat/milk supply.  Additionally, our garden is next to the horse area and we stopped using all chemicals in our garden.

In late April 2012, we discovered a mass on Devil (Vicki’s pony).  It was cancer and you can read the whole story about the surgery here.  While we don’t know what specifically caused it, the consideration about chemically based fly sprays became very important to us.  Would you spray your own body with the chemical fly sprays every day? We did research and found the Zephyr’s Garden products to be appealing.

Finally, as a barefoot horse trimmer, I frequently encountered horses with thrush problems.  Previously, my only recommended solutions were chemically based, and usually contained stains and chemicals that I didn’t really want to get on my own hands.  Then, I had a client with a horse who had bad thrush.  4 weeks later, the thrush was gone, and she made no changes in husbandry or diet.  All she did was clean the hooves and apply the Zephyr’s Garden Thrush and Hoof Fungus Spray.  I was sold and immediately purchase some products for our farm.

For the rest of the summer, we used only the Zephyr’s Garden fly spray, and it worked.  Anna and I have been thrilled with the products.  They are non-toxic, we don’t worry about the kids handling the spray bottles, and THEY WORK!  Also, the customer service is excellent – if you send an email, you will get a prompt response from Georgette, the owner of the company.  As a small business, I like to support other small businesses whenever possible, especially if the PRODUCT WORKS!  In fact, we were so frequently telling everyone about how happy we were, we decided to become a local dealer for the products.  We don’t have plans to open a tack shop, but we support what we believe in, and in this case, it just makes sense to help spread the word.

You can view our Equine Products page to see what other products we fully support.

The story of our lives with horses. And goats.