Finally, Photos

I finally managed to get to a library with high-speed wireless internet, so I have decided to post some photographs of the farm. They were taken several weeks ago, so things look a bit different now, but they will serve to show some of the things I have been talking about.

This first image is of the Pine Valley, looking down from the top of the market garden at about 5:30 in the morning. Some of the fields shown are part of the farm, and some are parts of neighboring farms.

Another image of the valley, this time from a pasture/hayfield hill on the farm. The water flowing downhill into the ditch is part of the flood irrigation scheme used on the farm to provide water to fields in sod and alfalfa. Water in the ditch is blocked up with a tarp, and then flows downhill into subsequent field ditches, which overflow onto the other parts of the field. It might sound like erosion would be rampant with this kind of flowing water, but the water moves very slowly and the grass or alfalfa sod protects the soil.

This is a harness with a collar. The collar goes on first by being unbuckled and then rebuckled onto the horses neck. The rest of the harness is then put over the right shoulder and pushed up onto the horse's body. The big curved metal sticks with the golden balls on top are hames, which are buckled onto the collar. The rest of the straps are then buckled in various places around the horse's body.

These are horses Misty (on the right from this front-on view) and Quinna (on the left from this view) being used to mark rows for planting. My room mate Lisa is driving them (she is a pro on this tool). I know that the horses look the same, but after spending so much time with them, it is not hard to tell them apart.

Silly as it is, I couldn't resist including a picture of Mirah, the trusty farm dog. She is super friendly to most everyone, and she chases the deer away from the garden. In this picture, she is lying under the chicken house, watching over (or, um, licking her lips at) the chickens. She has actually been very good about not touching the chickens, plump and tasty as they probably look to her dog eyes.

These are the laying hens out on pasture. They are not yet laying, but they are supposed to start soon. We move their electric netting around every couple of days to give them new pasture to eat. They are a lot of fun to watch, and they even come when called (by the sound of someone with a food bucket saying, "chiiiick chick chick chick").

Here is a picture of six horses pulling a soil-pulverizing tool called a disc. They are preparing the ground to be planted in the garden. We have since acquired a much smaller disc that can successfully be pulled by a team (which is made up of just two horses). This hitch is called "six-up" because there are two rows of horses. If all the horses were walking side-by-side, it would be called a "six abreast."

I hope that gives some insight into how things look around here. I may add some more photographs eventually, especially of haying, which is happening right now, but which I will discuss in a later post.