LUKE AND LEIA, OUR GREAT PYRENEES GUARDIAN DOGS-

Our new guardian dog pups arrived at our farm in October of last year.  We decided that since we already had an excellent guardian for our chickens (our Maremma, Ben), we would raise the pups, and begin their guardian dog education with Ben as their teacher.  So, we built a moveable pen for the pups near our moveable chicken house. At first, when the pups were really tiny, they spent quite a bit of time in their pen, just getting used to all the chicken activity around them.  Then, gradually, they spent more and more time out with the chickens-  all the time under the watchful eye of Ben.  He taught them to respect livestock- sometimes a very difficult job for energetic puppies surrounded by chickens!  It was by far the easiest training period we have ever had-  Ben was on the job 24/7!  

Ben and the puppies guarding the chickens

Leia watching Miel, a new mom and her kids

After Christmas, we decided that the pups were ready to go to work on their own- when they were only 4 months old!  We moved them to our goat field, and they immediately figured out that their new job was to guard our goats.  All of Ben's lessons about respecting livestock were transferred to the goats and the pups went to work right away.  They got used to life with the adult goats over the winter and were ready for their really important job of protecting our Spring goat kids.  

Now, the goat kids are about a month old, and no longer in danger of fox attacks- soon, we will be moving the pups (who are both around 70 lbs. now!) over to our sheep field to prepare for the arrival of our lambs in a few weeks.  

It is really wonderful to watch dogs at work, doing the jobs they have been bred for.  Our guardian dogs are important members of our farm team;  without our chicken guardian, we would not be able to keep our 135 hens out on the pasture to range freely.  Now we don't have to worry about fox or coyote attacks-  those predators look for easier meals elsewhere.  

Winter CSA at Brightwood

It seems that it has been about a year since our last blog post...things are pretty busy around the farm and it is hard to keep up with 'extra' things like blogs!  But I am determined to try again to share our experiences here on a more regular basis.

The winter was very mild with only a few nights below 20 degrees and only a little snow.  It was the perfect winter for our first cold weather CSA (Community Supported Agriculture, where regular customers agree to buy vegetables from a farm for an entire season).  We had a good mix of storage crops (potatoes, winter squash, sweet potatoes, garlic, onions), root crops (turnips, carrots), and greens (salad mix, Asian greens, kale, chard, etc.) and made up a box of veggies for each of our CSA customers every week from mid November until the beginning of March.  Here are a few of our boxes, lined up in the car port, ready for pick-up.

I find that I really enjoy growing during the winter.  Most of our crops are grown in our unheated hoophouses with some of the hardiest doing well outside under row covers.  Even on a cold day, the environment in a hoophouse is warm and inviting.  It is great to see all those green growing plants when the view outside is dreary and cold!  We have already begun planting for next year's winter CSA-  the potatoes are in the ground and looking good and we will be planting sweet potatoes and winter squash within a couple of weeks.  We wait until late July and August to begin to plant the other crops that will provide delicious vegetables all winter.

Next post; Leia and Luke, our two Great Pyrenees guardian dogs....

Time to Get Blogging Again :)

The Brightwood Farm Blog has been pretty spotty over the last year, although there are always lots of neat things going on at the farm that are worth telling folks about through our blog.  The problem is that we never seem to have time to sit down and do the work of writing the blog and getting it online.

I'll start with a look back at the winter just passed-  it was  mild and un-snowy compared to the winter of 2009- 2010.  Practically no shoveling this winter, but practically no cross country skiing either!  I have been going on walks in the woods each morning with Cara, our English shepherd.  It gives me a great opportunity to observe as the trees and woods plants respond to the changing seasons.  Here are a few pictures I took on walks this past winter.

We finished work on our two new moveable greenhouses (actually unheated hoophouses) on Christmas Day and started harvesting salad greens from them about a month later.  We also grew microgreens in trays all winter in our small lean-to greenhouse, attached to our house.  It proved to be an enjoyable wintertime enterprise, and although the microgreens took a little over a month to get to marketable size, we were able to grow them all winter with minimal additional heat.  As I write this in the beginning of May, the microgreens are ready to market after only a week and a half or two weeks- it is amazing what a difference more heat and light makes!

Market Central Farm Tour

We all enjoyed all the visitors that came to the farm during Market Central's 2nd Annual Farm Tour this past Labor Day. We estimate that about 300 people visited during the day. The weather was perfect; warm and sunny. We offered hourly 'Meet the Animals' tours led by our interns as well as mini courses on planting a fall salad garden, composting and herbs.

In case you missed the Market Central tour and would like to visit the farm this fall, we will be holding our 10th (I think!) annual Open House/ Field Day the afternoons of October 30th and 31st. More details later.

Goat kid videos

We are just past half way with this year's goat kidding. 15 does and 27 kids.

Caitlin, Erin, Samantha and the New Ducklings

Its hard not to smile looking at a baby duckling. Ask Erin, Samantha and Caitlin.

New Ducklings

The new ducklings are really cute. The lighter colored are runner ducks and khaki campbell. The darker are rouen. They were shipped to us as day old chicks in the US Postal Service. The postmaster calls early the day they arrive at the central distribution center and we pick them up. We bought them from McMurray Hatchery.