Category: Ancient Ponies Farm

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Dogs and more dogs…and more

Dogs are an important part of our life here at Ancient Ponies Farm.  We arrived here with Oscar and Pumpkin, neither of whom are useful as farm dogs, though we love them dearly!  
Last May, Elka joined our family.  She’s now 7 1/2 months old and is starting her training as a herding dog.  In the video below you can see her first encounter with sheep.  She is showing some good instinct here, which hopefully we will develop over time….and with our soon to arrive sheep.  Yes, Maybelle, Oliva (Leicester Longhairs) and Mary Agnes (a Gotland- shown in picture) are being picked up, by Zoe and me, in two days time.  Since Jasmine, Jessica and Jade are all pregnant and due in the spring, likely with twins or triplet baby goats, we thought we’d wait to breed sheep until next year.

With all of the prey animals we are now responsible for (3 sheep, 3 pregnant goats, 15 chickens and 3 ducks), we’ve been thinking a lot about getting a guardian.  A fox already took one of our ducks in broad daylight while I watched.  We tried two lamas but they didn’t work out.

So meet Nel.  This photo is Nel at 4 weeks so you can imagine what she will ultimately look like.  She is a Maremma, which is an Italian dog, bred to guard livestock.  She will ultimately live in the barn with the animals and guard against fox and coyote.  As we are learning to train Elka for herding, we are also reading up on how to help a livestock guard dog be the best and happiest she can be.  She comes next week when she is 8 weeks old.  

She will look something like this:

 

 

 

 

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Little Jessica

Our little Jessica, one of the twin goat girls almost died the other night.  Oy Vey!  How distressing.  She ate some poisonous weed, we think deadly nightshade.  I got home from a ride and saw her in the stall with green slimy foam around her mouth.  She was clearly in pain, grinding her jaw and bleating plaintively.  Her ability to stand was wobbly.  We got advice to give her activated charcoal from Danny Botkin, the man we got the goats from.  Zoe was on her way home from his farm and stopped to get some.  In the meantime, I also called Rachel from Little White Goat Dairy.   I have gotten pasture maintenance advice from her husband, Bruce, in the past.  Rachel insisted on coming right over, bringing activated charcoal gel, syringes, milk of magnesian and goat electrolyte powder.  She drove all the way to Orange at the drop of a hat and then examined Jessica.  She had gotten worse.  We learned how to squirt the charcoal, milk of magnesia and electrolyte water down the left side of her mouth so it was less likely to go into her bronchial tubes.  The charcoal is meant to absorb the poison.  Milk of magnesia helps coat the stomach and push the poison through.  Zoe and I then drove to the Tractor Supply in Greenfield to buy our own supplies for her.  When we got home she was worse.  She could not stand up and was looking very out of it. Continue reading “Little Jessica”

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The Farm From Above and Swarm

Miiko Sage, photographer extraordinaire, has a drone.  He has taken this drone video of the farm, starting at the garden in the northern part of the farm.  I didn’t know he was doing this until I saw the drone flying across the pasture toward me.  You can see that I was sitting in my front yard with Oscar if you look closely.  Notice the tops of the juniper and cedar trees.  These trees were almost dead when I moved in a year ago due to invasives, especially bittersweet and multiflora rose.  One of the first things I did when I moved in was to clear this off of the trees.  We cut their lower branches so we can keep it mowed, so as to prevent the invasives from growing up again.

This video was taken on June 12.

The next one will show the garden just brimming with food.  It is completely different now.  As soon as we have the next drone video, I’ll post it.

Here is a picture of our first swarm.  You can see this mass of bees hanging from one of our peach trees.  It looks like a huge wasp’s nest but it is made completely of bees.  They create a new queen and split to make a new hive.  Zoe and George put it in a box and extended our hives to make room for it.  

 

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Elka!

Elka!

Meet our new arrival in this menagerie!  Elka is a border collie puppy who came to us at eight weeks old.  She’s now 9 1/2 weeks.  My god she is so smart.  She learns everything quickly and eagerly, with a look in her eyes that seems to say, “what now mom?”  She follows me around, having more interest in me than the other dogs or animals.  However, she has already shown herding instincts, following behind the goats, watching them intensely and crouching in the border collie way when they stop.  On her third day here, I took her to the Quabbin.  When I waded in up to my knees, she dove into the water and swam out to herd me back in.  This bravery was on her eight-week birthday!

We love her dearly already.  Oscar clearly enjoys her.  His back legs are not functioning well due to a congenital cruciate ligament issue, for which he is getting surgery next week.  But he can stay laying down while she jumps all over him.  They can play for an hour this way.  Pumpkin, of course, hates her just like she hates everything, but the fact that she can sleep on the bed while Elka has to sleep in a crate makes up for the insult.

Oscar

Oscar will have his second knee done in about a month and will spend the entire summer recovering.  However, by Halloween, he will be able to be the young, vibrant dog he is in his heart.  It will be so good to have him back as my hiking and riding companion.

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Baby Goats = Happiness

Okay so I introduced Charlotte and Nell on this blog, but then they didn’t work out.  They were born last November and, because of the cold winter, the owners did not go out to handle them.  The lack of contact with people made them quite feral, at best, uninterested in humans and, in actuality, afraid of humans.  They were constantly looking for ways to get away and escape.  Goats are smart, or at least clever, and they found ways – EVERY DAY – to escape the pasture.  Then they were so hard to herd back in.   At any rate, we gave them back to the original owners, wishing them a good life.

Enter Jasmine, Jade, and Jessica…

Jasmine is the nursing mom and Jade and Jessica are her babies.  The twin girls were five days old when we got them, and now they are about a month old.  We were going to rename them, but Danielle told her niece, Jessica, that we had a goat with her name, so we were stuck..and we’ve come to know them as Jasmine, Jade, and Jessica.  They come from a line of J names.  Aunts are Janice Joplin, Jonie (Mitchell), etc…When we breed them, we will have, of course, Joan and Josette, Jay (Mascis), Jennifer (Drinker), Jalopy, Jerry, Jupiter, Jinny, Juniper…

Jasmine, the mom, is a year old.  She was held as a baby by her owners, Danny Botkin and his wife, Divya.  She is so gentle, and she feels more secure when people are around than when she is alone.  Jade and Jessica are complete cuddle-buns.  As you can see.  We got them for friendship as well as for milk and pasture management.  They like to eat invasives like poison ivy and bittersweet, leaving the grass for the horses.  They have not tried to get out once as they feel more secure around their stall.

Several mornings a week, we go to Atkin’s Market in North Amherst to get their gone-by vegies for the goats.  They love all of it except cucumbers, parsnips, and chard.

 

 

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Charlotte and Nell

Saanen Milk Goat
Boer Meat Goat

Last Monday, Zoe and I drove to Russel, MA to look at twin 5-month-old goat sisters.  They had been born to a Boer father and a Saanen mother.  The boer are meat goats, and the Saanen are milk goats.

They were born last November and lived happily outdoors as babies through that bitter winter.  Their pasture was small and on a very steep hill.  Though the girls were very skittish, we felt (sort of) confident that we could help them trust us over time.  The owner grabbed them one by one, and they screamed a most curdling cry.  Then they baahed and baahed.  We put them next to each other in dog crates in the car, and within a few minutes they lay down and were quiet.

When they first arrived, we kept them in their straw bed stall overnight.  The next morning we let them out into their new 7-acre pasture.  We closed the lower gate so they only had run of two of the acres.  The horses snorted and blew in surprise at their new companions.

Spencer chased them!  Yet, the girls did not seem afraid of the horses.  They would just move out of the way and stop.  Right away, they seemed to identify the horses as their new herd, following them around.

Now it’s been five days, and already they eat out of our hands and let us pet them a bit.  They frolic and nibble all day.  Nell is the dark one with stiff ears and dangles under her chin.  Charlotte is white with floppy ears like her dad.  We are hoping they eat poison ivy, bittersweet and buckthorn.

 

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Chestnuts and Baskets

We are hosting Katie Groves, basket weaver, to teach a workshop here Sunday, April 8. One reason we have invited her as opposed to other basket weavers is that she uses local materials that we can easily harvest ourselves.  We’ll be learning to use cattails, daylily leaves, bittersweet, grape vines and other grasses.  I am posting the information about this workshop below.

There are just a couple of openings if anyone is interested.  It will be 9-5, and the $85 includes materials, instruction, and lunch.  You can contact us at ancientponies@gmail.com if you are interested.

We have planted our 4 American Chestnuts.  One of them is starting to show through the top soil.  We plan to put them out some time in June.  We got these seeds from the American Chestnut Foundation.  As you may know, this area was once covered with American chestnut trees and the nuts were a staple for local indiginous people.  A blight killed all of the mature, nut-bearing trees and prevents them from growing into maturity.  The foundation is working to create a blight resistant tree and these precious seeds are the result of their efforts.   We will keep you posted!

Backyard Basketry: Coiling with Cattails, Grasses, and More

Have you ever looked outside and wondered what you could make with the abundant plant materials growing in your own yard? In this workshop you will learn how to use grasses, cattails, iris, daylily leaves, and many other common northeastern plants to create coiled baskets. 
 

Coiling is an ancient and versatile basketry technique in which a wrapping strand of yarn or fiber is sewn around coils of plant material to build a form. It is used all over the world to create beautiful vessels that can be either decorative or functional. Once you learn the technique there is a lot of room for creativity; your preferences, as well as which materials and type of wrapping strands you choose, will determine the overall look, size, and shape of your basket. Each person’s creation will turn out completely unique!

During the workshop we will discuss how to identify, harvest, and prepare local plant materials, all while practicing a variety of coiling stitches and embellishments. Weather permitting we will also take a harvesting walk nearby to identify and harvest some supplemental materials to add to your basket. If you are excited about learning to make baskets with locally wild harvested natural materials then join us for a day of creativity, fun, and learning.

Everyone will leave with a completed basket, handouts with information covered during the workshop, and inspiration to explore your local landscape. 

 
And more photos of a coiled basket class from this past summer

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Random Weave Basket with Grapevines and Bittersweet

Grapevines and bittersweet are some of our most common natural vines and their wild quality and abundance makes them ideal for creating the perfect market basket. In this workshop participants will make an easy and fun basket and well as learn everything they need to know to gather the right vines in their own backyards. You will learn a hoop frame construction and the technique of random-weaving to create a basket that reflects your love and appreciation of nature and handmade objects. All the secrets of harvesting, preparation, and storage of grapevines will be covered and participants will go home with a basket they made with their own hands as well as instructions and inspiration to create many more. Moderate hand strength required.

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Signs of Spring and Solar Cones

Although there are signs of spring here at Ancient Ponies Farm, the winter seems to be endless.  It is just “snow on snow on snow.”

 

 

And yet, the signs of spring are starting to be everywhere.  Walking across a snow-free area of the pasture, we see dots of robins searching for worms.  The crocus is coming up!  The buds of the lilac leaves are tight but green.

 

Another sure sign is that I saw Zoe drive by my window on Cubby, our little mower tractor.  Seeing this, I can be SURE spring is coming!  No matter how unlikely that seems today.   We had Cubby, and the manure cart packed away in the Brenderup horse trailer for the winter.  Zoe used it to take a first spring cartload of manure out to the garden.

 

We’ve also started planting some seeds indoors.  Leeks, lettuce, celery, and other tender greens.  Zoe had help doing this from Bob Winston our friend, a fellow farmer, and mycology sage.

 

My good friend Harry Rockland-Miller has been gardening for many years.  He has been talking to me about his “solar cones” and how much they extend his gardening season.  A good friend of both Harry and I, and a fellow gardener here at Ancient Ponies Farm, Jeff Weston, volunteered to make solar cones for us.  You can find the design for them in the book Solar Gardening.  This Sunday, Harry is coming over to give us a workshop on how to work with these solar cones in our garden.