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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.

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Garden Shed

Somewhere around the beginning of February, deep in the bowels of winter, there is a feeling of the coming spring.  A quickening.  Maybe it is the light that now lasts past 5:00 pm.  Maybe it is the angle of the light or maybe it is the slight moisture in or direction of the wind.  In spite of yesterdays snow that has turned now to a thick coating of ice, we have a sense of having made it through our first winter.  We managed to keep the horses fed and watered.

We managed to plow the driveway and keep the stove going.  For me, the biggest triumph is how the ponies have thrived.  They seem better than ever with glossy fur and playful relaxed temperments.  Of course we have many days of cold and icy percipitation coming but we are on our way out.

It really looked like this

Zoe and I have been getting ready for spring by reading up on seeds and gardening, ordering trees and bushes (walnut, mulberry, lindon berry, blueberry….) and planning out next Ancient Ponies farm group potluck (next week)

Also, big news, our garden shed arrived two days ago!  It’s beautiful and seems to fit right into the landscape.  Three men worked 5 hours to put it up.  At first it was snowing hard but then, while it was still snowing, the sun came out and then the snow stopped.  It will hold all of our tools, pots, amendments and mower.

Yay!  Here is a picture from across the pasture.   An then a close up.  Cute!

 

 

By the way, our friend Mikko Sage is an amazing photographer.  The photos of the ponies above are his.  We have hired him to be the farm photographer.  He is able to capture the magic here.  I highly recommend his work.

Jasper is such a ham that most of the pony pictures are of him. Here is a picture of the regal Spencer taken by Mikko.

I’ve taken so many pictures of my horses and have never been able to capture their beauty and personalities.
But Mikko has.

To see more Ancient Ponies photos you can click here.

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Porcupines and Permaculture

Did you know that over 1/3 of the carbon added to the atmosphere since 1850 has come from exposing soil to the air through tilling and deforestation? Tilling soil exposes the stored carbon to the atmosphere.  (see this)  Not only does tilling release carbon, contributing to climate change, it also devitalizes soil, creating the need for fertilizers and pesticides.  It is even possible to farm in a large way.  Here is an agribusiness farmer who has been working no till for over 25 years.

Many farmers, like us, are farming without tilling.  No tilling mimicks nature, where there is a natural fertility and growth with regular mulching from leaf fall.  Just dig up some soil in the woods and take a look at it.  The soil will have worms and bugs, smell deeply fragrant and feel moist and crumbly in your hands.  Tilled soil is dense, with little fragrance and without life.    Tilling leads to dead soil.

Today, Zoe and I are driving the Worcester to attend the NOFA winter conference.  (Northeast Organic Farmers Association) We’ll be meeting and talking to other farmers and attending workshops all day.  I’ll write a blog post about our experience soon.

In the mean time, the temperature has gone up more than 70 degrees from a week ago.  From -20 to 59.  Yesterday the rain began and it’s still going.  Most of the snow turned to slush and then ran down hill in rivulets of water.  Because the ground is so deeply frozen, all of the water is running off into our stream.  As I sit here now with the window wide open, I can hear the water crashing through.  This is the highest I’ve seen it so far. This photo is from the day after.  Already the water is a foot lower than yesterday.  It was so high one could have white water kayaked down it.

With the rain, yesterday the air was filled with dense fog.  Clouds blew around like beings all day.

Zoe and I took a walk out in the rain with the dogs.  About a mile from home, unfortunately, Oscar was surprised by a porcupine.

 

If I had seen it first, I could have warned him and he would not have gone for it.  But he saw this one before me and he dove on it.  Zoe and I removed 50 plus quills from his lips, tongue, palate and muzzle with pliars, something I’ve done many times.  Poor guy.

Today the temperature will fall 55 degrees, down to below zero again.  Crazy.

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There’s a Low Below the Low you Know

This is a line from an old Malvina Reynolds song called “there’s a bottom below“.

Yesterday morning it was -11 F when I went out at 6:30 to feed the horses.  That was so so low…but today…Oy Vey!  -12 F.   The cold is bitter, almost mean feeling, like it wants to hurt.  I dragged the hay across the pasture on the sled, breathing deeply.  Now as I sit here writing I can feel the cold in my chest.

The cold seemed to be freezing the little alveoli and capillaries in my lungs.  I have the water on to make some ginger honey tea to warm them up again.  

I’ve been locking the horses in their stalls at night and closing up the barn.  I give them two buckets of water each which are 3/4 gone when I come in the morning with the rest frozen solid.  I have to bring the buckets in to melt so I can fill them again.  It amazes the me that the hydrant in the barn keeps flowing!  I let them out in the day but feed them their hay in their stalls so they can be out of the bitter wind.  We haul the hose down from the house and then back to fill the daytime outside tank with the heater.

This cold feels epic!

However, the pipes in the clinic only froze and didn’t burst, there is a big pile of wood outside to keep our stove fed, we can unplug the freezer that is in the garage and, astoundingly, the ponies are warm under their blankets.  Today, from this low below any low I ever knew, the temperature is going to rise! Life is good.

We also keep warm by having friends here.  We had a wonderful Shabbat dinner with John and Sharon on John’s 83rd birthday.  I made Cholent and Zoe made Challah.  I feel so blessed in so many ways.