touch the earth farm blog

Our sow, Maya, gave birth to 9 piglets last night, unaided on pasture. She’s such a good homestead hog—I really couldn’t ask for more. There are a couple of small ones, but all were up and walking around this morning and look to be strong and vigorous. Big Boy, our boar, is in with them […]

One nuc (short for nucleus) anyway. The other will hopefully be ready within the next week, depending on the weather and how the queen is laying.
The install went really well, all things considered. Of course, my bee brush has gone missing, and I had a bit of trouble keeping the smoker going. I’m going to […]

Yesterday morning I finally sheared our sheep. I don’t imagine you’ve ever priced them out, but shearers are quite expensive little machines. So I was hoping to be able to borrow one from a friend who picked up some shearing equipment at an auction. This, of course, meant waiting for them to finish shearing and […]

The first round of hakurei turnips are maturing nicely and should be ready in the next couple of weeks, and I can’t wait! These turnips are so sweet and tasty that I’m betting they’ll quickly become a favorite. There’s a second planting just popping, and I hope to get a third in this weekend. These […]

This afternoon was a gorgeous taste of what’s to come, and just what my soul has been longing for while looking out over snow and ice layered pastures under gloomy gray skies.
Today, I was outside as much as possible, hanging laundry on the line, weeding, planting, day dreaming and garden planning. I got a third […]

Alas, living in the mid-Atlantic region as far south as we do makes for an interesting winter season. We’re up near 70° one day and down to 9° within the next week, not to mention the snow and ice and wind. These are difficult conditions for plants as well as people, and not surprisingly, these […]

This week, we’ve gotten a second round of radishes planted and the first round of hakurei turnips, a sweet, tasty white salad turnip. Both of these were planted in the high tunnel. Indoors, we’ve also started our first flat of broccoli and plan to start more seedlings over the next few weeks.
Good news is that […]

Well, Punxatawny Phil saw his shadow, which means six more weeks of winter! I don’t know about you folks, but I’m ready for the growing season, thank you very much. Enough already of the cold! Of course, last year we got most of our snowfall from mid-February on, so Phil just might be right.
We’ve had […]

Is this global warming? Maybe. We’re certainly seeing temperature extremes and high winds that some experts associate with it.
Last week, our temps dropped to 14°F at night, and this week, they’ve risen to 70°F during the day, not to mention the gusts of wind up to 35-40 mph. Needless to say, the plants are not […]

December has brought the end of the area’s drought, but it’s brought along some extreme weather as well. Most damaging here at the farm have been the high winds. While the snow fall early in the month collapsed some of the low tunnels, the snow itself is relatively insulating and did little damage. The winds, […]