Lepanto Farms

Quite simply, because life happens!

Snow, with the associated extra water hauling and hay throwing…

… fencing, always more fencing…

… gorgeous days too incredible to waste online…

… And the next thing you know, your mom is telling everyone at the family Christmas dinner about the farm and all the cousins want to know why the blog hasn’t been updated in so long (good grief, it’s been almost six months!).

Well, now you know.

I will try to be better. Nice comments make me happy, and then I post more!

In case you get the impression that small farm life is too cute for words, I present goose processing day! Yes, this happened between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I’m just getting it on the blog now. Sorry!

It started out sunny and cautiously optimistic. The geese were not amused, however, by my clever plans to corner them quickly and calmly, and the rest of the day was a bit… difficult.

My husband, bless his heart, at one point looked across the second goose carcass at me, with a fistful of down mostly stuck to his wet, cold hands, and commented, “I don’t remember agreeing to this when I said ‘I do’!”

On the bright side, our customers said the geese were remarkably meaty and not nearly so greasy as they were used to in store-bought geese. I’m guessing that’s because we feed very little grain (except in winter), and they kept themselves busy grazing and wandering all over the farm.

I wasn’t sure the fuzzy little goslings were really going to be full-grown by the holidays on just grass.

I believe it now!

They spend their days wandering through the hay meadows, munching constantly. At night, they ignore their lovely shelter and sleep near the pond so they can swim away from danger if they need to. They’ve scared off several hawks. They did eat my new lotus, but I’ll get over it.

And they LOVE a treat of a scoop of scratch grains.

Read the directions!

So, we’ve had a *fun* month that nearly included an early trip to processing for our big steer. He decided he didn’t care about the electric fence anymore and was getting out several times a day and damaging the fence in the process. Very stressful, especially since we live near a busy road.

Then we revisited the directions. Did you know that improper grounding is one of the leading causes (one fence manufacturer site said 90% of the problems) of electric fence failure? At least we aren’t the only ones.

It doesn’t look impressive, but that is the last four inches or so (down in the grass, with the wire clamp on top) of a six foot grounding rod, the first of three, installed last Monday. Yes, the fence works better now, and T-Bone will have two more months to be happy in the deep grass of the newly fenced pasture #4 and #5 before he goes to the butcher.

And I hope to stop seeing the sledgehammer every time I close my eyes sometime soon.

Also, the cow has gone to be bred. If all goes well, we will have a new calf in the spring.

It hasn’t been a glamorous, “isn’t farming great!” kind of month, but it was good. Which is pretty good, considering the amount of sweat involved.

When we were planning the house, Josh got sticker shock over the porch. “No,” I told him, “my vision of sanity at the end of this involves a porch and a rocking chair, cows in the field, etc. We have to have the porch!”

And, no, it hasn’t rained most of the last few months, it’s just that I’m out digging or weeding or fussing over animals if it’s sunny. I SIT when it rains and I can’t be in the fields… and then I remember to blog.

Really, really glad I raked hay this morning, because it would be spoiled now!