Approaching mid September...

With mid September approaching, there are quite a few noticable differences around the farm. While we do have summer like weather during the days (can you believe sunny and 70s all week) the nights are cool, often down in the low 40s. Of course this creates a lot of fog in the mornings. As you can see in the picture above, the fog is lifting out of the pastures as the sun rises up over the bay.





With mid September comes fall duties which I'll get to in a minute. During the summer, we tried for the first time to sell Windyknob farm eggs down along the roadside. Not being sure what to expect in terms of "traffic" we were shocked to say the least when the eggs were sold out in the first 4 hours! The chickens were laying 18-24 eggs a day by mid July, and the roadside stand continued to sell out every weekend. With the summer tourism traffic gone, its a bit of a reality check - how can we sell 10 dozen eggs a week? You'd be surprised. There's quite a demand for free range chicken eggs by my coworkers at school.

In the fall its time to prepare the animals for breeding, as well as the long winter ahead. After having been on pasture for the past 6 months, it is time to get rid of any internal parasites the sheep might have picked up while grazing. Some farmers will give this toxin every three to four weeks in an effort to kill all the larval stages of the worm. By rotating my flock every 4-7 days, I am able to decrease the exposure to worm larvae, and thereby decrease the frequency that I must deworm my flock. This is part of a practice known as Rotational Grazing. Of course its important to deworm before breeding season as well, which will start about a month from today.



Of course over the winter, the sheep no longer have the pastures to feed on, which is when we turn to hay for nutrition. This is the view of the hay loft, with almost 160 bales of hay (first cutting and second cutting) we are ready to roll here for the sheep's first winter at Windyknob farms. The 100 bales on the right were picked up this week. We are good to go on hay.