The Bovine Bugle

Mr. Woodpecker thinks it's time to tap the maples--sugaring season begins!

As I backed the loader tractor out of the Horsebarn this morning, I looked up the road and noticed something hanging from one of the maple trees lining the roadside. I drove the tractor under the overhanging branch and saw that it was a good-sized sapsicle. It had been warm enough for the sap in the maples to start running, and the sap had dripped off the branch. The conditions must have been just right to cause the sap drips to freeze and the sapsicle was formed. What was really interesting was what caused the opening in the branch allowing the sap to come out. A woodpecker had made a small hole in the branch, and the sap ran out of this break in the bark. So I guess Woody the Woodpecker tapped the first tree at Howmars Farm.

The weather looks promising for this weekend, and we will probably be tapping the hard maples and hanging our + 450 buckets. Getting around in the woods should be easy due to the lack of snow. No tapping on snowshoes this year. With a good crew, and good battery packs for the 19.2V drill, we should have most of the buckets up in one days time. Then in a couple of hours we'll have the gathering tub on the wagon, the dumping station hooked up that leads to the storage tank, and the sugar rig, or evaporator, put together and ready to make some delicious maple syrup.

It's always an exciting time of year on the farm. In a way, sugaring signals the end of winter and brings the promise of longer, warmer daylight hours and green pastures once again.

--Jonathan (left), Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
Tune in Monday when we'll have more "Moo-vie" news from Jonathan's farm.

If you wish to subscribe, send an email with "Bovine Bugle" in the subject heading to chalvorson@stonyfield.com

Got a question for farmer Jonathan?
Click here and we'll try to make sure your question gets answered.

Ever wanted a cow of your own? Check out our Have A Cow program.

What's hot, when the weather is not

A few weeks ago the temperature was about 15 below zero, but despite the subzero conditions the compost material in the barnyard was steaming away. On warm days, and we've had a lot of them lately, I can't put the manure and hay from the barn into the compost windrow. It's just too soupy. So, I pile the hay and manure from the barnyard on one side of the barnyard instead of mixing it with the manure in the barn. At some point I move the pile from the barnyard to the compost windrow.

I had noticed the pile in the barnyard steaming the other day, so this morning I grabbed the two-foot long thermometer on my way out of the barn. I put the thermometer in the pile and let it do its thing while I scraped the barn. When I checked it 15 minutes later it was registering a temperature of almost 130 degrees! It always amazes me to see how a mixture of hay, manure, and a little moisture can created so much heat, even in the middle of winter. Of course the cows looked at me as if to say, "What are you doing climbing around on the top of that pile? Get down here and feed us some hay". They weren't bothered in the least by the cold temperatures. With plenty of good feed, their shaggy, warm winter coats, and the barn for a windbreak they do fine all winter.

I put my thermometer away, fed the cows, and emptied the dump trailer down at the compost windrow. Once the tractor was parked, I headed into the farmhouse to warm up by the brightly burning woodstove.

--Jonathan (left), Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
Tune in Monday when we'll have more "Moo-vie" news from Jonathan's farm.

If you wish to subscribe, send an email with "Bovine Bugle" in the subject heading to chalvorson@stonyfield.com

Got a question for farmer Jonathan?
Click here and your question will be answered in an email back to you, plus it will appear on this site for all to see. You can even send your answer in by using voice mail, if your computer is appropriately equipped.

Killing two birds with one stone

Yesterday afternoon Justin, Noah, and I headed into the woods to work on a section for our ski trail. We have a dream of having several miles of cross country ski trails around the farm that we would maintain and groom for our own use and possibly to be used by others.

Using the chainsaw, I felled 12 to 15 small trees to make a clear path from the top of a hill all the way down to a small meadow. Justin, using an ax, started limbing some of the trees, and Noah explored the surrounding ledges and stacked some brush.

The next day I headed back to the spot with the tractor and wagon, and my wood cutting gear. I cut the trees--red maple, gray birch, and hornbeam--into three-foot lengths and piled the brush to the side of the trail. Once all the trees were cut up I loaded the wood into the wagon, using my pulp hook to handle the bigger pieces. I cut the trees into 3-foot lengths so that if we use the wood in our sugaring operation (making maple syrup) it would be the right length, or if we want to use it to heat the house we would just have to cut the pieces in half for 18" housewood. The largest tree I had to cut up was probably 8 or 9 inches in diameter. With the section cleared, it will give us a nice uphill climb, or a challenging downhill run while out on our skis. Now if we would only get some snow!!

--Jonathan (left), Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
If you wish to subscribe, send an email with "Bovine Bugle" in the subject heading to chalvorson@stonyfield.com

Got a question for farmer Jonathan?
Click here and your question will be answered in an email back to you, plus it will appear on this site for all to see. You can even send your answer in by using voice mail, if your computer is appropriately equipped.

Birds of a different feather come for the feed

With the weather turning colder and the first snowfall having come several weeks ago, Karen starts filling the bird feeder for all the wild birds in the area. The feeder hangs from the butternut tree on the lawn, and usually attracts the normal crowd. Chickadees, nuthatches, blue jays, sparrows, starlings, woodpeckers, the occasional cardinal, mourning doves, and other various birds visit the spot for a bite to eat.

One other bird variety has found the bird feeder a good place to have a snack. As soon as Karen had filled up the feeder for the first time, the chickens found the seed that had fallen on the ground and quickly gobbled it up. Now, every morning when the chickens are let out the bird feeder is the first place they go. Karen even wonders if they fly up and bump the feeder to make more seed fall on the ground. We haven't witnessed this first hand, but we wonder how much seed gets knocked on the ground. It may be just from the wild birds use of the feeder.

When one of my beef/poultry customers stopped by yesterday for a turkey, she had a good chuckle watching the chickens. Her husband would like some, but she is a little hesitant about it. I told her if she wanted entertainment the chickens would certainly provide it. You just never know where they will get to next. Whether it's under the bird feeder, sitting on top of the tractor, inside the wheel hub of the truck, or on the deck pecking at the patio door, they are always finding some new place to explore and often in a comical way.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
Got a question for Jonathan?
Send it in using the comment feature below.

Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

Love this blog? We have three more. Check them out at Stonyfield Farm blogs.

Mysterious creatures out on the Bog

I was putting some fence up across the brook when I noticed some white objects in the grass. After finishing the fence, I went back across the brook and over to the corner of the pasture where the white objects were sitting in the grass. I thought that maybe they were pieces of round bale plastic, but as I got closer I knew what they were. There were three giant puffball mushrooms (Calvatia gigantea) growing in the rich muck soil.

The largest of the three I picked and brought up to the house to show everyone.

I had never seen a puffball as large as this one. I put it next to the basketball to take a picture so we'd have some perspective on the size of the mushroom. It wasn't as heavy as it looked, weighing probably between 10 and 15 pounds. These mushrooms are edible but I haven't gotten brave enough to slice one up and saute it. I'm not a huge mushroom fan, anyway. I found some great information on the giant puffballs on this website.


--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
Got a question for Jonathan?
Send it in using the comment feature below.

Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

Love this blog? We have three more. Check them out at Stonyfield Farm blogs.

A weed that makes a beautiful picture

This picture is of a milkweed pod that has opened and is dispersing its seeds. Milkweed grows all over the farm. The cows won't graze it, people can eat the very young shoots in the spring, and it is the only thing that Monarch butterfly caterpillars eat. After the clusters of flowers are pollinated, the plant forms pods where the seeds mature. When ready, the pods split open and the seeds float away on stems of down, similar to the dandelions. The empty, dry pods on the stem of the plant make a nice touch when decorating wreaths.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
Got a question for Jonathan?
Send it in using the comment feature below.

Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

Love this blog? We have three more. Check them out at Stonyfield Farm blogs.

Is it summer, or is it fall in Vermont?

The calendar reads October 4th, but outside it seems like summer. The daytime highs have been in the upper 70's, and the grass is still growing like crazy out in the grazing paddocks. Everyone you see talks about how wonderful the weather is for this time of year. We sure won't complain knowing what lies ahead.

The soft maple trees that grow in the low lying areas of the farm have started showing some nice color, but most of the other hardwoods haven't really begun to change yet. Because of the extended growing season, the pastures are still providing plenty of forage for the cows so I haven't had to start feeding them any round bales yet. This helps the farm's bottom line in the feed expense catagory. With production costs so high right now, every little bit helps.

The warm weather is great for finishing up projects around the farm and around the house. The compost windrows are ready for spreading, and we'll cover one windrow and save if for use in the spring when local gardeners come looking for some of the rich, black stuff. On the old farmhouse, we've been scraping and painting trim around the windows and getting chimneys cleaned and ready to start burning wood. My forage supplier baled some third-cut round bales today, too. Dad has been keeping an eye on what Dennis has been up to. The feed looks great and the cows should milk really well on it.

Yes, this spell of beautiful weather is truly a blessing. It's giving farmers all a chance to harvest an extra crop of grass, and the warm temperatures are helping to delay having to turn on the furnaces to keep warm.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
Got a question for Jonathan?
Send it in using the comment feature below.

Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

Love this blog? We have three more. Check them out at Stonyfield Farm blogs.

The earth has yielded its fruits, and we feel truly blessed

The yield from the garden this year has been tremendous! With lots of sunshine, heat, and just enough rain, almost everything we planted has produced very well. Noah and I were out in the garden to see what needed to be harvested today.

A nice head of cauliflower was ready, so we cut it off the stem. Right next to the cauliflower the broccoli plants had already been harvested, but the plant grew some small heads of broccoli which have flowered. The bees were enjoying the abundant yellow blossoms. Some more tomatoes were ready. Karen has been busy making tomato sauce and salsa with the good tomato crop. The potatoes have done well, too. We dug what was left of the row of Red Norlands, and picked up almost 100 pounds. If it had been a full row, we would have gotten almost 150 pounds of potatoes from 10 pounds of seed potatoes. The four rows of Kennebecs are still waiting to be done.

We feel very lucky here. The summer has been a good one with fantastic grazing for the cows, a good crop of hay, a plentiful garden, and lots of nice weather for us to enjoy. Seeing the images of destruction left by Hurrican Katrina have made all of us here feel even luckier to live where we live. Our boys made us proud by wanting to donate immeadiately to the relief effort for the victims of the hurricane. It made them feel better knowing our donations were part of the effort to help the people they saw on the news everyday. The outpouring of help to the ravaged areas in Louisiana and Mississippi from Vermont and across the nation has made us proud of our country. We are truly blessed to live where we live.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
Got a question for Jonathan?
Send it in using the comment feature below.

Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

Love this blog? We have three more. Check them out at Stonyfield Farm blogs.

Back to school and back to Monarch butterfly season

It's been really crazy here at the farm with the beginning of school. Everyone starts a new routine, and all the help is gone all day. But we seem to be settling into the new routines, and Karen and I are getting used to not having any kids at home through the day for the first time in over 16 years. (Our youngest is now off to First Grade!)

With the start of school comes the search for Monarch butterfly caterpillars. Karen has a great knack for finding them, and she has found several the past couple of weeks. Starting with when our oldest, Ben, started school, we have usually had one or two two-liter soda bottles filled with milk weed and a hungrily munching Monarch caterpillar sitting in the kitchen in early September. It always amazes us to watch the magical transformation of the green, black, and yellow caterpillar into a beautiful red and black butterfly.

The first butterfly emerged from its chrysalis a couple days ago. We carefully brought the bottle outside and set the butterfly free. The next day, while I was trimming around the base of one of our Christmas trees, I spied a Monarch chrysalis hanging from a bottom branch (below). It's not often you spy one out in the field. I'll have to check that one to see when the butterfly emerges. Meanwhile, caterpilar number two is in the kitchen munching away and growing big and fat, getting ready to spin its chrysalis and make its amazing metamorphisis.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

Got a question or comment for Jonathan? Send it using the comment box below. (There's a delay as we check for spam.)

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

The green, green grass of Vermont in late summer

Son Noah came along with me to give the cows a new paddock after the evening milking. The cows followed us down the lane, and waited impatiently while we took down the cross piece that would let them into the fresh, lush grass. As soon as the first few feet of fence were wound up, the cows poured through the opening and began looking for the best patch of grass. If there was any clover in the paddock, that is what the cows would want to eat first.

The grazing over the past few weeks has been the best I've seen in a few years. The grass is so lush, so thick, that I swear you could catch your foot in it and trip. I tried to capture the lushness with a few pictures, but the camera just doesn't do it justice.

And in the morning, when the grass is awash with dew, it looks so good that I want to take a bite. I may sound like a broken record, but it is such a joy to see the cows out grazing, enjoying the grass and the sunshine, lazing in the late summer sun chewing their cud contentedly. And then I think of the cows in confinement dairies that never get to enjoy any of these things. I know if I was a consumer, which cows I would want my milk and dairy products to come from.

As consumers, your purchasing choice in the end determines how well our organic dairy farms fare financially. Hopefully by telling you how we run our farm and take care of the land and the animals, you will appreciate what we do to produce a wholesome product and will chose to support our family farms by purchasing the milk and dairy products made from our milk.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE
Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.
To unsubscribe, send a note to chalvorson@stonyfield.com

Care about healthy kids?

Turning over some old leaves, and lots of other stuff

While Ben was clipping some more paddocks this morning, I used the loader tractor to shape the compost windrows to get them ready to turn. During the past few weeks conditions had been dry enough to run the Sitler windrow turner over the compost, but I just hadn't found the time to get the windrows ready and turn them. Today was the day we were going to get things started!

It took me about 1 1/2 hours to shape the 700+ feet of windrows so that the seven-foot wide turner would travel easily over them. By the time I was done with this, Ben had come back to the barn with the other tractor which we use to run the windrow turner. This tractor, a Case-IH CX60, has a set of "creeper" gears that allows the tractor to travel very slowly while pulling the turner and allowing it to work the compost, add oxygen, and reshape the windrow. I thought I might get a chance to run the turner, for a change, but before I knew it Ben had the tractor hitched up to the turner and was off and running.

It took Ben a little longer to turn the windrows since it was the first time they were done. In about an hour and a half the rough, lumpy looking piles were turned into smooth, well-shaped, well-mixed rows of compost material. Soon the windrows would be heating up to 130-140 degrees, and as we turn them over the next several weeks the raw material will change magically into rich, dark compost.

P.S. I always like to mention that the Sitler windrow turner was paid for almost in full by a grant from Stonyfield Farm and I thank them for their support of all family farms, especially the CROPP/Organic Valley families that supply the milk for Stonyfield's yogurt production.

Got a question about composting, or anything else on an organic dairy farm? Use the comment box below and I'll try to get you an answer here in the blog very soon.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE

Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

To unsubscribe, send a note to chalvorson@stonyfield.com

A note from the editors: Interesting article today by Ellen Simon of the Associated Press, about why organic food costs more. Check it out!

Enjoying the beauty of spring is one of the benefits of grazing your animals

As Noah and I did fence the other day, I snapped pictures of some of the beautiful wildflowers blossoming right now. It can be very peaceful along the meadows and through the woods while we walk the fence lines. It lets us enjoy the beauty and wonder of spring, the new life coming from the earth after the bitter cold of winter.

Having a 6-year old along with you will make you stop and look at things you would have missed in the hustle to get the work done. It's good for us adults to be reminded to slow down, enjoy the world around us, and remember what it's like to be a kid again. As an organic farmer, we are out in the pastures and woods all summer long as the cows graze through the rotation 6 or more times. This close connection with our cows, and with the land, deepens our love and respect for our animals and for the land from which everything comes.
Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE

Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

To unsubscribe, send a note to chalvorson@stonyfield.com

Over hill, through the bog, we'll chase the pollywog

Noah keeps a sharp eye our for spring wildlife while out in the woods to help his dad.

Noah helped me fix some fence this morning, to ready a new paddock for the young heifers and steers. They are doing really well outside, and have actually learned to eat grass. It usually takes about a week to ten days before they realize, hey!, this green stuff is good! We feed them a bale or two of hay a day until they get the hang of grazing.

The high tensile fence Noah and I worked on went up over a ledgey hill, and then down through a small bog to a big red maple that anchored the fence. We replaced a few clips in some insultimber posts, and a couple of pin-lock insulators on a small red maple that was on the fence line. Once the posts and insulators were all set, we used the tightening tool to put tension on the two strands of fence. Now all we needed was the battery-powered fencer to put a charge on the fence.

Noah had a great time climbing the rocks, checking out all the spring flowers, and wading into the water to watch the pollywogs or tadpoles. We finished just in time to get back to the house for lunch and then get Noah up to kindergarten.

Can you spot the frog?

Or find the tadpoles?

Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE

Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

To unsubscribe, send a note to chalvorson@stonyfield.com

'Deer' Valentine: thanks for the snow

The recent snowstorm left a good 10 inches here on the farm, and we've been having fun playing in it and plowing it. The boys had two snow days off in a row, but I couldn't come up with a good work project for them so they got to play instead. It didn't take long for a snow tunnel to appear in a bank of snow I had pushed up with the tractor. The cows were even out enjoying the fresh white-stuff.

The skiing was wonderful in the meadow and through the woods. Up to this point the snow coverage in the woods had been pretty sparse, but with the new snow all the tree roots, rocks, and fallen limbs were well covered. The deer had been out in the meadow pawing through the snow to get to the grass. Karen pointed out a spot the deer had pawed that had a unique shape to it, and we wanted to send it along today on St. Valentine's Day. I hope you can make out the heart-shaped depression in the snow.

--Jonathan, Howmars Farm
Franklin, Vermont

ABOUT THE BOVINE BUGLE

Subscribe by using the box at the upper left.

To unsubscribe, send a note to chalvorson@stonyfield.com