Lovely rains relieved the dry pastures and orchards. Luckily our well drained soils demand our crop fields have good irrigation so the dry September didn’t set back the veggies. After so many glorious days, the drips off brim of the rain hat brought the gaze down and there on the forest floor was the vibrant red and yellow! Up close now, just a few feet away, the brightness of individual leaves now noticed.
The hours prior to the rain’s arrival were a scramble, chisel plowing to continue our efforts to reverse compaction and then the seeding of cover crops to hold our soils in place and add organic matter. And in this week’s mail from UVM labs our soil test results arrived with the satisfying improvements all around.
And as we prepared for processing our retiring laying hens we had a drop in raw milk inspection (we passed!) by Sue Janes with the Department of Agriculture. We remain so grateful for Vermont’s regulations which enable us to sell and our customers to enjoy raw milk.
Most exciting of all is that those retired hens are now available – fridge and freezer are stocked with stew birds. We waxed on about this two years ago…
Stew Hen on its way towards Chicken & Dumplings