Well I’m back again and here I am, on only my second instalment and its already late to the presses! Oh well, no one seems to have noticed and that could be construed as a good thing, but then again maybe not.
We are in the third week of April and after a cold, wet and somewhat shaky start to the month, it looks like we’re finally seeing some spring weather. Those peas I planted back in March never amounted to very much, partly because of the inhospitable weather and partly because of poor bed preparation. Soil preparation is a huge part of successful vegetable growing. There are so many factors working against your success to start with, such as bad weather, weeds, pests and disease. So you really do need to try and get all the things you have some control over, under control! Good soil preparation ensures that the seed will rest in an environment most likely to give it what it needs in order to produce a healthy plant: moisture, air, nutrients, proper temperature and minimal competition from weeds.
So those poor little pea seeds, broadcasted and hastily tilled into lumpy, weedy soil didn’t have a hope of developing into plants that would flourish and go on to fix nitrogen to help build up the soil! A few plants managed to push their way up into the world and have a go at growing but there weren’t enough of them to make a good green manure crop. I tilled all those beds in the first opportunity I had, relegating those survivor-type peas to the same end as the ones that wimped out from the start – life is so unfair!
Since then I’ve planted some of the early salad greens: spinach, dill and orach, and transplanted chard, beets, kale and lettuce. Of course I’ve also planted more peas but with a bit more thought and energy behind bed preparation this time. If we continue to get warm weather, everything should start growing and I may yet have a salad mix for the first farmer’s market on May 7 at the Lonsdale Quay.
While the saga of the peas takes place in the bottom fields, goats in the upper part of the farm are happily having babies. Four of my five does have kidded so far and produced the statistically acceptable four males and four females. The males won’t be around for too long though I’m thinking of keeping one for breeding this fall. The females are potentially part of my ever expanding herd, though at some point, rational thinking will kick in and I’ll have to make some hard decisions on how big this herd can get. I’m not a commercial milk producer so all the milk is consumed on the farm. Last year I milked two goats and we drank milk and ate yogurt and a bit of soft cheese. This year I’d like to delve into the world of hard cheese so we have something we can store and eat for months to come. There is a limited amount of cheese that four people can eat in a year, however, plus a limited amount of land for goats on the farm, therefore I’ll need to cap herd numbers at some stage.
Any goat owner you talk to probably has too many goats. Out of control goat expansion seems to come with the territory and is due partly to the goats’ great fecundity, and partly to their great personalities which makes it difficult to part with them (well, most of them, anyway!). You can do well selling breeding stock if you raise genetically superior animals, register them with an accredited Goat Breeder’s Association and go to lots of shows so people see how beautiful they are. I don’t have an interest in any of these things so, though I have some very good goats, my retirement fund will not be built up selling breeding stock. In fact, I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will never make any money on goats, and reaching this realization has been very freeing. Now I’m just resigned to drinking milk that demands great inputs of time, money, energy and creativity. I’ve crunched the numbers, done the formulas, analysed the data and – you know what? Its still worth it! Yes, we goat people definitely register high on the eccentricity scale!
One of the less savoury aspects of goat raising is the removal of horns. Pretty well every goat born is born with the potential to grow great, long, awkward, dangerous horns. Out in the wild, these horns were useful in establishing pecking orders and in defence from predators. In our more orderly society, however, horns are dangerous to humans, goats opposing them and goats owning them. They get caught in feeders and fences and can break and cause a lot of pain and bleeding. We have one horned goat on the farm and I’ve had to rescue her more than once from an embarrassing union with the fence, once while a herd of cattle stood by and jeered (they were polled). Poor Stella has had horns all her life and to remove them at her advanced age would probably be the end of her. Goats’ horns grow right out of the skull so the holes left after their removal would be large and very difficult to heal.
Therefore, your best bet is to remove horn buds while they are very small. The timing on this operation is pretty critical as you want to wait till the horn buds are visible and the young are old enough to handle the stress, but before the horns get too big. We use a hot iron that burns away horn-producing tissue and cauterizes the wound at the same time. I won’t go into any more detail than this but I’ll tell you, as a new goat keeper, this is the worst job on the farm! Amazingly enough, minutes after the operation the babies are bouncing around and even butting heads with their siblings. Now I just have to wait six weeks to see if I’ve done it properly!
April is the month to start getting things in the ground and come May, we’ll start selling at farmer’s markets. For our first couple of markets, our tables will have only a modest selection of goodies. Its good, though, to be out there, connecting with our customers after a long winter away. We’ll probably have some salad greens, rhubarb, watercress (grows wild), maybe some leeks that overwintered, possibly some radishes that John wisely planted a few months ago and maybe raab, also planted in late winter. Our customers take a little while to get back in the groove of their market Saturdays, so the sooner we can start, the better.
Next month we’ll be well into our first farmer’s markets and starting to harvest on an almost daily basis. All goats will have kidded and I’ll have some sort of milking routine established. I’ll do my best to maintain a monthly column once the season gets busier but I may need to bow out for a short spell. Tune in next month...
