One, two, three!
Three sows settled successfully!

Pictures? Coming soon…

Piglets will arrive in three weeks, and the Red Fox has begun watching the sows with anticipation, our dogs chasing his culinary aspirations off the fields daily.  The Hawks have begun to ride the morning skies, searching for a hen taken set, predicting an early Spring.  The lettuce starts pulled in November will find themselves placed back into the outdoor ground. The potatoes have sprouted eyes, waking from their dark, dry keep. Spinach and Mustard will grace our dinner plate.

Northern farmers begin smiling again, our frustrations of another long winter tossed into the forgotten annuals of yesterday. Exit soon the cold, and the sun grows stronger, and sticks around longer, by two minutes each day.

(And even better than all this?)

The Saddle Fitter comes, now open widely the barn.  Steady the light so he may see. Ready the farmer’s Spanish Mustangs for Spring!  An outdoor arena nears completion.  The  sun rises and the shadows lessen,  and on our ground we welcome the great Equestrian Masters,

the original Horse Whisperers,

the first to behold Natural Horsemanship,

the cowboys of days old when Knights readied themselves for maidens and kings, when Dragons need  be felled from the sky! Men of Science, Men of Earth, with broken collarbones and ripped leggings, tamers of untarnished colts and mishandled stallions alike.  These are the creators of this, the Noblest Art.

Speak now Master Steinbrecht, scream these truths Master Seeger, paint the picture Master Albrecht, and carry forth the first equestrian words, dear student of Socrates.

“Xenophon,” lends Socrates, ” will they need reinvent the Wheel, in the 21st century, as well?”

Let the journey begin!

Wait for me!

Evolution is a series of related changes in a certain direction. With their fossilized remains, Horses have provided humans a well documented example of a species exhibiting change throughout time. Arguably, no living creature presents a more complete archeological picture of adaptation across environment and time. A grandiose symbol of inherit power, beauty, and spirit, the remains of the Horse encompass the whole of our world.

Where would we humans be, were it not for Invention?  Where would we be, if not for the Horse?

Once, when young, a small girl looked up to her mother and asked, “Mom.  Do Horses go to heaven?”

With slight calculation, the girl’s mother smiled as she looked down, into the child’s eyes, and replied, “Yes. Horses go to heaven.”

This was of great relief to the child. You see, she had been instructed to believe in a heaven, and she was certain, even at this very delicate age, that if heaven kept no Horses, than it was not a place where she wanted to be.

SMR#3217 "Tequila Moon", a rare Spanish Mustang

The framework of a family’s small farm will be limited in growth by available resources and time. Growing big fast is typically the antitheses to success in farming. A successful family farm takes patience to build, and it will not survive if the generation following does not carry on the work load.

Framework of a successful family farm is built not only by generations of humans, but also by the dynamics of the food stocks themselves.  The animals and seeds must find their niche, and also build successive generations. A traditional structural component of the working American family farm is, without question, a flock of chickens. Chickens can often become ornamental, in addition to their working value, when fancied enough by the occasional farmer who has an unexplained  devotion to the bird.  Fancier’s of bird can enable a particular breed’s genetic survival. Most starter flocks delivered by fancier’s and hatcheries alike, go into the hands of an excited couple and their young children,surviving until interest is lost. For most flocks, this timeframe equates to a little over a year. In terms of genetic conservation, that amount of time and interest is of small benefit.  This isn’t the only difficulty in conserving poultry genetics. A rare breed must become structurally important within several farms.

The flock of a diversified working farm needs to be able, in part, to care for itself. Unless a farm family is fortunate enough to have a Fancier within their threshold, the chicken’s won’t be set aside special time for pampering.  There are crops to harvest, fences to mend, horses to work, pigs to feed, sheep to shear and a cow to be milked. Laundry must be cleaned, food prepared, children’s homework kept in check. A working farm needs a strong flock genetically wired for setting it’s chicks, defending it’s chicks, without calling much attention to itself. For nearly a decade, our flock of adopted Javas have done that. Free ranging across the farm, our Javas have foraged for food and set young in smart places away from predator’s eyes. There is great joy when first seeing a hen come back into the barnyard with a successful hatch of fluffy chicks stumbling to follow along. The hen will settled down, calling them in, and the smart chicks know to hurry under the warmth and safety of the hen’s feathers. Typically, we gather these young hatches and secure them in a mobile coop until they are too large for the hawk to carry away. Other than this intervention, our hens have only required that we close the coop door at night, and maintain dogs to keep the fox and fisher cat away. We toss a handful of grain in the morning and supply fresh drinking water. We muck out the coop quarterly. In exchange, the hens supplied our family with eggs and meat, and otherwise, took care of themselves.

Our Java flock was knocked in numbers when a three day heat spell struck two years ago, and this year, two of our Roosters disappeared to predation. The Javas that survive are low in numbers, and have not brought home a successful hatch in several years.

Before we adopted our Java flock, we held Buff Orpingtons. One of those original birds remains, a Buff Orgington rooster named Rambo.  Funny name. Rambo has positioned himself as an important peg in the framework that defines our family’s working farm. He is genetically a very resourceful bird.

He made a contract with the neighbor.

A  red Cape home sits near our barn, and Rambo spends a lot of time on her side of the fence. Several years ago, Rambo stole a black java hen from the java rooster flock.  He took her out on several dates, encouraging her to forage for food in our neighbor’s flower beds. Today, Rambo proudly crows outside our neighbor’s kitchen window, and that hen is soundly his mate. Almost romantic, isn’t it?

Not for most neighbors. This incredible neighbor tolerates Rambo and his hen foraging through her begonias, and she never complains about the dogs barking at 2 am when a smart fox crosses in. Very few neighbors in existence will tolerate a barking farm dog. We are extremely fortunate to have one of those rare neighbors. In fact, our neighbor sees Rambo as her chicken, and gave him his name. When we apologize for the noise and smell we produce, our neighbor, who was raised in the farmlands of Pennsylvania, laughs and encourages us, saying, “you keep doing exactly what you’re doing.”

Rambo and his Juliet Java hen are the most successful hatching pair of birds on our working farm. Together, they provide us with a yearly clutch, keeping us in daily fresh eggs. This successful cross comes at the genetic expense of both the Java and Orgington breeds. Once genetics are crossed, the breed travels a step closer to being forever lost. It is the purebred genetics that are of most value to ensuring diversity for our grandchildren’s food stock future. Rambo and his hen though, are providing offspring that naturally survive the conditions of our farm environment. As working farmers, wouldn’t we be fools to cull the most productive chickens of our flock?

Our food systems, in general,  no longer connect us to our neighbor. This is bad news for the Java, a bird that does not fit into the massive monoculture system of egg and white meat nugget production. Heritage genetics are challenged by a lacking passing of breed’s into the hand’s of the following generation. Also lacking are the number of working farms raising the same breed in a farming environment to continue producing livestock and flocks that exhibit the character traits that made them so valuable to the working farm in the first place. Ideally, we would successfully raise our chickens and pass extra birds off to our neighbors, and they’d raise them, and their neighbors would raise them, and we could trade back and forth genetics from the same breed. The original Stock exchange. We haven’t had the time or resources to successfully do that for the Java, and it pains us to know we have been of little help in preserving their genetics.

Outside of Rambo’s stolen Juliet, our remaining Java flock consists of eight black hens, one white hen and one white Java rooster, and now, this singular chick. This chick was hatched in the roosting box by an old hen who refused to get off the clutch of eggs. Most of the eggs were infertile. This one was not. We heard a peep one morning and with great joy, intervened, as the chick was unlikely to survive without food and water, having no way of following the hen in the long drop from the box to the ground. We are not particularly fond of the offspring that requires our added attention, in hope of survival. But what is the farmer to do?

The old hen and purebred chick have been moved into the mobile coop, moving on grass. Here the hen can teach her youngster the finer traits of what Javas do best, foraging. The mobile coop also protects the chick from the gathering birds of prey. Like gamblers, those talented hunters, placing bets on which hawk will find the best angle to swoop and steal the little one away.

We find that singular hatches like this one, with farmer intervention, rarely survive the test of time. We’ve name this java chick Doubtful. For now, caring for the chick has become part of our daily routine, it’s presence reminding us that the good farmer does best to cultivate an inability to give up hope. It is our hope that not only this Java chick survives and has Java offspring, but that other family farms successfully introduce Java’s into the framework of their particular working operation, supporting the work of the few fancier’s of this rare breed.

black java hen with chick

Most folks dislike bugs. A natural response to an instinctive sense of self preservation against parasites. That’s bad news for bugs.

With respect to successful food production, the continuing gardener will eventually come to learn that there are good bugs and bad bugs. Good bugs are called Beneficials. Bad bugs are called Pests. Good bugs eat bad bugs. Our goal as gardeners needn’t be a desire to eradicate all pests, but rather, to keep the pest numbers low. The good bugs will then continue to thrive. Once bad bugs take hold of a location in a garden, they can be difficult to overcome. The earnest gardener will then need to make a choice. The gardening life is full of choices.

At Laszlo’s Farm, we choose rainy days to engage in battle against pest infestation. Rainy days issue a no flight zone against a pest that bothers us most… the Striped Cucumber Beetle.

bad bug

This bug drives us buggy. Cucumbers and squash leaves are found thin and torn when this pest hits, weakening productive growth. Cucumber Beetles spread bacterial wilt from plant to plant, ensuring death, row after row.

With the no fly zone issued underneath a barrage of rain, the gardener can easily remove these bad bugs, ending their life cycle with a squish between the fingers or a drop into a can of soapy water. The life cycle of the Cucumber Beetle and many other bad bugs can also be disrupted by keeping the garden clean of weeds, offering less overwintering habitat. Keep your garden clean, year round.

There are many good bugs that will prey on the larval stages of various bad bugs. Lady Beetles and Damselflies, Praying Mantis and Wasps. These beneficials are the gardener’s good friends, and available for purchase if they are found lacking in your garden.

Northern gardeners know well the devastation of Flea Beetles (bad, bad bug). Heavenly Mizuna seeds planted early in hope of gracing the spring luncheon plate, only to grow up riddled with unattractive holes. The Flea Beetle shows no mercy.

Various management techniques will keep Flea Beetle population low on mustards. An early trap crop, like radishes, can be planted to attract the pest and keep it distant from later growth of desirable crops. Cheese cloth covers provide a shield that can also deter infestation. If space allows, plant crops successively throughout the growing season and rotate planting locations seasonally and annually. We find that hiding our mustard crops in between other crops confuses the flea beetle, and successive plantings are typically hole- free.

Colorado Potato Beetle’s are another pest we battle in Laszlo’s gardens. These pests can also be dropped into the can of soapy water or squished between two fingers.

mature bad bug

bad egg stage

bad larva

Warriors retire into the solitude of their gardens. With many years of quiet labor, they are eventually elevated to the esteemed distinction of Master Gardener. Although these Master Gardeners are becoming rare, they have always been elusive and do still exist. The continuing gardener should keep a look-out for the Master Gardener. Those located in your same vicinity will exhibit the best technique against garden foes of your territory. There are also good gardening books available. For the Northern states gardener, we suggest the ever timely Crockett’s Victory Garden, by James Underwood Crockett. Eliott Coleman has also produced several masterful works that will aid the gardener from the north.

The earnest gardener relishes the rainy day. With the sun eclipsed by wet clouds, the time arrives to tug at roots and transplant. Weeds release their grip on a soil loosened by moisture and rows are easily groomed.

But the best part of a gardener’s rainy day? The ideal opportunity to hunt and kill undesirable bugs.

Reasoning and pictures coming soon.

We breed our Oberhasli dairy goat every fall. The doe has a kid the following spring, and along with the kid comes a bounty of farm fresh milk. We supplement our doe’s diet with regionally produced grains grown by Robert Crow and Inverness Farm, but the bulk of our doe’s diet comes in the form of pasture grasses and weeds.

Milk and meat from a livestock animal whose diet is rich in forage of grasses and other plants has many advantages. This is where those popular omega-3 fatty acids come from. Maintaining livestock on rotational pasture also saves the small farmer the added labor and expense of growing grain to feed confined livestock. In addition, managed pasture rotation keeps livestock in better condition by providing a diet that nature intended. This foraged diet keeps stress low in all the herds and flocks at Laszlo’s Farm, making illness rare. Our sheep, pigs, goats, poultry and horses roam about the farm with their beaks and noses to the ground, and their backs are kept warm under the sun or cooled beneath the shade of trees. Our dairy goat, in particular, plays the part-time role of landscaper as she grazes up and down our historic New England rock walls, built centuries ago. She eats the climbing vines and weeds that threaten to cover the walls and nips low the blades of grass so we can see the bottom rocks disappear into the ground.

Goats are among the most worldly of livestock, finding a niche in a wide diversity of nations. While most Americans equate milk with the four-pronged udder of a cow, most milk produced outside of the United States is provided by dairy goats. Looking closely at photos from cultures across the world, with children playing near tents, and women walking to the well to collect water for the day, a keen observer will often spot a goat. And where would the Greek salad be without feta cheese! Goats also make great companions for children who can train them to pull a cart. Within the greater Animal Kingdom, goats are traditionally kept in stables to pacify hot-blooded race horses.

Here’s our most recent addition, an outlaw by nature and bred by an Angora buck. Click on the photos to get a better look.

Bunny the Oberhasli goat standing with a little one.  The newborn kid wears a lovely red coat and his tail moves vigorously in wag.  The delivery came with no fuss underneath an afternoon sun and in the cool breeze. We didn’t even see the stork fly away.

Oh yes. Pictures coming soon.

We once had a veterinarian visit, and she had not previously encountered Navajo-Churros. While looking over our Churro flock she commented, “They aren’t cookie cutters like other sheep breeds, are they. They each have their own look, and yet when seen as a flock they still look like a distinct breed.”

Each lambing season we marvel at the variety of color exhibited in the fleece of our new lambs. White, brown, black, blue, tricolor, pinto, and our favorite, badger. Badger? What kind of coloring is that?

A badger sheep has black legs, underbelly, points, and face, with a body coat of a lighter shade, similar to the grulla shading expressed in the Spanish Mustang horse. Both the Spanish Mustang and the Navajo-Churro breeds exhibit a phenomenal range of colors. It is this color that adds to the living beauty of the Laszlo Family Farm. We take pleasure in the diversity of tone, hue, and shade shown in the coats of our livestock.

For a more detailed description of the variety of coat patterns of the Navajo-Churro, visit the breed association website at www.navajo-churrosheep.com. This site also introduces you to this breed’s enduring history.

But before you go, just a few more photos.

Rising underneath a slivered moon, THREE little lambs on wobbly legs, following their mums. What joy to wake and find newborn lambs safely atop the field.

Lambing season begins! Pictures coming soon.

(Yesterday we heard coyotes chattering, their meeting called within the woods.)