We enjoy the holiday, quiet days, talking, reading, and driving around; the farm is always here and needs attention—no holidays for farm animals and endless farm chores.
The apples are falling, branches are falling in the wind, wood needs to be stacked, and the donkeys and sheep need to be let out to graze twice a day. Maria lets the sheep out in the evening; they spend much of the day in and around the pole barn. They get two trips to the pastures, each 2-3 hours. The water bowl needs to be checked twice a day.
The animals need feed in the winter for extra warmth; the donkeys need their hooves trimmed three or four times a year, the sheep shorn twice, and the wool brought to the knitting mill to be turned into yarn to be sold on Maria’s Etsy Studio page.
Between the farm chores we write, work on our art, our blogs, money, bills, and household tasks (shopping, cooking, repairs), and the excellent work at the Mansion and Bishop Gibbons is precious to both of us. I’m not writing books or getting royalty checks anymore, so I depend on Social Security and donations to keep the blog going.
You can contribute if the blog is meaningful and does you some good. The blog is my living memoir, for better or worse, my great work. My Support The Blog buttons are not working now; I wondered why the donations had dropped so sharply.
The buttons will be fixed shortly, but in the meantime, you can donate to the blog via Paypal, [email protected], or Venmo, Jon-Katz@Jon-Katz-13. Sorry for this confusion and frustration. You can also send checks to Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.
(Update: The donation buttons are working again; they were fixed this morning. You can donate here if you wish.)
I blog just about every day and am lucky and happy to do it.
Maria does almost all the wood stacking, but I can help by tossing the logs onto the pile by the woodshed, saving her time and some hard work. We’ll have all the wood stacked by mid-week, and when the final load of hay arrives, we’ll be set for the winter unless some breaks, leaks, clogs, or freezes. It’s time for the septic to be cleaned, also.
A farm pays no mind to holidays.
The Imperious Hens must be let out of the roost in the morning and locked tight in the evening. As the days get shorter, the eggs get fewer. The barn needs to be mucked out once or twice a day; the manure pile is spread around the three pastures by hand. The gardens are watered once a day.
We have 30 bales of hay in the barn and 30 more comings. A total of 60 bales first cut, and ten bales second cut (thicker and more nutritious for the coldest nights.)