I made this dish last night, a stir-fry with new broccoli, served with tender stems and leaves. I made a sauce with Tamarind paste and added mango to the chicken and mushrooms. Both in terms of taste and sight, broccoli was the standout.
Here are the week-old piglets:
It is unusual for a sow to have only two in a litter. Sara was worried for this first-time mother. But she seems to be doing fine. The advantage for the piglets is that they have an all-you-can-eat buffet with no competition. They should grow fast.
These radishes were grown in the greenhouse in a box that had maybe four inches of soil. Most of the radish developed above ground. I this variety, which is long with almost as much white as red. I haven’t tried them for breakfast but I have heard they are good cooked.
We have a small hog barn with a concrete floor and access to a separate pasture. Sara Silva brought over two Tamworth sows, both pregnant. They seem pretty happy with the wet and muddy conditions. It’s amazing to see their powerful noses turn the ground over, rooting around for grubs and worms.
The Tamworth is “a rugged, thrifty, very active breed” and it is a “lean-type hog” with the “reputation of producing the best bacon of any breed.” (okstate.edu, “Breeds of Livestock.”)
Sara arrived with some eggs to feed the sows.
I found another lamb dead in the pasture this morning. It is very disturbing. We’ve lost three of our four lambs this spring. I hoped they were big enough now not to be attacked by a predator. After I found it, I watched its mother and the other lamb cross the pasture to look at dead lamb and see if it would come back to life. I watched it with the same forlorn hope.
We think it must be a mountain lion. There were deep puncture wounds under both eyes. A neighbor had lost two lambs to a mountain lion last year. I’m not sure whether to show this disturbing photo that Milo took but it is compelling evidence. The image has a “terrible beauty,” to use the title of Leon Uris’s book on Ireland.
I don’t know what to do now. How can you keep a mountain lion out? We moved the sheep into a different pasture. Our dogs are away this week (because Nancy is travelling), although the previous attacks occurred when the dogs were here. One suggestion was to have the dogs mark the pastures and that the scent might keep the mountain lion away. We’ll look into electrifying the top of the perimeter fence.
We are also nursing a duck back to health. Last week, he was attacked, which was likely a raccoon. The feathers along the ridge of his back had been stripped and his skin was very red. Ben found him and his girlfriend, Sarah, knew what to do, putting the duck in the smallest box she could find. He stayed there for a full day overcoming shock. Now he’s in a barn stall and each day he seems to improve.
A much more pleasant development is that Sara Silva has moved her 300 chickens and Eggstream trailer into the orchard. We’ll be moving chickens around to mow the high grass for several weeks. The Rhode Island Reds, Plymouth Rock and Leghorns are proficient grazers, plus they provide fertilizer. It’s quite rainy and when it rains the chickens hide underneath the trailer and then rush out the moment the rain stops.
The chickens are protected by an electric fence, which Sara says has always worked for her. Today, she collected 210 eggs from the hens. They seem to like their new digs, not knowing what is happening elsewhere on Pillow Rancho.
This morning one of ewes was bleating sadly. I knew something was wrong. When I looked in the pasture, I saw one of the black lambs was missing. I hoped it was still asleep in the shed.
I found it in far end of the pasture, alerted to its location by a turkey buzzard sitting on the fence nearby. The lamb had been attacked by a predator and eviscerated. It’s a disturbing sight – the open ribcage, the body cavity covered in blood, the deep black of its wool and its delicate head on the ground, eyes open.
We have a five-foot tall fence around the pasture. It is sufficient to keep out a dog or a coyote. It could have been a bobcat. The lamb could have died from another cause and the buzzard ripped it open. Last week, we’d lost another lamb, a white one. It was probably the same cause, although I didn’t see it myself.
I will move the lambs into a pen in the shed during the night. Yet I know there’s something out there that threatens the lambs and will return.
This morning when I got up it was twenty-six degrees. Just a few weeks ago the temperature had reached eighty degrees. The heat activated the jonquils and the fruit trees in the yard. The plums trees are covered in fragile white blossoms when the freeze hit. The north wind blows the petals away.
At Pillow Road, February is the cruellest month.
I harvested some red and yellow beets and carrots that were planted in the Fall. I sautéed the beet greens with garlic.
Milo is holding one of the two new lambs born this week. We have two white, two black; two are males, two females.
I came back from the my trip back East to find a new pair of lambs in the pasture. One of them has a patch of white on his black head. What a wonder!
