After spending the winter months dining on chemical free hay, our Katahdin sheep and Jersey cattle were thrilled to graze fresh spring pasture.
Shade Stone Farm's hops are off to a good start. You can see the bines beginning their journey up the ropes.
Early morning mist blankets Shade Mountain in the background. You can see the light green blooms of our maple trees coming down from the mountain toward the house. On the left side of the photo you can see the white and pink blooms of our newest trees--the orchard! Here's a closer view of the newly planted orchard. It consists of two types of apple trees, two types of cherry trees, two types of pear trees and one type of peach trees. The narrow straw lined bed is our asparagus.
Shade Stone Farm's herb garden received its first plants yesterday. Let's hope Spring's promise of new life will encourage our herbs to flourish. Rosebud updateRosebud is doing great fitting in on the farm. She is making friends with the other animals and has captured the hearts of our children completely. She's very huggable! Our daughter didn't want to be away from Rosebud, so she elected to sleep in the barn with her! She didn't spend the whole night there as the cows made too much noise, but she did learn how sheep and cows sleep.
Meet Rosebud, our Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog-in-training. She arrived on the farm last night and went right to bed in the barn. This morning, she met the other animals, did some exploring, and walked the fenceline.
Construction has begun on Shade Stone Farm's new herb garden. If all goes well we will have various herbs available soon! Herbs waiting for their new home which is visible just below the deck railing. The herb garden will have different micro-climates to simulate the conditions that different herbs prefer. The mountain stone will help retain heat and provide some shade. There will also be a small trellis system for cold-hard Kiwi vines. The Herb Shnecke was something we saw while visiting an old castle in Germany. Shnecke means snail in German and the spiral design allows the grower to have moist, shady soil on the north side, moist sunny soil on the lower south side and hot dry soil at the top. We thought it was a great idea and decided to try it here at Shade Stone Farm.
It was only 40 degrees Fahrenheit today, but some of Shade Stone's bees took the opportunity to visit a few of the flowers that survived the 18 inches of snow we had last week.
Our resident Rouen duck surprised us with an egg this morning! Three of our hens like to skip the nest boxes and have claimed a corner in the barn. Happily for us, Jemima Puddleduck followed suit.
We are proud to announce that our maple syrup is available at two Beaver Springs, PA businesses: Airy Dale Farm Stand and Rayauda's Restaurant.
|