Clean up, Tables, and Cover Crops

Two days to catch up on.

Yesterday's Activities

Spent the day cleaning up the shed again. This time it was Jarrod, Jeff, and I working together. We did heaps. We organised all the tools, moved a few work benches around, and ran power to the tools benches. We also started work on cleaning up a beast of an old work table with hopes that we can resurface it to use it as our 'harvest table' (i.e. the one we stand around while sorting and bunching the vegetables just harvested).

Today's Activities

Shortened the legs of a harvest table and put wheels on it so that we can move it around easily enough. Did a bit more clean up in the shed, and built a coat rack and boot rack. The rest of the day was spent inside.

I called around to find out what to use on the surface of the table. Since we're planning to be washing it down daily and working with food on it, we'll probably need something sturdy and sanitary. The two choices we seem to have come down to are stainless steel or an acrylic top. Both options are very expensive.

Anyhow, after that we watched a video on cover crops, and had a discussion. I'll have to explain more about that later.

Still cleaning...

Today's activities:

• Seeded several trays of lettuce, fennel, flowers and tomatoes.
• Collected maple sap for the last time. The sap is flowing pretty regularly but it's been consistently cloudy for the past while, and the sap from certain trees tastes very... green. And by that I mean, much like how willow or grass tastes green. When the sap runs clear it tastes pretty watery and plain.
• Spent a long while with Jeff scratching the top layer of fungus laden soil off of the onion trays. The fungus appears either dark green, really dark green, or orange (when it has dried out), and makes the top 1-2mm of soil stick together and resist water. Scratching it off often reveals quite dry soil underneath which is a big problem if you're a... you know... water gulping seedling.
• Lunch.
  
• Met with the Jeff, Leslie, Ali, and Jarrod out in the barn by the new piglets that were born Saturday morning. This is to be a regular meeting time to discuss any issues. The only real issue was sorting out that Jarrod would no longer be doing chores (feeding the cows and pigs, milking, mucking out the milking area, watering the chickens, and collecting eggs), and that I'd start doing that for a bit in order to get the hang of it.
  
• The rest of the afternoon Jeff and I worked on cleaning up the disaster area that is the main shed. Part of this shed will eventually be used as space to process (wash, sort, and bunch) the produce from the fields.
  

Watching the piglets was a bit of a mixed experience. They are pretty adorable creatures. About the size of a loaf of bread (and with similar proportions), these eight little dudes spent most of the time clambering to find a nipple, or sleeping for 20 seconds at a time by resting their heads on another feeding sibling. The mother, the size of a small sofa, just lay on her side grunting occasionally and snuffling distractedly.

Actually, one piglet was away from the action, right by the mothers head, laying on its side and obviously dying. How so? It had glassy eyes and twitchy breathing and was occasionally pawing around at the air in a pathetic way. Over the course of our meeting I watched it slowly become less and less active until eventually its mouth hung open and it wasn't moving really. Between you and me, I silently repeated a little prayer for it. Maybe we'll meet up on its next go 'round, or mine.

I checked back just before I left and discovered a bit of gruesomeness. There were now only six piglets feeding (originally there were seven plus the sickly one). There was one piglet which was dead and only the remains of another piglet (just the ear and a bit of something). So it goes. I was told that the male pigs are kept away from a new litter because they'll occasionally eat the young ones but, as I found out today, in some cases so will the mother.