February Freeze

Junior the Rooster that believes he is a duck on the warm compost pile

 February on Whidbey Island is usually a mix of cloudy days, some rain and usually two weeks of spring like weather.  This year we have had the clouds and rain, but instead of the spring like weather we have had snow, ice and frigged weather.  Last February we had 1.5 inches of rain at our farm, so far this year we are almost twice that.  Two days ago we had four inches of snow followed by sunny weather that melted most of it and allowed me to put some finishing touches on the newly expanded buck house, with that afternoon getting another three inches of snow.  The snow was so bad the buses refused to go north of Freeland so I had to take the 4x4 truck into town to pick up Pam on her way home from work.  I don't mind driving in the snow with the exception of crazy drivers - tailgating is popular in the snow and ice with many drivers along with passing in no passing zones.  This morning we got down to 16 degrees when I went out to change water and feed the goats.  Oh my!

Our 9 year old peach tree after pruning

Last week the buds on the peach tree were getting huge so I pruned it.  My plan was to wait until Saturday March 12th because I am doing a pruning class/workshop for South Whidbey Tilth at our farm that morning, but with the large buds I did it anyway.  Now with this freeze I'm sure everything will slow down - probably could have waited.  Every year for the past few I teach pruning of fruit trees here at our farm in late February to early March in conjunction with a series of organic food growing classes SW Tilth puts on.  With our 22 fruit trees, most of which are semi-dwarf to full dwarf, and mature, this is a good place to show how to prune.  I am a certified arborist and learned to prune fruit trees from a retired WSU professor 12 years ago - hands on at a farm with over 200 fruit trees.  If you talk to 20 fruit tree experts, you will get 22 different ways to prune.  The system I was taught works very well and is very easy and fast.

From 10 am to noon, I will take the 20 or so folks around our orchard and demonstrate my technique, also talking about organic pest and disease control, along with how to fertilize.  Then after lunch I will prune all of my trees in about two hours, with anyone that wants hands-on experience welcome to stay.

This Saturday I am going to demonstrate fruit tree pruning to a group call Gleeful Gleaners, a group of people on the south part of Whidbey that pick fruit from trees that would normally just fall to the ground and take that fruit to the local food banks.  From one of the leaders of this group: "Despite winging it, our start-up year rustled up 53 volunteers, 23 tree fruit donors (some with numerous trees) and yielded 2107 pounds of fruit channeled to people in need of it."  I believe 90% of the fruit grown by homeowners falls and rots on the ground while these same people go to the store and buy fruit grown 1000s of miles away.  We use 100% of the fruit we grow, freezing and drying what we don't eat fresh.

Our Garlic coming up through the February snow

Winter Projects

Winter is almost over and my projects are just beginning to be completed.  The highest priority was to get the buck barn larger.  I converted a covered deck that we used when we lived in a travel trailer while building our house to a home for the bucks.  The structure was about 12 feet long by 8 feet wide with the east side open.  Besides being too small to loaf around, rain would come in the open side keeping the half the ground area wet.  With our very wet winter this year our bucks have developed hoof problems.  We need more dry space for them.

The expanded buck house still under construction

My solution was to expand their barn another 10 x 12 feet, enclosing the west side and leaving the north side open.  We get some cold winds from the north but the rain usually comes from the southeast.  I have some left over plexiglass from my redesign of our cold frames so I will put a couple of windows on the new west wall to give a little more light in there.  Today I'll order the metal roof (right now I have plywood and tar-paper on it) and get a few more boards.  The plywood walls on the south and west sides will be covered with alder saplings that I will cut from our forest.

Pam putting down fresh straw in the boy's area

My next project is to rebuild the cold frames.  We have been using plexiglass for the lights for the past two years, before that we used plastic but that only lasts a year before needing to be replaced. The plexiglass is expensive (over $35 for a square) and when the wind blows our lids start bouncing and they break.  This year we bought a product called Sollex.  They use it for greenhouses.  It comes in 4' widths and is about $6 per linear foot.  So each light costs me about $6, and it should last 20+ years, it's light and unbreakable.

The new cold frame "light"

We ordered our 2011 chicken crop and they will be delivered April 20th.  After rebuilding the cold frames I will build a new chicken coop.  This one will be 24' x 8', with nesting boxes and three brooding sections.  One brooding section will be for turkeys, one for meat birds and one for each year's new flock of laying hens.  I'll build it about 2 feet up off the ground so rats don't live under it and tall enough so we can park our garden cart at the door and be able to rake the litter directly into the cart.  I should begin construction by the end of this month.

Winter has been long, cold and wet, and I am looking forward to warmer and dryer days ahead.  Not much snow this winter but a lot of rain with the temperatures in the upper 30's.

Our Livestock Guardian Dog

Pooh Bear is our 2 1/2 year old livestock guardian dog, a Great Pyrenees.  We have a small herd of Nubian dairy goats and our concern for them is the coyote and other peoples' dogs.  Before we got Pooh Bear I would lock the goats inside the barn at night, nighttime being when coyotes are most active around our farm.  We have our pasture fenced with a five foot woven fence, with chicken wire along the bottom stapled to the ground.  When we were building our house we lived in a large travel trailer and built the fence to keep our two house dogs in, so we figured it would also keep the stray dogs and coyotes out.

Pooh Bear, our Livestock Guardian Dog

We chose the Great Pyrenees because of his history as a Livestock Guardian Dog (LGD) and his friendly nature with humans.  Some of the other LGD's are scary and we didn't want that at our little farm.  On large farms the Great Pyrenees usually guards over 160 acres so his tendency is to roam.  Our goats, always believing that the plant growth on the other side of the fences has a better flavor, tended to climb on the fence to eat what was growing on the other side and would knock down the fence.  The goats were afraid to climb over the fallen fence, but not Pooh Bear.  He would then go wandering.  Our solution was to put an electrical wire along the top; we no longer have that problem and it gives us an additional layer of protection.

I had to string a lower wire along the fence that borders the gravel road as neighbors walk their dogs off-leash and it would set Pooh Bear off.  I observed him throwing himself against the fence in a frenzy and feared he might break through.

Pooh Bear watching over his herd of Nubian Goats

 Pooh Bear has two different barks.  When he sees one of our barn cats or a deer the goats pay no attention to his bark, but when he hears a coyote and barks, all of the goats run to a place behind him, watching their protector intensely.  It's really awesome to watch.  We disbud our kid goats (a process of removing the new horn growth so the goats don't have horns when they grow).  We use a goat farmer in Oak Harbor to do that for us.  One year when we returned with the kid that was just disbudded its mother rejected the kid and wouldn't have anything to do with him.  Pooh Bear became his best friend with the two of them always seen together.

Pooh Bear as a puppy and his little friend

 We have a friend that owns an 180 acre ranch in north central Washington State that is very rugged.  They raise fiber goats with no fences and use one Great Pyrenees to protect their herd.  He tells the story of his dog killing a courgar that came after their goats.  So we asked him to assist us in buying a puppy.  The first day I brought the puppy home and introduced him to our goats the dog and I were walking on an old log, showing the goats that we could do that also.  A large chunk of the log split off and a nest of bees swarmed out, stinging both of us.  I looked at our poor puppy, rolling on the ground swatting at the bees and thought of Winnie the Pooh - from then on he was called Pooh Bear.  It's a great name for him as he looks like a bear (he weights 120 lbs and looks larger with his fluffy hair) but to humans he is just a Pooh.

Pooh Bear spends 99% of his time living with the goats - his time off is every evening when we take him for a walk (on leash) with our other two dogs.  We will often see him grooming the goats, licking them, especially around the face, ears, and urogenital region.  I have often seen one of our goats go up to him and stomp her foot to wake him up and he'll start licking her leg.  On the bad side, when a kid is not feeling well he tries to help and he is too rough.  He may paw at them and has been known to pull on their ears, trying to get them out of a tight spot.  This year when the kids are first put in the pasture with their mothers we plan on putting Pooh Bear in an adjoining pasture with our bucks.

Pooh Bear resting while the herd is out browsing in the pasture

LGDs are  hardy animals and often do not use a dog house or shelter, even in inclement weather.  They generally prefer to sleep in the open, somewhere high where they can easily observe their surroundings and often, even when it is snowing, I will see Pooh Bear sleeping out in the open.