Life on an organic farm is... Snappy:)

After some days up in the Adirondack with my family, I jumped back into farm life yesterday afternoon. So I'll sum up this past weeks happenin's, as the storm's a brewin' outside. Last week, before I left, we unfortunately lost a calf, #97, that had been sick :( Eric brought him inside the barn with him mother, who he was still nursing from, to keep an eye on him as she recovered. He was a runt to begin with, had maggots, and could have possibly had phenomena. He stopped feeding from his mother once the two were brought into the barn. Unfortunately the lil guy just didn't have the strength to survive his odds, and now is decomposing in the compost pile...
Fortunately though, our other calf, 91 or Heart, has been recovering well, and is currently acquiring a taste for grass as we ween her off the bottled milk.

We've been spending much of our time weeding, of course, and searching the many potato rows for Colorado Potato Beetles. This morning, we ventured into the field with our old yogurt containers filled with warm soapy water, to catch the bugs. We slowly walk down the rows, carefully look through the leaves, occasionally turn over leaves, and once we find them, pick them off the leaves and plop the lil moochers into our soapy water, which instantly kills them. Now, along with the adult bugs and the eggs, growing larva grace the leaves with their presence. Some larva are real tiny, but some have quite plump bodies from all the leaves they've been munchin' on. But no matter what their sizes are, they munch together, so once you see one, you're bound to see about 10 to 20 more on the same plant.

Today, Hannah, Maddy (I've been spelling her name wrong this whole time!), Calvin and I headed into St. Albans for our Monday CSA delivery to the Hospital. I conducted a survey for our customers, mainly to find out the main reason why they chose to participate in a CSA. I asked them to rank three main reasons for joining, environmental (wanting to limit their ecological footprint, ect...), Health (wanting to improve their own personal health by going organic), and supporting local their economy (since their money goes directly, and fully to the Noels). To my surprise, only one person ranked environmental as their top reason, it mostly got the second reason. Supporting the local economy and health were pretty evenly split as being people's main reason for joining the CSA. We dropped off our extra vegetables at the food shelter in St. Albans before heading back to Highgate.

As I'm writing this now, the rain brought a snapping turtle to the front yard! I wish I had my camera on me, as Richard picked it up by it's back leg, but the down pour wasn't the most enticing weather to run back to the trailor for it! It wander over from the ditch across the road, so Richard put the huge snapper in the back of his truck and returned it to it's ditch home. Ya never know what the rain might bring in...