Life on the farm revolves around watching the weather and in this growing season, the view hasn’t changed much- rain, rain, and more rain. For crop and vegetable producers the abundant spring rains delayed planting or even worst rotted transplants. Now all the rain may delay or even prevent their harvest before the produce or grain wet rots.
As a grass-based livestock farm, Evermore Farm doesn’t have to deal with those problems. Instead, this kind of weather can bring on pneumonia in the baby pigs and calves. We need to keep the feed troughs cleaned daily since any feed left will turn moldy from the moisture and moldy feed makes animals sick. While all our animals have access to pasture or runs 24/7/365, they still prefer to come in out of the rain. That means we need to keep adding clean, dry straw to the pens to keep them from turning into a wet, mucky mess. We’ll also use some time to repair fences, service the skidloader, and plan the winter group arrangements for mature verses younger animals. We’ll keep the farm store stocked with our pasture-raised meats and other specialty foods for our Friday and Saturday customers. Of course there’s always accounting and record keeping to update.
I admit that I’m tired of the rain and the gloomy days. But when you have animals that depend upon you for their care, you put on dry socks, put on your boots, and get back out there. It’s still easier to deal with all this rain than to plow and shovel snow. I hope Fall lasts for a long time this year.
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