Some farm photos

We have been rather busy the last couple of days, but nothing interesting to blog about. I have a couple of spare minutes right now, so figured I would update the blog and add a couple of photos taken about two weeks ago while we were staying at the farm.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great (well, what else can you expect around January 1st....?), hence, dull skies and boring lighting.

One of the reasons I greatly enjoy spending time at the farm is that there's always something to do. Apart from the daily chores and 'big time projects' there are also many small tasks that normally don't get done because they are not urgent enough, but are nice to fill 15 minutes or half an hour that otherwise would have been spend doing nothing useful.

Two of those half hours were spend removing dead leaves, branches and other waste from the small pond.


It is evident that it is not ideally situated in this regards since both the leaves from the two oaks on the left and those from the walnut tree on the right drop in during each fall. The trees, however, have been there since quite a while and the pond has been dug around a small natural source that keeps it filled year around.


Although I had fished out most leaves and other muck last year around the same time, I was once again truly amazed at the quantity that had ended up in the pond. Standing on the side of the pond I used a standard hay fork, leaning over to scoop up the muck from the bottom of the pond, that at it deepest is around 1,5 meter deep. I managed not to fall in, though there were several narrow escapes!


About two and a half years ago I spend a lot more time cleaning out the pond, since over the years so much rotten material had accumulated in it that it blocked the source, and the pond had fallen dry. I dug out about 50 wheelbarrow loads of muck that we used to fill up holes and trenches all over the property. Now we can still easily identify those because the dug up material functions as a very efficient fertilizer and causes the grass there to grow higher then anywhere else.

In the old days the pond was used by a flock of geese that were relatively successful in breeding. When things were downsized due to the advancing age of the permanent inhabitant the geese were moved to the other side of the main house where the chickens were. Like this it was easier to take care of them and feed.

After an unidentified predator had a feast meal on our chickens about two years ago, we only have some geese left. Due to the lack of water they do not breed, so each spring we tend to buy two or three goslings that join the two old timers.



The source feeding the pound is definitely not the only one on the property since we have a well close to the main building. It is rather deep (14 meters) but provides a steady supply of high quality water.

On some of our pieces of land a bit further down the road we have two additional ponds, I will try to post some photos of those another day.