Every single day, be it in fair or foul weather, our pups are out there with us helping us with chores on the farm. This isn't all too uncommon on farms, as many have such characters, but given their important roles in helping us out and offering companionship through difficult manual labor on hot and humid days or frigid days below zero, I thought it important to introduce them to you properly. 

If you follow our Instagram account, you may already be familiar with their faces, but here I offer you proper introductions. 

Yoshi is the oldest of our current companions, having just turned ten this past fall. He is, also, arguably the most loyal in helping out with farm chores, especially in the summer when conditions are boiling and we are out gallivanting in the back corners of the farm. Yoshi is sweet, patient, loves to play fetch and to be around his humans.

Rakas joined the family three Christmases ago, when we adopted her from rough circumstances. She is a dog with more love and enthusiasm than any other we'd ever encountered, and thus we named her accordingly (Rakas = Finnish word for love). Rakas will be the first to greet us in the morning outside the door with a wiggling bottom and big smile on her face. She also sometimes gets up to trouble by chasing chickens about when she's bored (a habit we are working on getting her to break). 

Thoreau (also referred to as Thor) is the newest member of the Dryak family, having joined us as a puppy in spring of 2018. Thor is a real Daddy's boy, loving to spend his time on the farm with Tony as much as possible. Thor is very sweet in demeanor and loves to be close to his humans. He is also a pretty independent pup though, and sometimes prefers to do his own thing as we are moving about the farm. 

Over the years farm pups have come and gone, but they all hold a very dear place in our hearts. 

…A week ago last Saturday we completed our first flow of maple syrup cook down. The flow has been slow this year due to the length of snow cover and lack of night and day variation in temperatures below freezing and between 40 and 45.

From 117 gallons of sap, we harvested 3 gallons and 11 ounces of syrup. If you know anything about maple syrup it can vary in color from light golden to very dark brown and in this case, ours is on the Darkside.  It is actually Elder Syrup because it is from the box elder tree, which is a member— I recently learned--of the maple tree family.  It is a very soft maple and to think all these years I just thought it was a nuisance with box elder bugs in it!  There is really no taste difference in the resulting syrups, but the concentration of sugar in the sap is much less in the box elder. Therefore, it takes a lot more sap to make the same amount of syrup. So, if you try some of our syrup, you Harry Potter fans can tell everyone that you are using syrup made from the elder tree on your waffles and pancakes! 

We were hoping to get another sap run this week, but the flow was light and it looks like the temperatures will be rising above freezing at night so that should probably be the end of our maple season.  (I say this while we are currently in an April blizzard!)

We did have one casualty from our maple season so, my ever cautious husband did the unthinkable of trying to stoke the fire for the cook down in bare feet! Picture wood log meets big toe… Yes, it is broken and requires a four+ week walking cast!  May the lesson to be learned for all of you maple syruping upstarts... it is better to wear shoes and caution when throwing logs into your maple sap cooker!

On another Elder note… My elderberry starts are leafing out in the house as I could not get into the area where I wish to plant them, so I think I will have to grow them in the greenhouse for a bit and plant them at a later date. Stay tuned. 

On the animal production side of things, all blizzards aside, we have put the hogs out on pasture this week, to do their plowing work on areas that we will be reseeding this year.  They do a wonderful job on cleaning up roots prior to disking the fields.  The cows are enjoying the freedom of a larger paddock to romp in, and under the new snow, the farm is starting to turn green again!   The chickens have also been allowed to roam outside and have been moved to a dryer location as we change season.  With the lengthening of the days, production has started to pick up for all you egg lovers!

That’s all for now on the Pautauwak Farm home base.  Happy April!

LHD

​PS… Below, you will find a poem in tribute to Rainbow, the Brown Swiss Cow that you see pictured above. She passed away two weeks ago. Rainbow had been through many trials and tribulations in her 12 years of life, she has now gone to the great pasture in the beyond. She was our lead cow and  family favorite....we will all miss her.
__________

Bovine Brass
 
The cows march home to the bell’s “cling, clang, cling.”
Brown Swiss, Rainbow, leads the long bovine string.
 
Jane has a higher pitched bell that rings, and…
The calves prance along with “ting-a-ling-a-lings”
 
The cows come home, it’s time—I think,
For chewing their cud, and a long, cool, drink.
 
The sun is burning brightly, flowers line the trail,
And one lone horse, Breezy, is bringing up the tail!

It is hard to imagine that two weeks ago there were a couple of feet of snow blanketed over our whole area.  Now we have mostly bare ground and the robins have returned to Pautauwak Farms!

We had a few calves born during snow storms in the past two months and are now looking to the rest of the herd to fare better calving on the grassy slopes. All in all, it was a tough winter, and I am glad that spring has decided to show up!  Yes, we will have a couple of weeks of mud to deal with, but the maple sap has finally begun to flow, the days are getting longer and warmer than the nights, and nature seems to be giving a sigh of relief that things will now be able to start to grow!  

Spring brings a lot of activity to the farm: repairs to winter damage; preparations for planting; cooking of maple syrup; cleaning out the build up from indoor housing of animals.  Some of our spring projects will also include planting of seedlings in our green house, and planting of new elderberry starts; separating calves from their mother cows, so the mothers have a bit of time to rest before a new calf demands their attention!  The sows are also in need of being bred, to deliver a summer litter.  And of course, final plans need to be put in place for this year's plant and animal growing season. 

​With that in mind, a note to all of you that we will have meat birds this year, so put your orders in now, as we will likely only raise a few above the pre-ordered amount.  

That's all for now.....Happy Spring!
LHD