lamb slaughter + first seeding + etc

1. Lamb slaughter

A year and a half ago whilst Daniel and I were still at Dickinson we got the opportunity to take some of the farm's sheep to the abattoir. I was still relatively new to the whole local food movement and had not, until that point, seen an animal slaughtered. The experience, at that time, was jarring enough for me to write this essay and stop eating meat for six months (Daniel also became a vegetarian for a long time). Reflecting on that article now, I agree with one comment about the piece being "overemotionally wrought," and it was clearly written from the point of view of a farmer noob. Yesterday, we saw at Northland what in my mind was the ideal slaughter for a farm animal (a lamb, in this case)- on farm, with no stress for the animal until the last few seconds. Maryrose also let us help skin the animal, and perhaps involvement in the process or an interest in understanding the various cuts of meat which will come from this animal were a part of the reason our reaction was so calm compared to the slaughter 18 months previous. But the fact of the matter is that most slaughters can't happen like that one; most farmers have to send their sheep to a licensed butcher, which involves probably a day of stress during transport for the animals at the end of their life, and to be honest I'm fine with that. Northland, for example, takes their lambs to a slaughterhouse in PA a couple hours away, but that doesn't mean that their lambs weren't raised under the most ecologically and humane (err, really, ovid? whatever the sheep analog for humane is) conditions possible. What still jars me is stuff like this, a system that respects neither animals nor the humans processing the animals.  

A magical photo Daniel took on the farm last October of Maryrose and Miley moving sheep

Anyyyywayyyyy....

2. First seeding/ greenhouse & other things update

Things here have been good. Fellow Dickinson Farm worker/ Daniel's girlfriend Megan is here, we seeded our first plants a couple of days ago, we've been working on advertising our CSA, we (very awesomely) received a greenhouse from our friends at Kingbird Farm and are working on putting that up, most of our crop planning is done (yay), we've been making great waffles with yeast (thanks Maryrose) and we're waiting for the weather to finish the whole snow thing so we can start putting seeds in the ground. 

Here are the photos, sorry Elizabeth we didn't get any good ones of Lee this week. She is still very cute though, don't worry. 

OCDaniel organized the seeds. No actually it's super necessary.  Thanks Daniel. 

The seed card catalog/ library


Filling a channel tray with potting soil (for scallions)

Megan and Scott prepping some flats

Seeded cherry tomatoes

Okay sheep slaughter photos. Here's Maryrose "punching" the skin off the animal. She uses her hands to do this so as to not rip holes in the skin.

Mostly skinned

Megan and Daniel carrying the carcass to rest for a week.

Note the t-shirts. We're removing a fence in the area where the greenhouse is going to go.  You can see one of the endwalls for the house in the foreground.