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Not enough weekends in a month

Posted by lorivertin on

Since we both work, most of our farm projects are weekend activities. From Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, we try to squeeze in all sorts of necessary and unnecessary work. The beauty of living on a farm is that there are endless projects you can dream up. There are some necessary maintenance tasks we have tackled this year, but much of it has not been our own labor. We completed a kitchen renovation, interior painting, a new well in the small pasture, a new roof… and on the schedule is repainting the house exterior, some additional interior painting and some new flooring in our gym. I think working two days and devoting five days to projects would be an ideal schedule for me.

In May, I had the opportunity to be a member of the judging team for the European Koi Show in Oldenzaal, Netherlands. The team was composed of twelve judges, five from the US, five from the UK, one from Belgium and one from France. The show site had over 100 vats and over 550 koi benched into the competition. It’s a lot of walking, not the most fun when it starts to rain, but overall a great experience to judge on an international team. All of the judges are so amusing and it’s fun to hear what they do outside of koi judging and koi keeping. The show organizers did an amazing job setting up the venue, bringing in vendors, meals for the judges, hospitality – first class!

Left to Right: Lawrence Gill (US), KT Shanafelt (US), Lori Vertin (US), Carol McCall (UK), David Young (US), Gary Hillier (UK), Tony Sheffield (UK), Kieron Burns (UK), Rudi Van Den Broeck (BE), Michelle Gravenish (US), head judge Gary Pritchard (UK)

One of the first tasks we did as a judging team was to select the Grand Champion for the show. It’s always nice when the decision is unanimous because it gives you confidence that all of the judges are evaluating along the same lines. Our Grand Champion shared a vat with two other koi that received significant awards. I would be interested to see the other koi from this pond that weren’t entered into this competition. Clearly their owner has a good eye for koi and cares for them well.

We were divided into four teams to ensure that koi judging would end on time. No one wants to be judging koi by flashlight at 10:00 pm! I spent much of the day on a team with the French judge, Joël Jouannet and the Belgian judge, Rudi Van Den Broeck. Thankfully both judges speak English very well. 😂 The next day, I judged the children’s koi show with two American judges – Michelle Gravenish and KT Shanafelt … and two judges who live in the Netherlands but call the Koi Society of Australia their home club, Anja and Richard Albertsboer. It truly is an honor to be included on the judging team and something that I really enjoy.

We had a lot of lively meals, visited some local sights, and just had a great week in the Netherlands.

My koi did not miss me. They are kind of on auto-pilot. They swim around all day, eat a lot of food, and don’t do any tricks. We are thinking about running some grow lights over the pond to encourage some extra algae growth on the wall. Since the pond has a permanent cover, the water is shaded much of the day. Perhaps the lights might enhance the color of the koi as well since they should get a little sun. There are patches of sunshine at different times of the day but nothing really significant.

In about two weeks, my koi judging association has an annual seminar and this year we’ll be in southern Washington (about 20 miles north of Portland, Oregon). I should be looking forward to all the koi topics we will be discussing … but I’m more excited about the opportunity to check out the Japanese Garden in Portland and to hang out at Koi Pond Cellars/Parker Family Winery. 😂

We have thrown in the towel when it comes to some of the landscaping tasks around the house. We have hired a landscaping team to mow/string trim regularly for us. The team will be working on repairing our lawn and several other projects. The pond builder/tree planter is very happy to have hired Mr. Landscaper.

The side slope has always been difficult for us to maintain. Mr. Landscaper is putting down rocks and creating some stone steps up to the pond area. It’s back breaking work and I’m really glad we’re not doing it.
We have taken out all the rocks that used to form a dry river bed that functioned as a runoff during storms. The problem was that the rocks in the bed were at least three layers deep and over time accumulated dirt and sprouted a lot of weeds. We are going to put back a dry river bed but only one layer of flagstone type of stone that matches the flagstone we have. I actually thought about doing this job but Mr. Landscaper has been tasked to source and complete this project.

The Japanese maples have been neglected. I believe I have some new maples waiting for me at Grove Creek Maple Farm, but we have just been a little busy. Meanwhile, the weeds are taking over the maple garden. I hope to get to this under control over the next few weeks. Weeding is something I could do on my lunch hour. I always think about the team of gardeners that I observed in Japan at one of the great gardens. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a team on call???

My weeding issues could be partially resolved by putting down some more weed barrier fabric and mulch. I had put mulch down only in limited areas because the chickens always came in and made a mess of things. The chickens are now doing a better job of staying out of the garden (the threatening stick is very effective) – so I should be able to create more easier-to-care-for zones.

Year two of beekeeping has begun. We have added a colony of very angry bees. Last year – zero stings. This year – 6 stings on Day One. I feel the guard bees for this colony are hyper vigilant and high strung. Does not make me want to go and check on them too much. The individual I bought this NUC from said he breeds very gentle, docile bees. I would hate to see any aggressive colonies he might have.

We have put the honey box up and I am hoping the bees are busy filling the cells up. We do notice that in the morning, the bees are flying out of the hive as if they are on a mission. Maybe in a few weeks they will settle in and become calmer.

I think the chickens are my favorite feature of our farm. There’s way too many eggs and always a little drama happening.

While I was in the Netherlands, the chicken run was painted black. The color scheme for most structures around here is white with black trim, some dark coffee brown for contrast.
The eleven week old hens have been moved to the big girls’ land. They aren’t particularly thrilled because they are being picked on a bit. We moved six of our older hens to the hay farmer’s farm to keep our hen numbers manageable and less big hens to torment younger hens.
The younger hens have figured out that flying up to a roosting bar is one of the safest places to be in their new home.
The ameracauna chicks are now seven weeks old and living in a small outdoor coop behind our garage. I will keep them here for at least four more weeks before sending them to the big coop. Perhaps we’ll keep them here a few extra weeks just so that they are bigger when they join the flock. Maybe less likely to be pushed around.
Egg production has been very good. As of June 2, 2025, our chickens have laid 5680 eggs. The first egg was laid on January 12, 2023. With the six hens moving away, our laying hens have been reduced from 18 to 12. No one needs 18 laying hens. We were getting 13-16 eggs daily. Most of the eggs we gave away to the hay farmer since he has a much larger network of friends and family that he can give eggs away to. The current group of 12 laying hens produce 9 or 10 eggs/day. I expect that in a few weeks this number will go down since fewer eggs are laid in hot weather. The next big egg push will probably be in September. Next spring we will have 22 laying hens. I might consider rehoming a few of the hens before then.
With all the changes, we now have a new queen hen in the flock. The old queen, Beth, was sent away. Ethel is a golden colored, Calico Princess, who seemed somewhat retarded when she was younger. She is now the biggest bully of the flock, laying the biggest eggs as well. Her Calico Princess sister, Lucy is also a bully. I’m actually surprised that Ethel became the alpha hen since we thought it was going to be an Easter Egger named Wanda. Poor Wanda spends most of her day running away from Hal.

The gardens have enjoyed a rainy May.

Strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, assorted herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, broccoli, beans and corn are all doing well. I have not spent much time up here with the rain and travel. I will be doing some more work in this garden soon with our latest garden project.
The flower garden is somewhat mediocre because it doesn’t get as much sun as I thought it would. I will be making this the summer lettuce garden next year because the amount of sun and shade will be perfect for lettuces. I’m actually thinking about moving some plants around and sowing some more lettuce seeds for fall in this structure.

Our vegetable garden up by the barn is nice but it’s rather windy and the carpenter bees have made several holes throughout the wood frame. We have talked a lot about having a vegetable garden in the small pasture. With the new well that was put into the pasture this spring, we can now move forward setting up a new food garden in a better spot. This garden will be taken down and turned over to hay this fall.

I have placed the bottom frame of four 10 x 20 chicken runs in the new food garden space (just like the flower/lettuce garden structure). The chicken runs are economical, easy to construct, come with netting, and will reduce the amount of fencing we will need for deer proofing the garden. I’m super excited to start planning where different berries are going in, setting up new raised beds and building new compost carrels. Two of the structures will be filled with soil, kind of like a giant 10-20 raised bed, and the other two will have raised beds within them. We’ll then add more raised beds between the structures.

The tree planter rented a ditch digger so that we could put some PEX (flexible plastic pipe) into the ground for future irrigation projects. We also wanted a PEX line to the chicken coop so that their auto-fill water would stay cooler in the summer. Putting this piping a few inches into the ground will also keep me from tearing up hoses when I’m out mowing the field edges.

The hay has been cut and half of our fields have been baled. Our fields are normally cut mid-May but the weather has not been cooperative. Our hay farmer is planning to get the other fields baled on Monday – wet or dry. We often remark that we’re lucky that we have day jobs and are not true farmers. It must be incredibly difficult to work so hard and lose everything to weather, insects and other random acts of nature. Support your local farms before they turn into another subdivision.