Apifera Farm - where art, story, animals & woman merge. Home to artist Katherine Dunn

Apifera Farm is a registered 501 [c][3]. #EIN# 82-2236486

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©Katherine Dunn.





Sunday, April 19, 2009

Sunday workers



With the first blast of summer like weather, winter coats are shedding, and the grass is growing by leaps and bounds. Our first year of leaving the ewes in the lavender field is paying off. The grass would be mid calf high by now. We are quite pleased, plus it allows us to rotate pastures and let the other sheep field rest a season. And such good fertilizer - right from the source! We won't till between the rows this year, giving the soil a rest, and maybe won't have to in the future with the sheep in there. We still have a lot of thistle and weeding around plants to accomplish, but as the plants are larger now, there will be less 'honey I'm freaking out the weeds are taking over the plants" mode. I'd love to put the donkeys in there, as they adore new thistle, but they seem to think that we planted the tidy rows so they could make special Donkey Row Running Olympics...and I fear plant damage.

For those of you who don't know the Katahdin breed, they are a 'hair' sheep, and shed out their coats. The fields are full of fluffy little shapes, newly fallen from the ewes - perfect house making material for all our bird friends having babies.