Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.
Peak Summer
With Independence Day upon us, high summer kicked into gear for everyone around here. Our lives become richer with the busyness. Opportunities for leisure and play abound right alongside work. Reconnecting with family from near and far becomes easier with the outdoor temperature and nature in full summer garb.
We also get so many great reasons to complain. The traffic, the lines, the entitlement. No lack of complaints makes for no lull in conversations. And the heat! We northerners can wax eloquently about our near death, 85-degree discomfort with glee for hours. Oh, the misery!
Full swing summer puts Quill’s End Farm into 5th gear. We got somewhere to be, and we aren’t there yet. For the first time in twenty years, even though we are grazing more cows than ever before, the pasture got ahead of us. Benjamin took an acre of it and made hay.
I dream of a time when we can put up all of our own hay. The problem is, I want all of the hay to be as good as the pasture. High legume content, desirable species hay growing on fertile ground. That means that after you pick up your hay, you lay down compost to more than replace what you took, thereby improving soil.
On Friday, after a late night hay gathering, we spread that acre with four-year old compost that looks like topsoil. Satisfaction. Benjamin also spread younger, nubblier compost on next year’s garden plot which will soon get plowed and cover cropped. It made a hot July day extra satisfying.
As predicted, we then received multiple showers and downpours to help everything along. This also helped my state of mind, as taking hay from a pasture mid-season is no light thing. I dread the possibility of feeding hay in late August should the weather turn dry and the pastures slow down too much to keep up with the cows.
As your homes and lives fill up with friends and families, we pray for ease, relaxation, and fantastic meals. Our pork, dairy and veggies are ready to impress your company. Whether grilling or crockpotting, we’ve got something exquisite to fill your plates while your loved ones fill your heart.
Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously permitted us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.