{"id":97221,"date":"2025-07-13T06:44:52","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T10:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/?p=97221"},"modified":"2025-07-13T06:44:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T10:44:52","slug":"view-from-the-farm-november-2017-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-3-2-2-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-3-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/?p=97221","title":{"rendered":"View from the Farm – July 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Webmaster’s note: <\/em>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing Education<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The “University of YouTube”\u00a0came along just in time.\u00a0 Jacks of all trades are aging out and it is harder and costlier to hire tradespeople.\u00a0 It is true, the folks of Maine have, more than not, aimed to solve their own minor problems with a, “can’t be that hard,” attitude.\u00a0 But boy, if the internet had nothing else to recommend it, I’ll take professionals walking me through fixing what breaks around here every day.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These last couple of weeks, we have had to troubleshoot and fix: refrigeration, a vacuum pump on the milking machine, the scalding machine’s gas regulator, lighting system, pilot and thermocouple.\u00a0\u00a0Thankfully, none of the repairs turned out to be more than tune-ups or replacing readily found parts.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m just extremely grateful to the folks who decide to film themselves explaining normal operation and common failures for just about everything under the sun, who then post it to YouTube.\u00a0 It’s my very own, customized continuing education, such a great\u00a021st century, accessible tool for anyone with a sensibility to try.\u00a0 We did alright this time around and did not dig ourselves into a deeper hole.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides troubleshooting equipment, we’ve been hauling and stacking hay.\u00a0 One of our hay producers prefers if we can pick it up in the fields as he is 78 this year.\u00a0 Loading bales onto the truck in the cool of the evening after all the chores are done and driving back in twilight\u00a0makes for a nice end to the day.\u00a0 We hope we can fill the hayloft.\u00a0 It can hold about half of our winter needs.\u00a0 Filling it in June would\u00a0cut down on winter hauling, though stacking hay in the winter is<\/em> nicer than in the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The critters have all finished shedding winter and their coats are sleek and shiny as they graze in grass as tall as they are.\u00a0 Ahh, early summer.\u00a0 If you’re a cow at Quill’s End, it is easy living.\u00a0 You can taste the sweetness in the milk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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. Quill’s Endians are members of Halcyon Grange and publish a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and generously permit us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page<\/a> for more information.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. Continuing Education The “University of YouTube”\u00a0came along just in time.\u00a0 Jacks of all trades are aging out and it is harder and costlier to hire tradespeople.\u00a0 It is true, … Continue reading “View from the Farm – July 2025”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,74],"post_folder":[505],"class_list":["post-97221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","tag-agriculture-2","tag-farms"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Walter Boomsma","author_link":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/?author=2122"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"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. Continuing Education The “University of YouTube”\u00a0came along just in time.\u00a0 Jacks of all trades are aging out and it is harder and costlier to hire tradespeople.\u00a0 It is true,…","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1arC1-pi5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=97221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=97221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=97221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=97221"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mainestategrange.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fpost_folder&post=97221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}