Building Unity Farm Sanctuary - Second Week of June 2017

Star the Donkey arrived at the Sanctuary last week and she’s living with the goats, serving as a livestock guardian.    She’s 18 years old  (donkeys live to 35) is about 100 pounds overweight.   We’ll be restricting her diet, giving her daily exercise, and provide intensive veterinary care until her weight normalizes.    I expect that will take a year or two.    Her first vet visit and farrier (hoof) work will be this week.

Honey the chicken develop wheezing this week and we’ve isolated her from the flock.   Although she has intermittent breathing issues, she’s eating, laying eggs, and acting normally.     We’re not sure if its viral, bacterial, parasitic, or structural, but we’ll continue to isolate and observe her.

Dr. Henry Feldman from BIDMC brought us an unusual gift this week - a laser cut holder for Unity Farm Cider and Honey Lager.   He made it on his Glowforge, a 3D laser printer.    The precision is amazing.   Here’s a video showing how it works.

Work on the sanctuary continues.   This week we replaced the toilets with modern low volume models from Toto so now we have highly reliable bathrooms for guests, visitors, and events.   We’re continuing work on the water system and all plumbing from well head to house distribution should be replaced by next week.

It’s been raining non-stop for the past week and we’ve been doing our best to keep the animals warm and dry.    Palmer the Turkey has learned to sleep indoors on rainy nights but most of all he loves his humans.

As the mud dries we’ll continue to add stone dust to the new paddocks and build fences.   By July we should be ready for the four new 12x20 run ins.

This weekend I’ll continue our Spring program of trail mowing and maintenance.   At this point, that means nearly 3 miles of work as listed below.     At the end of mowing 3 miles of trail, Ibuprofen is your best friend.

On the Unity Farm property, 6000 feet
Woodland trail 950 feet
Barn road 250 feet
Mushroom trail 250 feet
Orchard road 350 feet
Old Cart path 600 feet
Marsh trail 850 feet
Unity Lane 500 feet
Driveway 500 feet
Orchard trail 800 feet
Gate trail 450 feet
Forget me not glen  200 feet
Cattail hollow 50 feet
Momiji Matsu trail 250 feet

On the Sanctuary property,  2640 feet
Pine loop 600 feet
Pond trail  250 feet
Portion of Upper Meadow trail 400 feet
Coyote Run trail 400 feet
Treehouse trail 150 feet
Paddock trails (TBD) 840 feet

On the rural land foundation property, 5400 feet
Green Lane trail  1050 feet
Brook path 800 feet
Cattail loop  1800 feet
Lower Meadow trail 450 feet
Zions Lane 450 feet
Portion of Upper Meadow trail 850 feet