Time is running out before daddy hast to leave for National Guard for a couple weeks. Time is also running out before the hot and dry season is upon us. Trying not to repeat the mistakes of last year, where we lost a number of orchard plants due to drought,we are working on getting all… Continue reading Mulching the Orchard
Month: May 2024
Wheat and beans
The garden is slowly beginning to take shape. Our winter wheat is coming in very nicely, and we even have seed heads forming. The beans have come in quite satisfactory, unlike most of the rest of the seeds we have planted. We have four trellises worth of blue lake, two trellises worth of purple French… Continue reading Wheat and beans
New Grass
Moving the steers and sheep to a new paddock at 5 AM. They rush deep into the new standing grass and immediately get to work. For the next 40 minutes, all you can hear is “Chomp, chomp, munch, munch.” And birds singing and chickens clucking, and roosters crowing…
Winnie Help!
Her "Buck-bucks" wanted to go scratch through the pigs' straw pile, so she helped them out. What comes out, must go in. Eventually we should alter the fence lines so the chickens can forage in the pig pen, but right now they would jsut get out into the driveway and make a mess and then… Continue reading Winnie Help!
Fixing Fence
When I was a kid, my Dad and Grandpa had a fencing wagon. It was a large flatbed that pulled behind a tractor, always disorganized, loaded with a jumbled rack of wooden fence posts and rolls of wire, stacks of step-in metal fenceposts, buckets and bags of insulaters and gate handles, usually a few fencing… Continue reading Fixing Fence
Don’t be hasty
We were very excited that the soil temperature had been hovering over 60 for a week, so we got beans and corns in the ground last week. So far so good, then this week has been cool and cloudy, and yesterday we had a full day of, cold, soaking rain, and then a cold wind… Continue reading Don’t be hasty
The Second Shade Mobile, Part II
I bet you didn't know there was going to be a part deux. But there is! LAst time, when we put the thing together we didn't have a tarp to go on top, so, while it did cast some shade, it was very little, and in a grid pattern. Now we have a green/silver 12… Continue reading The Second Shade Mobile, Part II
We are really doing it!
We finally got to the thing! The intensive pasture management, or rotational grazing, or whatever you want to call it, that we have been planning on since Ryan started reading all the farming books during the pandemic, before we even had a farm. Almost two years after buying this farm, we finally have the infrastructure… Continue reading We are really doing it!
Mulching the food hedge
 spent a few mornings over the last couple weeks, running loads of wood chips out to the food hedge. Not very time efficient, takes about an hour to load up drive out unload and drive back, but eventually we got it done. This was the most difficult section to mulch, because every shovelful had… Continue reading Mulching the food hedge
Seeds
Carrots, parsnips, onions, beets