They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
With the summer drought well under way, the grass has pretty much gone dormant for the season. But you know what hasn't? The weeds! (Although borage is a bit too useful and pretty of a plant to be called a weed in an unqualified sense). A quick trip into the food forest area to pull… Continue reading Thank God for Weeds?
The rain has stopped for the summer. The pasture is not growing anymore. We have about another two weeks of rotation before they are off the pasture until the rains return, hopefully in September. This means we have to buy in hay. Last year we got about a hundred bales from Papa's field. This year… Continue reading Summer Drought and Truck Maintenance
We are getting to the end of the spring flush. This means that the weather is getting hotter and drier, so the grass growth slows down. If we irrigated the pasture we could probably keep it growing longer, but irrigation of two acres of pasture would be very expensive, so we do not do that.… Continue reading Fixing Fence
This was Saturday, May 30th, the last day before Daddy left for National Guard orders. Getting to the thistles was a top priority, as they were starting to put on buds. But first: Cannellini beans! Dozens of little beanlets! And we took a few minutes to weed out another section of row 5 and seed… Continue reading Thistle Massacre
Tuesday, May 26th. Seppi saw me heading out to the wilderness with a shovel, a machete, and some clippers. He immediately ran to the tool shed to grab his hatchet and followed along. Yes, a five-year-old (almost six) has a hatchet. It is quite blunt, you couldn't cut a dandelion with it, but it is… Continue reading More Man Work!
We have been noticing a problem in the pasture with the onset of hot weather. It is the presence of flies. Deer flies, specifically, but there are many varieties of fly out there. They love poop, especially cow poop. They also like landing on warm, sweaty surfaces, and in the summer, there is no warmer… Continue reading Pasture Ducks
I have so many pictures backed up, waiting for get put into a blog. I have given up on a detailed update on all of it, but as this blog is our primary record keeping mechanism (for big picture stuff, anyway) they still need to get updated. Good Friday (April 3rd) planted two new apple… Continue reading Three Week Update Post
Last Saturday, Adam texted this picture during morning chores. (It was a clinic day, so I wasn't there for chores). No, that's not a picture of one of the older lambs. This is a new lamb! Matilda had a baby on April 20! No, no one was tracking she was pregnant at all, though I… Continue reading Well that was a surprise!
We are doing the pasture rotation a little bit different this year. We have three lambs and a calf in our little flerd, and there has been some coyote activity in the area over the last few weeks. Also, there is not enough grass yet to sustain them in a small 40x50 foot paddock for… Continue reading Early Spring Pasture
Way back at the beginning of December.... We built a fence. We got a lot of work done in a single day, but left some of the brackets unattached, but this was no big deal we came back and got 3/4 of them put in a few days later. Couldn't quite finish before sundown and… Continue reading Finishing the Fence
Little Farm in the Big City 