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.
There are two kinds of work that need to be done on the farm. First, there is what might be called infrastructure work. This is work, mostly one-time projects, that hopefully set the conditions for life and work on the farm for years to come, everything from setting up the workshop to running water and… Continue reading Organizing
A far cry from when we first got them and they wouldn’t let a human within arm reach. I mean the steers. But she was too pretty not to take her picture. The sheep will happily bound over and eat all the alfalfa pellets. The steers are a little bit more circumspect. But they let… Continue reading Happy Cows
When it does, it's usually not mine. Moving the steers and sheep on Saturday morning I was struck by the how much grass they left standing. It seemed that we should be following them with some other critter that not only ate the grass but also crushed it, rolled it, and squished it into the… Continue reading Love it when a plan comes together…
This is how we get things done here on Three Hearts Farm. https://videopress.com/v/MOkb6OWB?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true Never underestimate the power of two Kraeger men With a machete and an ax.
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…
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
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 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!
The last shade mobile we built had a door. This is because, eventually, we plan on enclosing it in chicken wire and putting chickens in it. However, this is not ideal for cows, as they can get stuck in the doorway and break it. So we made another shade mobile last Tuesday. Incidentally, Ryan had… Continue reading The Second Shade Mobile
Maybe. The ultimate goal of getting our rotational grazing set up is to be able to move cows and sheep, +/- pigs, and poultry of some type around the pasture every single day, with less than one hour of work per day most days. We anticipate having seasonal ups and downs, e.g. planting and harvest… Continue reading So easy a child could do it
Little Farm in the Big City 