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.
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
Thursday is usually a fairly short day of work. Thanks to some recent changes in Daddy's work schedule, it should soon be a day off for both Mommy and Daddy! Then we will have a family day every week (until we fill it to the brim with errands and extra-curricular activities and such...) But for… Continue reading Thursday Afternoon
It's amazing what we can accomplish with a few hours of work and some motivated helpers. Miss Winnie fits Seppi's old cowboy boots. Man work! Not quite big enough for Daddy's sunglasses. Ellie was sent to go get a roll of wire from the barn. Apparently she needed Seppi and a wheelbarrow to bring it… Continue reading The Sheep Shelter
Right now the process is too time consuming. We are going at look at ways to improve the process so it only takes a few minutes. At the beginning of the week last week we found that the sheep were beginning to test the fence. Their side of the fence was eaten down pretty low,… Continue reading Setting up a new paddock
Well, it's not pretty, but it will do. Two 8-foot gates closing a 16 foot gap at the end of the laneway. They are only fastened by two relatively light chains with extremely light clips, but there is a pile of rocks (yes, I know, but I was in a hurry) behind the middle section… Continue reading Opening up the lane… by closing it off!
Little Farm in the Big City 