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.
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
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
Our rainwater catchment system has three parts, in the simplest analysis. Collection, storage, and retrieval. Phase one, and by far the most expensive part, was setting the the storage system, that is, the big 5,000 gallon tank. Phase two we knock out last weekend, setting up the collection portion of the system. This is the… Continue reading Rainwater Catchment System, Phase II
Last Saturday, after the bull calves casually walked through our (somewhat) electrified netting for no apparent reason, Mommy and Daddy went on a date. I record that here because we made a resolution at the beginning of the year that we were going to do one date per month, and so far so good! Of… Continue reading It never goes smoothly…
Busy day on the farm yesterday. We decided on Sunday we need to re-arrange the barnyard better to be able to sort out livestock and direct them where we want them, and to be able to drive a truck into the laneway, or even just walk down the laneway without having to walk through gates… Continue reading The Measure of a (Little) Man
Quick update from last week, on Thursday afternoon after work we split forces. Mommy took the two older girls and got all of the grocery shopping done for the week. Daddy took the two younger ones and finished the last stretch of pasture fencing. It was cold, so Seppi borrowed my flannel. Winnie didn’t mind,… Continue reading The final stretch
Is more fun with family. At 5 AM I was out in the field tying down this inside corner. It was a tough job, getting all the thirteen longitudinal wires pulled back against the wood post. There was just too much tension, not all of them got pulled back. I will probably revisit this in… Continue reading Stretching the fence…
There are two things you must have in place before you can intensively rotate animals on pasture: Water Control With the plumbing finished, the yard hydrants connected and operating, and the trench filled in, the pasture set up moves into what we hope will be the final stage before we can put animals onto it:… Continue reading Building Fence Anchors.
We have been doing site prep for a water tank install for the last couple of weeks. It was supposed to Arrive on Good Friday, but had to be delayed until the following Tuesday. It was supposed to arrive at 8:00 AM but at 6:30 in the AM I got this picture from Adam. It's… Continue reading Installing the Water Tank
We officially finished the pasture water line project today. That is, we covered the last 80 feet of trench. The older girls earned a dollar each pulling up a rubbermade tote of shotweed. We managed to get it green, so this patch at least did not shoot seeds all over the place. Ellie fed some… Continue reading A project finished
Little Farm in the Big City 