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.
Cow salt and sheep salt are not the same. I don't know if you know this. You may have thought that we just salted our cow and our sheep with the same generic table salt, but you would be wrong. Sheep salt has to be granular, not blocked, because sheep have smooth tongues. They cannot… Continue reading Salt Boxes
Meishans are a very interesting species of pig. We haven't completely figured out their behavior yet. Most of the time you can run them through the pasture and they may root a little here and there, but overall they will leave it alone. At most you'll have a spot or two where you have to… Continue reading Pasture Rehab
Here in the good ol' Pacific Northwest, getting ready for winter is more about getting things ready for rain than it is prepping for snow or ice. This means cleaning out the gutters (before and after the leaves fall). We had gutter guards, but found that we grew too much moss under them and the… Continue reading Winter is Coming
We have moved the animals on. After about 10 days at the east end of the north pasture, we have shifted them to the north side. This is the worst and least productive part of the pasture. We have decided to mob graze it this fall/winter. That is, instead of moving the animals through fast… Continue reading Pasture Rehab (with a digression about Curly Dock).
Tuesday after school we set out for the pasture to mark out the lines where the new fence is going to run. The first step was removing the netting that has been up since early this summer. These longer sections of netting are extremely heavy and awkward to move. I will be so happy when… Continue reading Subdividing the South Pasture: Marking out the lines
Monday was one of those days. We hustled hard first thing to get to the farm early, because it is Michaelmas and we wanted to get Iris back out on pasture. Why on Michaelmas? Because it's fun to say, and because it's memorable. It's a fixed feast at the end of September that I can… Continue reading Not much gets done some days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLo_XQJeF5k Some observations: The difference a few days and one good rain storm can make is astonishing in pasture recovery. I need to learn how to identify pasture grass species. The farm is quite pretty of a summer morning.
Meet the newest addition to the farm! The last two weeks have been more than usually busy. Daddy was away for National Guard, Mommy was busy trying to hold down the work schedule, get school schedules planned (we start back up Mid August) as well as planning for tutoring at Classical Conversations, and prepping for… Continue reading Iris
As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Edmund contracted to dig the hole for the first fence post for the south pasture. Schedules have been hectic, so we were not able to get together to put the post in, and also, we didn't have the 16 foot gate to measure the post location with. We… Continue reading Subdividing the South Pasture: Setting the First Post
It has been a while since we posted anything here. We've been busy, camping, and going to Swiss wrestling festivals, and of course working on the farm here and there. Now, since Daddy has to go to do that National Guard thing again, we are going to try to write all the blog posts, so… Continue reading Subdividing the North Pasture: Hanging the Gates.
Little Farm in the Big City 