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.
Actually, it probably will not be the last ditch. But we have broken ground on the next stage of the rainwater catchment project. This is the trench that will run water out of the tank and splice it into the line running out to the pasture. And this is why hand tools for digging rather… Continue reading A Last Ditch Effort
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…
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
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
Allow me to introduce the newest critters on the farm: That's right, folks. We brought home two rams, from a farm a few miles south of here. They were born this year on Valentine's day. Their sire is a roughly 200 Lb's Navajo Churro ram (with four horns, very handsome feller) and their dam was… Continue reading Our First Sheep
Thursday was the first day we tried to stretch the fence in the pasture. Got off to a good start, but ended up not going according to plan. The problem was that I actually have no idea how to stretch a woven wire fence, and had no idea how much stretch it would have. So… Continue reading Best laid plans
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 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 