Author: Head Farm Steward

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Playing Around

Play.  When was the last time you played?  Really played?

I have strawberry plants.  I have a 300 gallon tank of water and a bunch of catfish.  I don’t know what I don’t know but I’m doing it anyway.  And having fun.  It’s fun.  But is it play?

I don’t know.  I’m fully engaged.  I’m in the moment.  I’m taking risks and am more concerned with the action than with the outcome.  But I’m also learning.  Experiencing.

But is it play?

What do the kids think?  Well.  We dug a big hole in the greenhouse for a 300 gallon tank.  The kids helped.  For a while.  Then they headed off to the swings.  What happened?  Did they simply have enough?  Can an 8 year old boy get enough of digging a hole?  Maybe he can if the hole is regulated (so deep, so wide, so long and in the greenhouse).

Can this become play?  Can I play with my kids and still get my chores finished?

Those animals have to eat.  They need clean sheets.  Somebody has to cook and cooking/eating requires clean dishes…that somebody has to wash.  Where is the fun in that?

I think it’s all fun.  Sometimes there are aches and pains, sore muscles after a hard day’s work or an impressive feat of strength or endurance (lol).  Sometimes there are bad smells.  Sometimes your sock gets wet or something splatters on you.  Well.  Maybe it’s cause I’m still a boy.  It’s fun.  I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t fun.

But fun is subjective.  Fun is up to you.  I asked Dr. Singh (my botany/microbiology professor in college) how he adjusted to an arranged marriage. He told me something I have always carried with me.  “Chris, you have to decide, DECIDE to love that person every morning.  Even outside of an arranged marriage that’s true.”  Please allow me to twist that back to the topic.  Each day I have to decide to embrace the work before me.  In fact, I usually plan out my day well in advance and finalize plans in the minutes between waking up and getting up by listing the major goals.

Yesterday I moved some catfish to the pond (aquaponics hasn’t cycled yet), fed, watered and moved the broilers, fed the pigs then worked for my employer till noon.  At lunch I hauled a load of manure after cleaning out the stalls.  After work in the afternoon I went to pick up feed at the mill with my dad then came home to build fence for the cows.  The kids had been gone all day and were tired as the sun was setting and really didn’t want to help dad build fence.  I’m happy to slog through it but it’s my dream, not theirs.  Not yet anyway.

What am I teaching my children?  How can I encourage them to embrace my dreams?  to find the fun in the tasks I set before them?  How can I lead them to my vision without convincing them I am insane?

Just as Dr. Singh told me I had to decide to love my wife every morning, I have to make positive decisions about my kids too.  They are kids after all.  It can’t all be about work, no matter how fun the work is.  They need time to play.  They need opportunities to explore.  They need time to fail.  And I need to be right there.  We make tipis, we make cardboard haunted houses, we make paper halloween masks.  We listen to silly songs, read Hank the Cowdog books.  We go swimming when it’s cold, all of us standing at the edge of the pond shivering and daring each other to go first.  Take a moment in your work day to just do something fun, even if there are no kids in your life.  Skip instead of walk somewhere.  Yes, you’ll look silly.  Maybe you’ll make somebody laugh.  Laugh too.

Those things have to be in my planner.  There is so much work on the farm (the no fun, workey kind of work) that I have to be purposeful about planning activities that include the kids.  I don’t want to farm alone.  This has to be a multi-generational deal and I have to be training my replacements.

But it’s not all sunshine and roses.  I’m really not very good at this parenting thing, though I excel at work.  I mean, I’m a machine.  I can work and just keep working.  But I get a little jittery sitting still for too long having tea or playing legos.  It’s also difficult for me to manage my reactions when a little helper tangles up a spool of electric fence as darkness swallows us in the pasture.  I have to remember that failure is part of learning.  They make mistakes, we take a moment to talk about it and I tread carefully so I don’t crush them.  I make mistakes and I hope they will continue to decide to love me anyway.

Am I having fun farming?  Yes.  Am I having fun parenting?  I have decided the answer is yes.  And I have to positively decide to play through my day.  My kids won’t stick with it otherwise.  What’s the fun of doing this without my kids?

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A Beautiful March Day in October

It’s March.  Well, it’s not but it feels like March…but different.  The weather is right.  We got an inch of rain last night.  The wind is blowing endlessly and I’m in the garden.  March.  But instead of planting potatoes, I’m harvesting the remaining tomatoes and peppers.  I’m cutting up the plants to allow them to compost in a windrow in the garden under (you guessed it!) horse manure.  I’ll haul the horse manure once the row is out.

We’re getting an incredible harvest of green tomatoes but the summer garden is at an end.

The fall garden is getting a good head of steam.  Carrots are doing well.

Spinach is finally starting to come out.  I have the hardest time with spinach.  No idea why.

Radishes are coming out.

Lots of things happening in the garden.  Out of the garden too.  Our last chicken butcher date is this weekend.  I think we’re all ready for it.  Place your order soon.

 

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Vermicomposting

My third child is a bit outgoing.  He didn’t really talk until he was 5.  Now it’s the opposite…lol.  He tells everyone he meets that he has worms.

That’s a bit awkward.

I made stacking boxes to keep worms in similar to my stacking supers on my beehives.  Here’s how.  Start with a 1×12.  You will need to cut two lengths off of the board: 24 inches and 16.5 inches.  Really, you should cut one 24.5″ and the other 17″, then trim them down and square them up.

Then rip the two boards to 5.5″ wide.  Now you have two pairs of boards.

Screw the longer boards to the shorter boards.  The result will be a box measuring 24×18.  That’s big enough to hold some compost and generate a little heat but small enough that you can pick it up and carry it around.

Then tack on some 1/4″ hardware cloth.  This lets the worms through but keeps the compost from falling out when you carry it.

Here are three boxes.  I have a plywood board at the bottom and a burlap sack over the top.  The burlap shades it and holds in moisture.  Just use what you have laying around.

Pull back the bedding, add in some kitchen scraps…whatever.

We use rabbit manure.  You don’t need to compost this, they are like slow-release fertilizer pellets but the worms seem to like it and it’s what I have.

To keep the worms from being burned I drilled a couple of holes in the bottom of a bucket, filled the bucket with rabbit manure then poured a bucket of water into it.  That should start the heating process pretty quickly.  Once it cools I add it to a new tray or fill in spaces in older trays.

The worms crawl up the stack, eating as they go, leaving their castings behind.  We try to fill a box each month and harvest a box each month but it varies…like all biological things.

We ordered our worms from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm.  5000 of them.  They seem to do what they are supposed to do.

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Too Much Vacation

I’m on vacation right now.  I’m not in Florida with my toes in the sand.  I’m neck-deep in work.  No time to read.  No time to write.  I just work.  It’s awesome.

I spent the last 3 days running my sawmill.  We cut and stacked 2,000 board feet of oak and walnut for a customer.

 

This morning I built fence, milked, fed, mucked, cleaned the kitchen, gardened and trimmed goat hooves.  It’s now 10:30.

Here’s a summary of other stuff happening around the place.  Our rabbits are multiplying.

The catfish are…well, catfishing it up.  The bell siphons were a bit tricky at first.  More on that some other time.

And I hauled another load of horse manure to the garden.  My garden is on a slight North-facing slope.  I may have to bury the Georgia wall to get it levelish.

Well, that’s all I can do for now.  We’re out of feed for the broilers and a bit low on groceries.  Gotta do something about that.  Come see us.  Stuff is changing.

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Strawberries in the Greenhouse

Well, we have this greenhouse…thing…and we’re trying to find ways to put it to use.  So…we’re shootin’ for early season strawberries.  I bought 50 Chandler plants from Ison’s nursery in Georgia.

I marked out another garden row, put down a layer of composted mulch then started digging the hole for the next project, aquaponics.  More on that another time.  I needed to do something with the blue clay I was digging out of the hole so I put down a layer on the strawberry row.  Then I added a layer of composted horse manure and sawdust, jersey green sand and just a bit of aragonite before going to work this morning.

Then the oldest boy and I popped them in the rows when I got home.  Our rows could be straighter but what’s the fun in that?  Plants are 1 foot apart in rows and the rows are a staggered foot apart.  I am loosely following the Missouri high tunnel production plan but I emphasize the word “loosely”.

OK.  Well.  Too much to do to sit around chatting.  Hope this works.  It could be a spectacular failure.  Well, it could be a failure.  It’s not big enough to be spectacular.  Anybody have any tips for me?

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Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Manure Pile

Look at it.  Just sitting there.  All that fertility.

My neighbor cleaned his feed lot and put together a big-ole manure pile.  The stuff that dreams are made of.  I’m sure he’ll spread it on his fields this fall without really letting it compost but that’s just how most people do it.

My other neighbor, my dad, keeps horses.  There is a fair manure pile at the barn made from the manure of one of the horses.  I …erm…liberated…some portion of that manure for my garden and hope that dad doesn’t mind.  I mean, it’s his manure.  He needs it for his hay fields and his own garden.  Maybe if I put in some extra effort to keep all three horses bedded and keep the manure composting he won’t mind…

I have a few cows.  We rotationally graze them so there is no cow manure pile.  I have a lot of chickens…same thing.  No manure except in the old hen house.  Pigs?  No manure pile.  I keep rabbits and the breeders stay put.  Well, that’s what I’ve got.  Rabbit manure.  Well, rabbit manure and what I clean out of the hen house each spring and fall.  Well, that and what I clean out of the greenhouses in the spring.  But I need compost now.  Like…NOW!  Ugh.  What to do?

I guess I could head to St. Louis Composting to just buy compost.  For $25 I can buy a pickup truck load but why would I do that when I could spend a month shoveling, raking, sifting and hauling to end up with a lesser quality (though herbicide-free) compost for free?

And even if I had my neighbor’s manure piles and even if I had the energy to turn them all by hand or a heaven-sent front-end loader to turn the piles for me would it be enough?  How much finished compost could I haul home at $25/yard?  When would that be enough?  If I had 50 yards of compost sitting in a pile on the farm ready to be used would I still look over the fence wishing that manure pile was my own?  Is there such a thing as enough?  Am I a compost miser?  Do I hoard manure?  Are my eyes bigger than my stomach?

How much is enough?  I don’t know.  I just know I need more and I need it right now.  And again in the spring.  And again in the summer.  And again next fall.  Does anybody else have these problems?

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Did You Ever Give a Chicken a Bath?

No.  Heck no.  They run around in the rain.  Good enough.  I also don’t snuggle with my birds.  Maybe I’m the weird one.

Click on image for source

However, I don’t show my birds.  Mine are economy birds, not luxury birds and certainly not show birds.  They eat bugs, dethatch the pasture, spread manure piles and lay eggs, all on a relatively small amount of feed.  Economy.  They are not pets.  When they get old they get retired to freezer camp.  If they get sick they get culled.  If they develop a limp they get culled.  If they don’t lay eggs they get culled.  I think they are happy taking dust baths so I don’t waste time fighting it.

I now present two links.  The first is a how-to on bathing your chicken sent by my sister.  I read that and shake my head.  Others may read it and take notes.  Good for you.

Click on image for source

The second is a portion of a documentary called The Natural History of the Chicken.  I would swear it was made as an homage to Christopher Guest.  Just watch the bit about the lady with the chicken.  Start at the beginning of the series to learn about giving mouth to beak to a chicken…lol.

Click on image for source

Good luck and let me know if you have ever bathed with, gone swimming with or kissed a bird.  I haven’t.

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I Know He Can Get the Job…

I know he can get the job but can he do the job?

So.  You want to be a farmer.  I know you can buy the land but can you work the land?

Let’s paint a picture.  Little house…just big enough for the fam but no room for clutter.  A cellar for your jars of canned goods.  A wood burning cook stove.  A milk cow, a couple of pigs, some chickens, a big garden and a couple of fruit trees.  Ah, the good life.  If you have children, add homeschooling to the mix because you love spending time with your family and you know you can give more personalized attention to the children than they would get anywhere else.  Yup.  One of you stays at home with the kids and keeps the farm chores under control, the other drives off to the city to actually pay for the farm and get insurance.  Those rose colored glasses are already clearing up aren’t they?

Did you know gardens grow weeds?  That orchards grow deer?  Did you know that livestock die?  Worse, did you know they sometimes get sick and don’t die?  Can you actually send that steer off to be killed, shoot the pig or kill the chicken?  Do you want to sit out all night hoping that ^&*(#! raccoon/mink/possum/skunk/etc. comes back so you can shoot it?  Sleeping (well, tossing) in the open air night after night with a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other.  Do your children see roadkill and ask if we should stop to pick it up for the compost pile?  Have you ever had a hog bite the sleeve of your Carhartt and pull if off of you (and drag it through the mud) while another hog bites a hole in your new rubber boot and the rest of them put their dirty noses against your work pants and nibble at the seams?  Then you’ve got manure on your sock, in your boot, on your pants, all over your jacket.  You become immune to the smell that lingers and only the other customers at the shopping center notice it.  How many layers do you want to keep on your acreage?  DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY EGGS THAT IS?!?!?!?  How many eggs do you think you can actually eat and sell?  Seriously!  What are you going to do with them all?  Throw them at the pigs?  (…that’s not a bad idea…)

How about compost?  Each day you muck out the stall (horse, cow…whatever) into a wheelbarrow.  Then you add it to a pile (probably requiring you to fork or shovel it high onto the pile).  Then you fork or shovel the pile a couple of times to keep the compost active and hot.  Then you fork or shovel it into a wheelbarrow again and head off to the garden for more forkin’ shoveling!  All so you can sneak a few minutes here and there of pulling bushels of weeds and handfuls of produce from your garden that never quite manages to look the way it did when you first envisioned it.

And oh!  A wood cook stove!  How romantic!  You see the nice glow in the stove, you see the lovely wife pulling a roast out of the oven with a pie in the warmer.  You don’t see the husband off camera with a hole in his boot wearing a smelly jacket (stupid pigs) holding a chainsaw for his entire week of vacation, felling, cutting, splitting and stacking the wood so he can save a few dollars over just buying propane.  Oh, you can get the job.  No problem.  But can you do the job?

Fresh milk!  It’s fresh!  It’s raw!  It’s fun! (for the first two or three milkings).  Then it becomes a chore.  Another chore.  I mean, you got up early this morning, fired up the wood stove, went mud-wrestling with the pigs, let the chickens out (checking for dead birds), moved the chicken tractors, watered the ducks, pulled a couple of weeds in the garden while getting a beet to feed the cow, somehow managed to catch the cow, squeezed the milk out of her for 30 minutes (oh, my aching everything), strained and chilled the milk and somehow 7:00 turned into 9:30 and those small humans you keep in the house haven’t eaten yet.  Oh, and there’s laundry to wash, laundry to put away, summer clothes to pack, fall clothes to unpack, lunch to make, phone calls to answer (your husband asking if you are having a nice day), eggs to wash, sort and sell, somehow you have to make time to teach those small humans to read, write and cypher, the goats managed to escape somehow so you have to chase them down.  Then that husband of yours who drives to the city to sit on his rear all day will be home soon and he had the gall to ask what you did today since there is still a basket of laundry that needs to be folded and you didn’t gather the eggs…you know, because HIS TIME IS TOO VALUABLE TO WASTE GATHERING EGGS OR PUTTING AWAY LAUNDRY!  HE CAN GO FEED THE STUPID PIGS TONIGHT!  Oh, and you totally forgot to work on the applesauce, to pick and freeze peppers out of the garden, and another day passed without watching that webinar for that new side business you’re thinking of taking up in your free time and if you don’t start making cheese soon you’ll have to buy yet another fridge!

You can get a farm.  No problem.  But can you do the work?  Whew!

I’m not saying you can’t do the job.  I’m asking if you can do the job.  I know you can get the job.  I’m not arguing that with you.  Banks will loan the money.  Interest rates are attractive.  But what are you going to do when you get there?  Will you miss your manicure?  You won’t miss the weight you are guaranteed to lose.  You might miss putting your feet up from time to time.

So that takes us to why.  Why do we do it?  Why do we quite literally work our rear-ends off day after day?  That’s a question for another post.  I’ll give you a hint: Before the farm I felt like Joe from the clip above walking around the office in his pointless life.

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Pretty Girl. Shy Girl.

Where is Molly?

I brought the cows up during the thunderstorm at 3:00 in the morning.  We put them in the combine shed…since we don’t have a combine.  That’s where we should be milking anyway…not next to the old swing set in the back yard.  Well, we SHOULD have a more formal milking location but…anyway…

I gave them access to about 2 days worth of grazing with another 3 days within easy reach.  Just have to move the fence.

I had to look around a bit to find Molly.

She was hiding next to aunt Flora.

Aunt Flora wants to keep an eye on me.

Molly, as you might expect, spends much of her day eating, sleeping and growing.  When she bothers to get up she frolics around, Houdinis her way out of the fence and annoys her mother.  We think aunt Flora wants to be a mother.  Just a few more months, Flora.

I caught Molly blinking after a nap and finally caught May with the camera.  We are milking her once a day and it seems to be keeping the fat on her back.  Here’s to hoping we can rebreed her soon and get her shifted to summer calving.  Wonder if I can get another straw from Top Brass or if I should go with an A2A2 sire out of NZ…

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Welcome to Fall

We nearly missed last Winter.  Spring was short.  Summer came early and now Fall is asserting itself before I am ready.

Fortunately the garden was untouched.  Normally we are frost-free for another three weeks.  I’m not even sure this is the first frost, just the first one I noticed.

I don’t think this is a good sign.  Could be a long, cold winter.  Not good for the bees.  The next few days are calling for warmer weather but no real sign of an indian summer.  I don’t think there was frost on the clover where the cows are grazing right now.  I’ll have to keep an eye on them.